“The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! He will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not …
“The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; …
Since I wrote about ikebana, Japanese flower arrangement, it seems to be a natural transition to move to tea ceremony, another practice that represents Japanese culture. Well, I first tried to introduce it with my own words, but I give up, since Kakuzo Okakura has already so eloquently explained in English 110 years ago. Rather, I will …