How tourism, a booming wellness culture and social media are transforming the age-old Japanese tea ceremony |
One of Japan’s most recognizable cultural practices – the Japanese tea ceremony, known as chanoyu, or chadō – is being reshaped by tourism, wellness culture and social media.
Matcha, the Japanese powdered green tea that is used during the ceremony, has entered the global marketplace. Influencers post highly curated tearoom photos, wellness brands market matcha as a “superfood,” and cafés worldwide present whisked green tea as a symbol of mindful living.
The Japanese tea ceremony is deeply rooted in the ideals of Zen Buddhism, but the current matcha hype has little to do with the tea ceremony. Green tea has become part of the on-the-go coffee culture. On social media, a centuries-old spiritual practice is compressed into a 15-second reel.
As a scholar of premodern Japanese literature and culture, I know that this commercialization is not without tension. The reflective values of the Japanese tea ceremony trace their origins to a monastic routine.
Tea arrived in Japan from China in the eighth century. Emperor Shōmu served powdered tea, an ancestor to what we today know as matcha, to Buddhist monks in 729 C.E.
Around the end of the 12th century, the practice of serving tea became more widespread after the Zen monk Eisai returned from China with matcha tea seeds from the plant that was to become the source of much of the tea grown in Japan today. He also brought with him the knowledge of how tea rituals were practiced in Chinese Buddhist temples.
Wild tea grew in Japan, but the tea grown from Eisai’s seeds became known as “honcha” or true tea. Matcha soon spread through Zen monasteries, where it was believed to generate greater enlightenment than long hours of meditation.
As Zen Buddhism gained influence among the warrior class in the 13th century, monks carried tea culture beyond temple walls. In 1483, Ashikaga Yoshimasa – Japan’s military ruler, or shogun, who was........