As
early as the year 729 we read of the Emperor Shomu giving
tea to one hundred monks at his palace in Nara. The leaves
were probably imported by our ambassadors to the Tang Court
and prepared in the way then in fashion. In 801 the monk
Saicho brought back some seeds and planted them in Yeisan.
Many tea-gardens are heard of in succeeding centuries, as
well as the delight of the aristocracy and priesthood in the
beverage. The Sung tea reached us in 1191 with the return
of Yeisai-zenji, who went there to study the southern Zen
school. The new seeds which he carried home were successfully
planted in three places, one of which, the Uji district near
Kioto, bears still the name of producing the best tea in the
world. The southern Zen spread with marvelous rapidity, and
with it the tea-ritual and the tea-ideal of the Sung. By the
fifteenth century, under the patronage of the Shogun,
Ashikaga-Voshinasa, the tea ceremony is fully constituted
and made into an independent and secular performance.
Since then Teaism is fully established in Japan. The use
of the steeped tea of the later China is comparatively
recent among us, being only known since the middle of the
seventeenth century.
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