THE LITTLE TEA BOOK 



This work, which is classified by 

 subjects, has been assigned as the be- 

 ginning of the Chow dynasty, but 

 belongs more properly to the era of 

 Confucius, K'ung Kai, 551-479 B.C. 



Although known in Japan for 

 more than a thousand years, tea only 

 gradually became the national bev- 

 erage as late as the fourteenth cen- 

 tury. 



In the first half of the eighth cen- 

 tury, 729 A.D., there was a record 

 made of a religious festival, at which 

 the forty-fifth Mikado " Sublime 

 Gate" Shommei Tenno, entertained 

 the Buddhist priests with tea, a hith- 

 erto unknown beverage from Corea, 

 which country was for many years 

 the high-road of Chinese culture to 

 Japan. 



After the ninth century, 823 A.D., 



6 



