Book Launch & Talk: Making Tea, Making Japan. Kristin Surak in conversation with Christine Guth and Fabio Gygi

Japanese Studies

11 June 2014
18:30–00:00
The Japan Foundation, London

Past event Organised

Why did an activity as mundane as tea preparation and drinking become one of the most potent symbols of Japan? How does the tea ceremony create an experience of Japaneseness – not just for foreigners, but for Japanese as well?

Drawing on her new book Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice, Dr Kristin Surak (SOAS) will explore the relationship between culture and nation in conversation with Dr Christine Guth (RCA) and Dr Fabio Gygi (SOAS).

The discussion will examine the tension-filled transformation of chanoyu from an aesthetic pleasure of elite men to a hobby of housewives as it came to embrace not merely the elite few, but the nation as a whole, and probe the ways that tea masters have capitalized on the association between tea and Japanese culture. As such, the tea ceremony serves as an exceptionally vivid illustration of one of the fundamental processes of modernity: the work of making nations.

Contact Information

For enquiries about this event, please contact:

Japanese Studies & International Dialogue
LO_JapaneseStudies@jpf.go.jp

CC Natsumi_Abe@jpf.go.jp (Natsumi Abe, Assistant Director and Manager for Japanese Studies)

and Iona_Vos@jpf.go.jp (Assistant Programme Officer for Japanese Studies)

General Enquiries
LO_info@jpf.go.jp

Phone: +44 (0)20 7492 6570

This event is free to attend but booking is essential. To reserve a place, please e-mail your name and the title of the event you would like to attend to event@jpf.org.uk

Book Synopsis

Few practices are simultaneously as exotic and representative, instrumental and sensual, political and cultural as the tea ceremony. Pre-modern in origin, the ritual was recast as a political emblem of the modern Japanese state, and then transformed into its contemporary incarnation as a cultural icon of the country. Throughout these conversions, its practitioners have played an integral role in defining and redefining what it means to be Japanese. Employing ethnographic, historical, institutional, and phenomenological methods, Kristin Surak shows how the tea ceremony has become intimately tied to national identity through a process she terms "nation-work." Making Tea, Making Japan: Cultural Nationalism in Practice includes an account of the historical evolution of the tea world and a detailed investigation of its contemporary organization to offer a systematic study of the ways that cultural practices define, explain, embody, and cultivate nations.