Professor Ariel Stilerman publishes new book "Los cien poemas del arte del té". This book reveals the role of classical court poetry (waka) in the development of the tea ceremony during the late medieval and early modern periods in Japan. The culture of tea in Japan has its roots in cultural practices and institutional arrangements that produced a constellation of descriptive and prescriptive discourses on human behavior, as well as ideological and economic formations. Across that complexity, this book traces the crucial role of classical aesthetics, of their mediation through the practice of medieval collective verse (renga), and of the pedagogical arrangements originally developed for the transmission of knowledge about poetry and of the culture of the imperial court. This analysis is supplemented by a consideration of early modern anecdotal and commentarial work, of their areas of overlap with Buddhist soteriology, and of the impact of print technology on the circulation of knowledge about specific disciplines.

This book includes a complete and annotated translation of Chanoyu hyakushu based on the version preserved on sliding doors to the room Dairo no Ma at the Urasenke Konnichian complex in Kyoto and known today as the Hogo-busuma. The text is illustrated with more than thirty reproductions illustrating how the practice of the art of tea was represented in ink and woodblock works.