The Cultural Politics of East-West Exchanges : Okakura Kakuzo and Japanese Tea Ceremony in American Culture

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japanese art and culture exhibitions at the world expositions served as a catalyst for widely spreading Japanese taste, called Japonisme, in the West for about 40 years. These exhibitions included Japanese teas, tea ceremonies, ceramics, and ukiyoe prints. Interest in Japanese tea ceremony in the United States was maximized in the early twentieth century, especially in the New England region, centering on the elite community of the culture and arts, including the so-called Boston Brahmins, as wealthy, white patrons utilized Japanese cultural objects as a means to signify their refined and eclectic taste. The individual mainly responsible for this phenomenon was Okakura Kakuzo (Okakura Tenshin), a strong advocate of the cha-no-yu, Japanese traditional tea ceremony and author of The Book of Tea. This article focuses on the role of Okakura Kakuzo in the Japanese tea ceremony spreading among the intellectuals and the upper class society in the Boston area during this period of cultural politics of East-West exchanges. It also explores why his book, The Book of Tea, published in English for Western readers is considered a classic for understanding Japanese culture theory in Western academia and art world to this day, and how, with his other book, The Ideals of the East, it provides a framework for forming debates and discourses on his viewpoints or tendency for Japanese nationalism and Asianism.