Although tea drinking is popular worldwide, only in Japan has tea been so influential in the development of art and culture. 

The custom of drinking matcha tea was introduced from China to Japan in the 12th century, where it was valued as a medicine and as link to continental Buddhist culture. But over the centuries a purely Japanese Tea Culture arose with the creation of a separate tea space, with procedures for preparing and receiving tea infused with Zen ideals, and with the development of the wabi aesthetic that favored imperfect, asymmetric and irregular beauty. This form of Tea is known as wabi-cha.

Today Chanoyu is regarded as a traditional culture, but in the 16th century it was quite novel and even revolutionary. The aesthetic of wabi influenced new forms of architecture, gardens, ceramics, textiles, and other crafts specially created for Chanoyu, attesting to the originality of early tea masters all of whom were lay Zen practitioners.

Chanoyu has been transmitted since the 17th century by the descendants of early tea masters and their disciples. But within these family traditions new utensils, tea procedures, and ways of thinking about Chanoyu have evolved to the present day.

We invite you to take part in a cultural journey that arose in East Asia more than eight hundred years ago and is now enjoyed in countries throughout the world.