Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/277

 only because its popularity dates from the Military epoch, when a pastime so essentially effeminate ought to have been quite incongruous with the spirit of the time, but also because it constitutes a mirror in which the extraordinary elaborateness of Japanese social etiquette may be seen vividly reflected.

A coarse variety of the tea-plant appears to have existed in Japan from time immemorial, but its properties did not receive popular recognition until the twelfth century, when Eisai, a priest of the Zen sect of Buddhism, travelling to China for the purpose of studying the methods of propagandism which had brought the doctrine of religious meditation into wide favour there, learned immediately the value attached to the leaf and was informed of the nine virtues it possessed. He carried back with him to Japan a book of directions for the culture and curing of tea, together with a jar of choice seed, and from that time the beverage came into favour among the upper classes. During more than a hundred years, however, the fine leaf was so rare and so highly prized that a small quantity of it, enclosed in a little jar of pottery, used to be given to warriors as a reward for deeds of special prowess, and the fortunate recipients assembled their relatives and friends to partake of the precious gift. The ceremony observed on these occasions might be described as tea-tasting rather than tea-drinking. Several plantations of tea had been formed