Japanese tea in the United States before World War 2
For many years, the United States was essentially Japan's only major tea export market, as most other countries that drank green tea grew their own, and Japan did not enter the West African tea market until the 1930s. The U.S. had its own Japanese tea brands, its own methods of preparation, and its own tea-styles, so I thought a thread devoted to this topic might be fun.
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Might even have been grown in their Taiwanese colony, which did grow a lot of tea for their Japanese overlords. Some green tea varietals can be traced back to these times. In fact I just had a sort of Taiwanese Sencha a couple of days ago, made out of some half abandoned bushes from that period.
I was thinking of Oscar Wilde's observation from The Decay of Lying, which reminded me of this thread.
I was thinking of this quote due to a 1916 catalog photo from Vantine's Oriental, a New York shop that specialized in Eastern imports -- they were selling kimonos as tea-gowns that people could wear for tea parties! At first, the idea of special clothes for tea sounds a little strange, but I know a few Japanophiles today who would probably be tempted by an invitation to drink tea while dressed in a nice kimono that they picked up in Japan but never have an occasion to wear in the U.S.
Oscar Wilde wrote:I know that you are fond of Japanese things. Now, do you really imagine that the Japanese people, as they are presented to us in art, have any existence? If you do, you have never understood Japanese art at all. The Japanese people are the deliberate self-conscious creation of certain individual artists. If you set a picture by Hokusai, or Hokkei, or any of the great native painters, beside a real Japanese gentleman or lady, you will see that there is not the slightest resemblance between them. The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them. In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.
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I was thinking of this quote due to a 1916 catalog photo from Vantine's Oriental, a New York shop that specialized in Eastern imports -- they were selling kimonos as tea-gowns that people could wear for tea parties! At first, the idea of special clothes for tea sounds a little strange, but I know a few Japanophiles today who would probably be tempted by an invitation to drink tea while dressed in a nice kimono that they picked up in Japan but never have an occasion to wear in the U.S.
The most popular type was sencha, but most was given an extra firing to help with the shelf life, which gave it a different taste than modern sencha. I suspect it was more similar to the roasted banchas made today, except with higher-quality base material.
Thanks. Makes sense.