Description

In the 1880s and 90s Okakura Kakuzo was a leading figure in the movement to preserve Japanese culture in the face of the intense foreign influences then flooding the country. He later moved to Boston, and became curator of the Japanese and Chinese art department at the Museum of Fine Arts. Written in the early 1900s, this interpretation of the Japanese tea ceremony reveals to Westerners its deep significance concerning art, nature, Zen meditation and a refinement of living, drawn from the sober simplicities of the ritual.