Tea ceremony glossary

A tea organisation founded by Tanaka Senshō that deliberately teaches across school lines rather than within one.

The ceramic jar holding matcha for thick tea; wrapped in a silk pouch and treated as the most highly ranked utensil of a gathering.

A larger, less formal event with several sittings in a day; the usual way for newcomers to attend tea.

Records of the date, guests, utensils, and menu of actual gatherings; first-rank historical evidence.

A basket holding a portable set of utensils; lighter and cooler in feeling than the tea box.

The general term for vessels holding matcha, divided into thin-tea containers and thick-tea jars.

Lu Yu's Tang-dynasty classic, the oldest specialist book on tea anywhere, and the basis for East Asian tea studies.

A small bleached linen cloth used to wipe the tea bowl during a procedure.

A slender bamboo scoop for measuring matcha, often carved by the host and given a poetic name.

Books recording the precepts, utensils, and gathering records of tea; the basis of transmission and research.

The complete four-hour form — meal, charcoal, thick tea, thin tea — regarded as the most demanding expression of tea practice.

A whisk cut from a single piece of bamboo, used to mix matcha with water; treated as a consumable.

Turning the whisk in hot water at the start of a procedure to raise the tines and show the guests it is sound.

The idea that tea practice and Zen run to the same point; the foundation of the practice's interior dimension.

The Japanese practice of preparing and serving powdered green tea, treated as a lifelong discipline rather than a beverage ritual.

The arrival of tea from China, from Heian-period first contact to Eisai's decisive transmission in the Kamakura period.

The older and more practice-oriented name for Japanese tea culture, beside the more inward-sounding chado.

Ii Naosuke's treatise, which systematised ichigo ichie as an obligation on both host and guest.

A loose title for the modern comprehensive tea manuals produced as the practice entered school education.

Eight centuries from Eisai to the present, through shoin tea, wabi tea, warrior tea, and modernisation.