Okakura Tenshin (Kakuzo)Educator / Critic Died: 2 September 1913
Birthplace: Yokohama, Japan Best known as: Author of The Book of
Tea Okakura Tenshin, also known as Kakuzo Okakura, was a
Japanese writer and art curator whose most famous work is The
Book of Tea (1906). Okakura grew up in Yokohama, and his
family's prosperity allowed him to study at the Tokyo Imperial
University and to eventually earn a Masters in Arts degree in
1880. For years he worked collecting and writing about Japanese
art and culture with Ernest Fenollosa, becoming a well-known
critic of the trend toward westernization. In 1898 he was
dismissed from his position at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and
lost government support, but he went on to found Nihon Bijutsuin
(the Japan Art Institute). For financial support he travelled to
the United States to sell artifacts and found an appreciative
audience in Boston. He became a friend and advisor to art
collector Isabella S. Gardner, and in 1904 began working at
Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, later