Category: Culinary Japan

What is the tea ceremony?

The tea ceremony involves preparing powdered tea for guests according to custom and enjoying its austere taste quietly and serenely. Influenced by Zen Buddhism, the tea ceremony seeks to purify the mind and attain oneness with nature.

The ceremonial serving of tea used to be exclusively practiced by nobles and priests who gave it its original form around the middle of the fourteenth century. Its popularity gradually spread to wealthy merchants, warlords during the era of civil warfare (in the 15th and 16th centuries), and their retainers.

The tea ceremony has been modified in many ways over the years. Until the end of the Edo period (1603-1867) it was practiced almost entirely by men; women joined in only after the beginning of the Meiji era (1868-1912).

There are many schools of tea ceremony, including the three Senke schools of Ura, Omote, and Mushanokoji. They all uphold the spirit of the ceremony while observing their own distinctive styles of preparing and serving tea.

#JapaneseCulture #TeaCeremony #ZenBuddhism

The Japanese tea ceremony, also called the Way of Tea, is a Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of matcha (抹茶), powdered green tea.

In Japanese, it is called chanoyu (茶の湯) or sadō, chadō (茶道), while the manner in which it is performed, or the art of its performance, is called (o)temae ([お]手前; [お]点前).  Zen Buddhism was a primary influence in the development of the Japanese tea ceremony. Much less commonly, Japanese tea practice uses leaf tea, primarily sencha, in which case it is known in Japanese as senchadō (煎茶道, the way of sencha) as opposed to chanoyu or chadō.