We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Patricia J. Graham, a valued member of our exhibition committee for the online art exhibition True Image: Celebrating the Legacy of Yinyuan Longi (Ingen Ryūki) and the Art of Ōbaku, will publish a revised edition of her book Tea of the Sages: The Art of Sencha in November 2024.
Differences between the original and new editions:
The original edition, published by the University of Hawai’i Press, sold out, and Floating World Editions has now agreed to republish it in a revised edition. This is not just a reprint. The new edition includes corrections, minor updates to the text, and extensive revisions to over 50 primary and secondary bibliographic sources. A comprehensive new preface explores developments in the field over the past twenty-six years. Additionally, all 83 featured artworks have been digitally remastered, with most now in full color (including one substitution and one addition). Unlike the original edition, which had only 16 color plates in a separate section, this edition integrates the color illustrations directly within the chapters alongside the related text.
Book Description:
The Japanese tea ceremony is usually identified with chanoyu and its bowls of whipped, powdered green tea served in surroundings influenced by the aesthetics of Zen Buddhism. Tea of the Sages introduces the philosophy and material culture of an alternate Japanese tea ceremony featuring sencha (steeped green leaf tea). Sencha initially gained popularity among Japan’s Sinophile intellectuals, who learned of it from immigrant seventeenth-century Chinese scholar-monks of the Ōbaku Zen school. They championed the beverage as an elixir consumed by ancient Chinese sages. Sencha inspired painters and poets, and fostered major advances within craft industries, especially ceramics, metalwork, and bamboo basketry. Its popularity as an everyday drink remains strong and has spread widely outside Japan. The sencha tea ceremony survives as well, with more than a hundred schools still in existence today.
About the Author:
Patricia J. Graham, a former professor and museum curator, is an independent scholar based in Colorado, affiliated with the University of Kansas Center for East Asian Studies as a Research Associate, and a certified appraiser of East Asian art. Among her many other publications are Japanese Design: An Illustrated Guide to Art, Architecture and Aesthetics in Japan (Tuttle, 2021) and Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600–2005 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2007).