Customer Reviews

The Tea Ceremony

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I've found that an understanding of the tea ceremony led to a better understanding of so many Japanese cultural treasures that I now recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about subjects ranging from gardening to ceramics. Interested in Raku pottery? Study the tea ceremony. Want to know more about Japanese gardens? Study the tea ceremony. A fan of Zen Buddhism? Learn the way of Tea. Want to know more about Japanese architecture? Learn about sukiya style by studying the tea ceremony. Are you interested in Japanese woodworking and joinery? Learn about Tea, you'll know more about what to hide, what to emphasize in your carpentry. This particular books is a very good starting point, don't be surprised if you read this and then become interested in 20 other subjects. You'll keep coming back to this one in order to understand all 20.

This bood is a fairly good intro to the Japanese tea ceremony for the absolute neophyte. Covering history, gardening and a very basic overview of the utensils and ceremony. For anyone wishing to know more about the actual procedures of the ceremony, the book falls short (however, I'm not aware of any books widely available that do a good job of explaining these procedures). As tea ceremony is best learned under the tutalage of an instructor, anyone more serious about tea would do best to seek out a teacher.

Some aspects of a culture are deep-seated, traditional and can be puzzling to outsiders. Yet, some knowledge of that aspect will provide the foreigner with an enormous advantage as they try to enter that market and expand their business. In Japan, one very important tradition is the tea ceremony, and the ability of a foreigner to appreciate the role it has played in Japanese society can be a key to business success.
This book contains descriptions of the history of the ceremony, the role it has played in Japan and many of the ways in which it is conducted. Learning the basics of the ceremony is not difficult, yet it can be essential knowledge when meeting and interacting with Japanese business executives. It should be required reading for anyone with a need to prepare for meetings and interactions with executives of Japanese companies.

While the schools of tea differ, and this school/ryugi differs in details from the principal schools, it gives a good outline of history and practice. Excellent in photography, diagrams and production.

A few years back I participated in a tea ceremony in Japan as a tourist with little idea of what was going on besides that it was cool and elegant. Reading this book filled in for me what I missed -- and it was a lot. This is a wonderful introduction to that most Japanese of ceremonies.