Origins and Transmission of Tea — Lu Yu's Classic of Tea and Eisai's Kissa Yōjōki

Origins of Tea — The Camellia sinensis of Yunnan, China

The origin of tea lies in the primeval forests of Camellia sinensis in Yunnan and Sichuan, in southwestern China. In myth, Shennong is said to have discovered it in 2737 BCE. The Shennong Bencaojing, China’s oldest legendary pharmacological work, tells that Shennong sampled a hundred herbs, was poisoned, and cured himself with tea leaves. It is legend, but it shows that tea was understood from ancient times as a medicine.

In Yunnan, wild tea trees over a thousand years old still stand, and this is presumed to be the birthplace of tea.

Lu Yu’s Classic of Tea — The First Book on Tea in the World

The oldest surviving practical work on tea is Lu Yu’s Classic of Tea (chá jīng, ca. 760), from Tang China. Here the character 茶 for tea, and the practice of cultivation, manufacture, and drinking, were first codified.

The Classic of Tea comes in three books and ten chapters:

• One — Origins: origin and botanical characteristics of tea
• Two — Utensils: tools for making tea
• Three — Manufacture: manufacturing tea leaves
• Four — Vessels: tools for preparing tea
• Five — Boiling: methods of decoction
• Six — Drinking: how to drink
• Seven — Anecdotes: history and lore
• Eight — Origins: geography of tea
• Nine — Simplifications: abbreviating utensils
• Ten — Diagrams: illustrations

Lu Yu was raised as an orphan at Ryūgai-ji temple and later became a recluse to devote himself to tea. His method involves boiling powdered dan-cha in water with salt — different from the modern matcha method.

Three Forms of Tea

Ways of drinking tea shifted in three stages over the ages:

• Dan-cha (compressed tea) — Steamed leaves pounded and pressed into a cake, boiled to drink. Mainstream in the Tang.
• Matcha (powdered tea) — Steamed leaves dried and ground on a stone mill; whisked into hot water. Established in the Song.
• Sencha (steeped tea) — Loose leaves steeped in hot water. Established in the Ming. In Japan, popularized in the middle Edo by Baisaō and Nagatani Sōen.

Tea Culture in the Tang

In the Tang dynasty, tea shifted from medicine to refined enjoyment. In the marketplaces of Chang’an and Luoyang, tea houses lined up as places of refreshment for monks fighting drowsiness and for literati to converse.

The poet-monk Kōnen (Jiaoran), a friend of Lu Yu, left the “Tea Song,” celebrating tea as an elixir.

Saichō and Kūkai — Tea Arrives in Japan

The transmission of tea to Japan came through the kentōshi (embassies to Tang) during the Nara and Heian periods. Three key figures:

• Saichō — In Enryaku 24 (805), a legend at Hiyoshi Taisha in the Hiyoshi tea garden (Hiyoshi Chaen) records that he planted tea seeds on Mount Hiei
• Kūkai — Returned in 806 and is said to have offered tea to Emperor Saga
• Eichū (743-816) — In 815 the Nihon Kōki records that he served sencha to Emperor Saga at Sūfuku-ji in Ōmi, and this is the first confirmed textual reference to drinking tea in Japan

However, tea in the early Heian was medicine reserved for a few monks and aristocrats, and after the mid-Heian, with the abolition of the kentōshi, it died out along with them. The revival awaited Eisai in the Kamakura period.

Song-Dynasty Tencha — Establishment of the Matcha Method

In the Song, powdered dan-cha was mixed directly with hot water in a bowl — the “tencha” (point-serving) method. The Emperor Huizong (r. 1100-1125) wrote On Tea (Da Guan Cha Lun), treating the technique in detail.

The tenmoku bowls of Song-era Ken kilns (yōhen tenmoku, yuteki tenmoku) are the tea utensils of this age, and later crossed to Japan to become National Treasures. All three surviving yōhen tenmoku are in Japan — Seikadō Bunko, Fujita Art Museum, and Ryōkō-in of Daitoku-ji.

Eisai — The Reviver After 400 Years

The tea drinking that had died out from the mid-Heian was revived in the early Kamakura by Myōan Eisai (Yōsai) (1141-1215), founder of the Rinzai school of Zen.

The Life of Eisai

• 1141 — Born to the family of a shrine priest, Kaya, at Kibitsu Shrine in Bitchū
• 1154 — At 14, took the tonsure on Mount Hiei; studied Tendai teaching
• 1168 — First journey to Song China (half a year)
• 1187-91 — Second journey to Song, four years of practice at Wan’nien-ji on Mount Tiantai and Jingde-si on Mount Tiantong. Received the seal of transmission of the Huanglong branch of Rinzai Zen from Xu’an Huaichang
• 1191 — Returned home, bringing tea seeds. Planted at Fushun-an in Hirado and at Mount Sefuri
• 1195 — Founded Shōfuku-ji in Hakata — the first Zen temple in Japan
• 1202 — Founded Kennin-ji in Kyoto — with the support of Minamoto no Yoriie
• 1211 — Completed Kissa Yōjōki
• 1214 — Served tea to Minamoto no Sanetomo
• 1215 — Died at Kennin-ji at age 75

Kissa Yōjōki — Japan’s First Book of Tea

Kissa Yōjōki (Notes on Nurturing Life through Tea, 1211) is Japan’s first tea book, in two volumes.

First Volume (Chapter on Tea)

Discusses the nurturing of the five viscera (liver, heart, spleen, lung, kidney) and their relation to tea. In the opening Eisai writes:

“Tea is the miraculous medicine of nurturing life, the wondrous art of extending years.”

He positions tea as bitter, nourishing the heart. Citing Chinese medical texts such as Shennong Shijing and Guangzhou Ji, he describes the botanical character, growing regions, manufacture, and effects of tea.

Second Volume (Chapter on Mulberry)

Discusses the medicinal virtues of mulberry (leaf, fruit, bark) and outlines treatments for five diseases (drinking-water disease = diabetes, palsy, non-eating disease, tumors, beriberi). Prescriptions combining tea and mulberry are included.

Tea for Minamoto no Sanetomo — The Decisive Moment of 1214

On the 4th day of the 2nd month of the 2nd year of Kenpō (1214), the shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo suffered from a hangover. Eisai performed prayers and offered tea as a “good medicine.” Sanetomo recovered, and Eisai presented a scroll (a version of what became Kissa Yōjōki) describing tea’s virtues, as recorded in the Azuma Kagami.

From this event, the practice of drinking tea began to spread in Kamakura warrior society. After a 400-year gap, tea took root again in Japan.

The Spread of Tea Seeds

Eisai’s tea seeds from Song were first planted at Fushun-an near Hakata, and then at Iwakami-bō on Mount Sefuri. He also passed them to Kyoto’s Myōe Shōnin (1173-1232), who established a tea garden on Mount Toganoo (Kōzan-ji). Toganoo tea came to be called honcha (“true tea”), distinguished later from hicha (“non-tea”) of Uji.

Myōe is said to have brought tea to Uji as well, and is revered as the ancestor of Uji tea — the source of today’s Uji tea brand.

Tea and Zen

As a Zen monk, Eisai valued tea as “a way of driving away sleep and awakening body and mind” during zazen. Rinzai temples developed ritualized tea-drinking (yotsugashira chae, “four-heads tea ceremony”), one of the sources of later chadō practice.

Kennin-ji still holds yotsugashira chae every year on April 20, Eisai’s birthday. It is an 800-year tradition — a starting point of the notion of “tea and Zen as one taste.”

From This Article to the Next

We have traced the transmission of tea from China to Japan and its revival by Eisai after four centuries. The next article turns to the tōcha and shoin no cha of the late Kamakura through the early Muromachi — a lavish, playful tea among warriors and courtiers that turns, eventually, toward Murata Jukō’s emerging wabi. From “upper-class entertainment” toward “the beauty of wabi” — a great turning point.