The Book of Tea, Okakura Kakuzō [ereader for textbooks .TXT] 📗

to established etiquette, the chief guest now asks permission to examine the tea-equipage. Rikiu places the various articles before them, with the kakemono. After all have expressed admiration of their beauty, Rikiu presents one of them to each of the assembled company as a souvenir. The bowl alone he keeps. “Never again shall this cup, polluted by the lips of misfortune, be used by man.” He speaks, and breaks the vessel into fragments.

The ceremony is over; the guests with difficulty restraining their tears, take their last farewell and leave the room. One only, the nearest and dearest, is requested to remain and witness the end. Rikiu then removes his tea-gown and carefully folds it upon the mat, thereby disclosing the immaculate white death robe which it had hitherto concealed. Tenderly he gazes on the shining blade of the fatal dagger, and in exquisite verse thus addresses it:

“Welcome to thee,
O sword of eternity!
Through Buddha
And through Dharuma alike
Thou hast cleft thy way.”

With a smile upon his face Rikiu passed forth into the unknown.

Endnotes

Paul Kransel, Dissertations, Berlin, 1902. ↩

Mercurius Politicus, 1638. ↩

The Chinese Elysium. ↩

We should like to call attention to Dr. Paul Carus’s admirable translation of the Tao Te Ching. The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago, 1898. ↩

The precious jewels formed in the bodies of Buddhas after cremation. ↩

We refer to Ralph N. Cram’s Impressions of Japanese Architecture and the Allied Arts. The Baker & Taylor Co., New York, 1905. ↩

The Dragon Gorge of Honan. ↩

“Pingtse,” by Yuenchunlang. ↩

Sumadera, near Kobe. ↩

All celebrated Chinese poets and philosophers. ↩

Colophon

The Book of Tea
was published in 1906 by
Okakura Kakuzō.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Tassos Natsakis,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1997 by
Matthew, Gabrielle Harbowy, and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies,
a painting completed in 1899 by
Claude Monet.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 24, 2019, 5:02 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/okakura-kakuzo/the-book-of-tea.

The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.

Uncopyright

May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

Copyright pages exist to tell you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S. public domain. The U.S. public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S. to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions.

Copyright laws are different around the world. If you’re not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook.

Non-authorship activities performed on public domain items⁠—so-called “sweat of the brow” work⁠—don’t create a new copyright. That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks L3C, its contributors, and the contributors to this ebook release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the underlying works, which, though believed to already be in the U.S. public domain, may not yet be in the public domain of other countries. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.