Table of Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Tea, Aesthetics and Power -- Tea, Authority and Identity -- Tea, War and Society -- 1 What Is Twenty-first Century Tea? -- The Pleasures of Hakata Tea -- Tea Pleasures as Power -- 2 Inventing the Nation: Japanese Culture Politicizes Nature -- Introduction -- The lethal aesthetic of 'Japan the beautiful' -- Nation building demands a politicized culture -- Lethal transience in Meiji literature: beauty and death as citizenship -- Showa era painting: foreign beats native -- Meiji era tea: the aesthetic seduction of an ideological tool of state -- Conclusion -- 3 Lethal Transience -- Introduction -- Tea as transience: divine flowers and sacred Japaneseness -- Wartime sakura: patriotic transience -- Persistent sakura -- Conclusion -- 4 Japanese Harmony as Nationalism: Grand Master Tea for War and Peace -- Introduction -- Kokutai no hongi: tea as cultural nationalism -- Marketing militant harmony: tourism and tea -- Tea-room harmony: war and peace -- Rikyu in 1940: tea as state nationalism -- Tea spirit and state nationalism -- Tea as state nationalism: Grand Master lectures -- Tea for peace -- Conclusion -- 5 Wartime Tea Literature: Rikyu, Hideyoshi and Zen -- Rikyu as representative: tea as national pride -- Rikyu in wartime tea literature -- Zen is Tea as imperialism: Zen is the sword, Zen is Bushido -- Wartime tea literature -- The Way of Tea in citizen education -- Debates about the values of the Way of Tea -- Conclusion -- 6 Grand Master: Iemoto -- Introduction -- Historical background of the Grand Master system -- Sensational location: iemoto in popular culture and literature -- Thousand Cranes by Kawabata Yasunari -- Conclusion -- 7 Tea Teachings as Power: Questioning Legitimate Authority -- Introduction -- One context: teaching and research connected.

Read the text so closely it alarms its protectors -- How discourse shapes experience in institutional contexts -- Reading against Anderson from outside: Kramer versus Anderson -- The hard reflexivity of future tea -- Conclusion -- 8 Teshigahara's Rikyu as Historical Critique: Representations, Identities and Relations -- Introduction -- The film Rikyu as a considered historical intervention -- Written history: qualifying the legendary status of Sen no Rikyu -- Anecdotal accounts as national myth: tea is cultural -- History into film: consuming the nation -- Positioning the audience: genres in national cinema -- Tea film, tea practice: the critical power of voice-over -- No final position: othering the Self -- Conclusion -- 9 Lethal Transience as Nationalist Fable: kumai Kei's Sen no Rikyu: Honkakubo Ibun -- Introduction -- Critique of everyday myths: locating Kumai's work -- Counter-Orientalism deconstructed: lethal politics of 'Japan the beautiful' -- Cinema's resistant and reactionary framing of the nation: jidai geki -- Film as history: tea's aesthetic of seppuku and sakura -- History into film: emphasizing transmission and 'authenticity' -- Cinema as meta-history and the politics of Sen cooperation -- Structural outline: anecdotes as quotation marks -- Qualifying the narrative -- Protect me from what I want -- Conclusion -- 10 National Identity and Tea Subjectivities -- Desire: shopping for authenticity -- Tea worlds -- Post-war tea as anime: 'One bowl, one final bow' -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Index.