Changes

Tea might have been first introduced to Japan in [[805]], when [[Saicho|Saichô]] brought ''camellia sinensis'' seeds back from China. It first grew to significant popularity in China only about a hundred years earlier.<ref>Gallery labels, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.</ref>

Tea might have been first introduced to Japan in [[805]], when [[Saicho|Saichô]] brought ''camellia sinensis'' seeds back from China. It first grew to significant popularity in China only about a hundred years earlier.<ref>Gallery labels, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.</ref>

Powdered tea is believed to have been introduced to Japan by [[Eisai]] in [[1191]], along with [[Rinzai]] [[Zen]].<ref>Conrad Schirokauer, David Lurie, and Suzanne Gay, ''A Brief History of Japanese Civilization'', Wadsworth Cengage (2013), 81.</ref>

Powdered tea is believed to have been introduced to Japan by [[Eisai]] in [[1191]], along with [[Rinzai]] [[Zen]].<ref>Conrad Schirokauer, David Lurie, and Suzanne Gay, ''A Brief History of Japanese Civilization'', Wadsworth Cengage (2013), 81.</ref> By the 14th century, it was being sold in urban marketplaces and outside Buddhist temples, and was gradually becoming more widespread among urban commoners. Meanwhile, elites began to engage both in ritualized tea gatherings (so-called "[[tea ceremony]]") and in tea battles (''tôcha'') - competitions to identify different varieties.<ref>Morgan Pitelka, ''Spectacular Accumulation'', University of Hawaii Press (2016), 20.</ref>

The first sample batches of tea reached England around [[1664]]. By the 1830s, more than 30 million pounds of tea were shipped from China to Britain every year.<ref name=matsuda/> China was, for a time, the world's only exporter of tea, and the volume of trade in the good was such that, at its height, tariffs on the importation of tea represented as much as 10% of total British government revenues.<ref>Lloyd Eastman, ''Family, Fields, and Ancestors: Constancy and Change in China's Social and Economic History, 1550-1949'', Oxford University Press (1988), 128.</ref> Tea + [[silk]] constituted at least 50% of Chinese exports throughout the 19th century, peaking as high as 92% in 1842 and 93.5% in 1868, though this figure fell to 64.5% in 1890, just before the turn of the century. At least 40% of tea production in China was for export, and 50-70% of silk production, all the way to the 1920s.<ref>Joseph Esherick, "Harvard on China: The Apologetics of Imperialism." ''Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars'' 4:4 (1972), 10.</ref>

The first sample batches of tea reached England around [[1664]]. By the 1830s, more than 30 million pounds of tea were shipped from China to Britain every year.<ref name=matsuda/> China was, for a time, the world's only exporter of tea, and the volume of trade in the good was such that, at its height, tariffs on the importation of tea represented as much as 10% of total British government revenues.<ref>Lloyd Eastman, ''Family, Fields, and Ancestors: Constancy and Change in China's Social and Economic History, 1550-1949'', Oxford University Press (1988), 128.</ref> Tea + [[silk]] constituted at least 50% of Chinese exports throughout the 19th century, peaking as high as 92% in 1842 and 93.5% in 1868, though this figure fell to 64.5% in 1890, just before the turn of the century. At least 40% of tea production in China was for export, and 50-70% of silk production, all the way to the 1920s.<ref>Joseph Esherick, "Harvard on China: The Apologetics of Imperialism." ''Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars'' 4:4 (1972), 10.</ref>