Tea is said to have began as a medicine and grew into an everyday beverage. While tea entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements in China, the fifteenth century saw Japan turn tea into a religion of aestheticism. This religion, known as Teaism, and introduced by Okakura Kakuzo, author of “The Book of Tea.”

Okakura

In Japanese culture, Teaism has been highly favored by the isolation of Japan from other cultures. Tea is a part of many Japanese habits, customs and cuisines. Anyone studying Japanese culture will notice the importance of tea as it is also in the literature and paintings.

Japanese Teahouse

Okakura describes Teaism as “a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.