Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice

Kristin Surak’s Making Tea, Making Japan is one of the most transformative volumes I have read in some time, and deserves a reading beyond those who most obviously must engage it -- those who study Japanese society and those who are interested in nation formation. Surak’s analysis of the tea ceremony suggests something new about cultural power too, and therefore deserves an even broader audience.The tea ceremony has somehow survived radical transformations of Japanese national expression while at the same time ensuring a sense of continuity that phases of isolation, westernization, imperialism, postwar defeat/recovery, and democratic and peaceful internationalism would seem to deny. There is something about this tea ceremony that is remarkably resilient, on the one hand, and generative, on the other.It is resilient because it is reproduced over time. Yes, the experts and principal practitioners may shift from upper class men to housewives, and it may articulate very differently with various kinds of power, from militarists to commercial houses. It remains recognizably the same in practice over time, but it is more than resilient. It is generative.Tea ceremony practitioners are able to use this ceremony to express a kind of power that is not just about the manipulation of force or the distribution of resources. It expresses, in that Durkheimian sense, a kind of collective effervescence that is not only in the moment of ritual, but present in the anticipation of its performance, in the immaterial residues left on its artifacts, in the contemporary aura of its historical endurance.In a seminar at Brown University, Surak explained that resilience and generativity of practice in terms of the contradictions that the tea ceremony embodies. It is distinctively Japanese, and yet it is universal. It is remarkably dependent on certain concrete settings and material artifacts, and yet it transcends the material world. It is heavily scripted, but it depends on a measure of improvised interaction in which much is unpredictable. It is, in short, a performance dripping in feelings of authenticity and yet unreal given the world in which we live.It's a brilliant work, and exceptionally well written. It inspires.

This was an interesting read that is very well written.. Easily understandable

Highly recommended, and quite different than other English-language books about tea. Packed with interesting info about the cultural history of chanoyu, particularly over the past century. Although the nationalism thesis is interesting and well laid-out, tea practitioners will find much history and culture here that's not available from orher sources.

Timely, informative, written with expertise and persona

Not many books are written on this subject approaching it with the mind set on an anthropological, sociological or ethnological frame. This is one of the few. Fluent, well written and certainly well referenced, the book is perhaps a reminder of the deja-vu for the people involved with the Japanese Tea Ceremony while presenting a somehow inflated or rather distorted image of this practice in its nationalism / nation-work / nationess robe for the novice not familiar with the ceremony.Which is the targeted audience - was a question that came to my mind?The book is a pleasant reading no matter what. Chado, as described by Mrs. Surak, was a calculated and cleverly controlled tool to define, enhance and grow a solid and distinctive engine supporting the work of building the nation, and in this case a very culturally distinctive nation: Japan.The analogy to similar movements in Europe and Asia is fascinating for the reader hungry of adventurous and exotic possible symmetries. I am not sure this is in fact a good conclusion. Yet the daring to take this view is to be applauded.All in all, the book should be on the shelves of anyone who is curious or involved or both, with the the magic of a spiritual experience - the Zen dimension of tea, which unfortunately, is not at all presented as a fundamental factor in the meaning and the evolution of this tradition, left to inspire the curious only with its worldly, aesthetic, cultural and political dimensions, in the arms of people looking as always for what they love to look for: power

For me, this was the best thing I've read about in regards to the tea ceremony. It describes not only the method of it, the history, the business, and the social implications of the tea ceremony.This book does away with all the flowery explanations and the usual allusions to zen and nature that the tea ceremony is often compared with. It's a straightforward explanation of why the tea ceremony is so important in Japan. Period.If you ever wanted to get beyond the surface of the tea ceremony and know why the ceremony is important in Japan, this is it.

Prospettiva molto interessante sulla cerimonia del tè in relazione alla creazione dell'identità nazionale giapponese.Chiaramente frutto di un lungo field work in loco.

Great book for the “academic” side of puerh.