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An illustration from
the magazine Ryōri
no tomo, 1914.
girls’ schools embraced it as a useful device to inculcate among young
women rules of comportment and behaviour for the reception of guests.
Chanoyu masters wholeheartedly welcomed the role that the cult of tea was
to play in female education, realizing the financial and other advantages
that were to be gained through the popularization of their pursuit. 57
There was, in fact, a close connection between the cult of tea and the
aesthetic principles that guided professional cookery in Japan. A particular
style of serving food, which emerged in the sixteenth century among the
practitioners of chanoyu, successively acquired a dominant position on
the Japanese culinary scene. By the nineteenth century, the style began to
prevail in prestigious restaurants; during the twentieth its main principles
were extended to encompass gastronomy and home cookery as well; today,
it is considered the defining feature of culinary ‘Japaneseness’.
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