茶道をしている方で、海外の滞在経験がある方が多いなと時々思います。海外経験を機に日本文化に興味を持たれるのでしょうか。日本文化に興味があり、それを機に他国の文化にも興味を持たれるのでしょうか。茶道は、日本の美意識が詰まっていると思うので、日本人だけでなく、海外の方にも伝えてもらえる人がいるというのはうれしいです。

１００年以上前に、茶道を西洋人に伝えた方がいます。明治初期に活躍した岡倉天心です。「The Book of Tea」（邦題茶の本）で、茶道を通して東洋の美意識を英語で世界に発信しました。当時、文明開化で近代化、西洋化されていく中で、あえて東洋文化、日本文化を発信しました。その本では、茶道をTeaismと言っています。〇〇ismとは主義や思想のことで、茶道をセレモニーとしてとらえるのではなく、茶道の背景にある日本人の哲学、思想に注目しています。

天心は東洋の美を不完全の美として取りあげています。そこについては次回Teaism ～ The book of Tea②で書いてみたいと思います。

最後まで読んでいただき、ありがとうございました。

I find there are many Japanese tea ceremony practitioners who have experience staying abroad. Are they interested in Japanese culture because of their experiences abroad? Or do they have an interest in Japanese culture and then become interested in other cultures? I think the tea ceremony is the very essence of the Japanese sense of beauty, so I am glad to know that there are people who can pass it on not only to the Japanese but also to people overseas.

There was a person who introduced the Japanese tea ceremony to Westerners more than 100 years ago. It was Mr.Okakura Tenshin, who was in the early Meiji period. With "The Book of Tea," he introduced the aesthetic sense of the East to the world in English through the Japanese tea ceremony. In the midst of modernization and westernization due to the opening up of civilization at that time, he dared to introduce Oriental and Japanese culture. In the book, he refers to the tea ceremony as Teaism, where "ism" means principle or ideology, and he focuses on the philosophy and thought of the Japanese people behind the tea ceremony, rather than viewing it as a ceremony.

Tenshin describes the beauty of the East as the beauty of imperfection. I would like to write about that in my next article Teaism - The book of Tea (2).

Thank you for taking the time to read this article.