Week 11 (Nov. 8 – Nov. 14)

Table of contents

To-do and Weekly Schedule

Reminder

Did you submit your Sunday blog post? It’s been a while and maybe you forgot as we got out of the regular pattern.

Remember to book your Advising Appointment, I have made 20 min. appointment slots available. From Friday Nov. 11 onward would work quite well as you get a sense of which classes have filled up already and which may be still available when it finally rolls around to you.

Good to know

Upcoming assignments

Another essay is coming up! We do the same thing as last time: you get a starter pack to play with and you can add onto it with good quality materials (consult with me, and use the library catalog as your starting point). The previous 4 starter packs are also still available to work with. The new set of starter packs will be available shortly and linked at the end of this page, under “Looking ahead” (I will send out an email as well). The draft version is due in two weeks (Nov. 21), so you can enjoy a more carefree Thanksgiving break. When you return from break, you will have your third mandatory meeting with Brianna, to discuss your essay’s rewrite. The rewrite is due on Dec. 5.

In the last week of classes, you get space to work on an “unessay“, a small project you get to design yourself that is not a traditional essay. Demonstrate how much you learned this semester about the history of tea and how you can put your analytical reading and research skills to use. You can (should?!) do something creative – artwork, podcast, video, performance (recorded), a curated collection etc.. More details will follow!

There will be a final check-in during finals week, after you’ve submitted your unessay and a third and final reflection. We’ll agree on the final grade for the course at that point.

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving (Nov. 23)

This session will be asynchronous: you have to do things with course materials, but we don’t have to be in the same room (or on Zoom) to learn new stuff.

By Tuesday, 12:30PM

Prepare for class: Read/view the following

  • Farris, William Wayne. “Chapter 2: Tea Becomes a Beverage for a Wider Market, 1300-1600”. In A Bowl for a Coin: A Commodity History of Japanese Tea. University of Hawai’i Press, 2019.
    • Focus questions: In this chapter, what changes do you observe in tea production and preparation? What longer term effects does that have for the history of tea in Japan, in terms of aesthetics; on the social; and on the economic level?
    • Task: Try to create a three sentence summary of this chapter in your own words.
  • The Japanese Tea Ceremony. Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai (Films for the Humanities and Sciences), 2018. DVD, 31min.
    • Available on Canvas page
    • This is a video of chanoyu as Sen Rikyu stylized it after the period under discussion in Farris’s chapter, but Farris already foreshadows some of the tendencies that go into this particular form.
    • Tip: on Friday, Nov. 19 (2-4pm) you get a chance to take part in a chanoyu session as a volunteer. Begin practicing sitting on your knees now! 🙃
  • In class hand out: Sen no Rikyu. “Hundred Rules.” In Sadler, A. L. Cha-No-Yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony, 107-109. Rutland, Vt.: C.E. Tuttle, 1977. First published 1933 by J.L Thompson & Co.
  • Optional extra: Benn, James A. “7: Tea comes to Japan: Eisai’s Kissa Yōjōki.” In James A. Benn. Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History, 145-171. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015. 
    • Ebook Trexler
    • Contains a discussion and a full translation of a key text for the re-introduction of tea in Japan, which is also mentioned in Farris.
    • Note that the monk Eisai is also known as Yosai. Japanese names are… complicated!

By Thursday, 12:30PM

Prepare for class: Read:

  • Okakura, Kakuzō. The Book of Tea. Auckland, N.Z.: Floating Press, 2009.
    • Read chapters 1 “The Cup of Humanity” and 4 “The Tea Room”
    • Take notes and bring to class: what is remarkable, strange, interesting in this text?
    • Okakura writes at the start of the twentieth century, when Japanese people have experienced the modernization of their country at unprecedented speed. In tea (chanoyu), he finds that the connection with the past is not completely broken.
  • Optional background: If you need more details on the history of Japan for this time period, we don’t have a good textbook in e-format, but you can get up to speed with chapters 2 and 3 of this little useful book:
    • Goto-Jones, Christopher S. Modern Japan : A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. (ebook)

Sunday, 11:59PM

Blog post: Write a blog post of 200-400 words on how you now understand more about the history of tea in Japan, and add it to category FYS106; add an image to brighten up our blog stream. You may compare with what you learned earlier in the course about China, and the wider world, of course! Connections are always a good way to demonstrate your learning.

For a short post like this, I recommend picking one topic, rather than giving a full summary of everything. (I will happily trust you learned more than is in your post!)

Checklist:

I wrote a blog post of at least 200 words, and no more than 400 words.
I added it to the category FYS106 on my blog.
I added an image to the post, with ALT text describing the image, and a caption.
I included at the end a bibliography of the works I consulted or referred to.
I checked that my post appears on the internet the way I want.

Looking ahead

You can find all the information about the second essay on this dedicated webpage. It’s pretty much the same as last time

Slides

Where to get help