Review Essay: A Nation, a World, in a Bowl of Tea

Fujimori Terunobu. 藤森照信. Fujimori Terunobu no Chashitsugaku: Nihon no Kyokushō Kūkan no Nazo [Fujimori Terunobu’s tearoom studies: The riddle of Japan’s smallest space]. 藤森照信の茶室学。日本の極小空間の謎. Tokyo: Rikuyosha, 2012. 296 pp. ￥3,000 (cloth).Surak, Kristin. Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012. 272 pp. $85 (cloth), $25 (paper/ebook).The tea in Surak’s bowl is bright green matcha whipped with a whisk; Fujimori’s is steeped sencha heated over a tiny bed of coals. Fujimori’s funky tea seems to be the antithesis of the refined practices Surak strives to embody. Only occasionally does a communicant in Fujimori’s tea space wear a kimono, and there is no reason to worry about treading on the silk borders of a tatami, because his floors are usually finished in other, more modest, materials. Fujimori’s tea is one that can accept outside influences; Surak’s sits complacently at the center of an industry built on centuries of history. Surak shares the conventions of tea; Fujimori celebrates its unconventional fringes.