The Bilingual Encyclopedia of Chanoyu, the Japanese Tea Ceremony

The Bilingual Encyclopedia of Chanoyu, The Japanese Tea Ceremony

This book is a comprehensive dictionary of chanoyu (the Japanese tea ceremony) in English and Japanese. It contains 3,300 entries covering the entire field of chanoyu (tea ceremony terms, tea utensils, tea rooms, tea masters, tea schools, kaiseki cuisine, history of tea ceremony, etc.), as well as related topics, such as senchado (schools of decocted tea), kodo (incense appreciation), rikka (formal flower arrangement), and Zen Buddhism. More than 900 beautiful photographs and to-the-point illustration are provided. The kao (stylized signatures) of tea masters, essential to authentication, are also listed. In addition to Japanese and English entry indexes, the dictionary includes a unique category-based index, which has made the book truly useful.

The English text captures subtle nuances, making this reference work a pleasure to read for English readers. The author, Koichi Eugene Okamoto, Ph.D., a former Fulbright scholar as well as a leading tea ceremony practitioner, planned and wrote all the entries in both languages in parallel. Viviane Lowe, M.A., an editor specializing in art and culture, worked closely with the author to finalize the first draft. Jennifer L. Anderson, Ph.D., a cultural anthropologist at San Jose State University and an Urasenke tea ceremony practitioner, advised the author on various parts of the final revision process.