126 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



When the tea-trade was thrown open in England, with the re- 

 duction in cost of transportation and of entrance duty, and with the 

 addition of new producers (India and Java), the prices of tea sank 

 more and more,^ and its consumption increased accordingly. Tea 

 ceased to be a mere luxury on the tables of the well-to-do. 

 Millions of poor people in Europe and in all English-speaking 

 countries have become accustomed to its enjoyment, and found 

 that it furnishes them the cheapest and healthiest warm drink. 

 The way its use is distributed over the different countries, is seen 

 in one of the following summary tables. 



According to Junker von Langegg,^ tea has been known in 

 Japan for more than a thousand years, but has become the national 

 beverage only since the fourteenth century. In the eighth century 

 of our era the imperial court (Shomu Tenno, Kwammu Tenno) 

 first became acquainted with it. Towards the end of the latter 

 emperor's reign, the priest Saito (Denkio Daishi) introduced tea- 

 seeds from China and planted them at Uji (805 A.D.). According 

 to another authority, tea-seeds and the art of preparing tea were, 

 previous to this, brought from China, by the abbot Yei-shu, to his 

 monastery in Omi, and cultivated there. In agreement with this 

 we have the further statement that Saga Tenno, the fifty-second 

 emperor, visiting this monastery in 815, was regaled with tea, and 

 that the drink having met his approbation, he issued a mandate for 

 the establishment of tea-gardens in the neighbouring provinces of 

 the Gokinai, and also in Omi, Tamba, and Harima. 



At that time, and even centuries later, tea was very dear, a 

 luxury of which only the nobility and the Bonzes partook. The 

 cultivation of the tea-plant seems to have gradually fallen into 

 neglect, for only on this supposition is there significance in another 

 story, — that the Bonze Yei-sei, about the year 1200, introduced the 

 plant into the province of Chikuzen, on the island of Kiushiu, by 

 means of seeds from China, and that anyhow it was not until this 

 time, under the patronage of the eighty-third emperor (Tsuchi 

 Mikado Tenno) that tea-growing secured a firm hold in Japan. 

 Miyo-ye (Meiki), abbot of the monastery Togano, near Kioto, re- 

 ceived tea-seeds from Yei-sei, with directions for training the shrub 

 and treating the leaves. He is considered the founder of tea-culture 

 in Yamashiro and Yamato, and particularly at Uji^ the celebrated 

 place for tea. To this day in a chapel there the first tea is offered 

 to him every year. Further advancement of tea-growing around 

 Uji was caused by Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu after his abdi- 

 cation, about the year 1400. We have already cited some of 

 Kaempfer's remarks about the tea of Uji, and seen therefrom that 

 its fame was already great throughout Japan two hundred years 



' For a long time a pound had cost from ;^io to ^5 in London, and even in 

 1780 it was sold at £,Z' 

 2 *'Japanische Theegeschichten." Vienna, 1884, C. Ceroid. 



