Legend has it that the ancient Chinese emperor and inventor of Chinese medicine, Shennong, was the first to discover the pleasant flavor and medicinal properties of green tea. One day, as he was boiling water over a fire, a breeze swept a few leaves of a nearby tea bush into his kettle. Shennong not only enjoyed the newly ‘invented’ beverage, but would also go on to study the health promoting properties of his accidental discovery. This legend reflects what has been part of the Chinese culture for almost 5000 years: Tea is so precious that it could only be of royal origins and it promotes health in mind and body.
A new powdered form of tea emerged during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Freshly picked tea-leaves were steamed to preserve color and freshness, then dried and ground into a fine powder called ‘tea mud’. The tea mud was placed in moulds, then pressed and left to harden. Later it was dried in the sun and then baked to prevent rotting. These ‘tea cakes’ were easy to store and transport. To make a cup of tea one would break off a little piece of the tea-cake and then whisk the tea powder up in a drinking bowl.
This way of processing and preparing tea was eventually abandoned in China. But in the early 8th century traveling Zen monks from Japan had begun to bring tea and tea seeds back with them and started growing tea plants in Japan. Soon the Japanese Zen priests began their own tradition of cultivating, processing and preparing powdered green tea – and thus Matcha was born.
It was in the 11th century that the Zen priest Eisai initiated the cultivation of tea in Japan. His famous book about tea opens with the sentence: “Tea is the ultimate mental and medical remedy and has the ability to make one’s life more full and complete.” In saying that, Eisai was referring to Matcha, later to become Japan’s most treasured kind of green tea and the only tea to be used in the traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony (Sadō).
Sadō (‘The Way of Tea’) in its modern form was developed by Zen monks over the course of the 15th century and became popular with the Samurai society, royalty and Japan’s upper class. The teachings of the monk Sen-no Rikyu were the most influential, basing Sadō on the four principles of harmony, purity, tranquility and respect.
