The Culture of Tea Ceremony with Tea Master Kumakura of Omotesenke

On August 25th, Consul General Kazuhiro Nakai was invited to the event “The Culture of Tea Ceremony with Tea Master Kumakura of Omotesenke” at the Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens, which has an authentic beautiful tea ceremony room “Seishin-an”.

“Omotesenke” is one of the leading schools of Japanese tea ceremony, founded by Sen-no-Rikyu, who started the Japanese tea ceremony in the 16th century. “Omotosenke” is very active in introducing the tradition of Japanese tea ceremony overseas. In fact, the school has four branches in the United States: Hawaii Region, North California Region, South California Region, and Eastern Region. There is an active group of Omotosenke in Florida, and it is part of the Eastern Region branch.

Each year, the “Omotosenke” Headquarters in Kyoto, Japan, sends a senior tea master to each US branch to provide a training session to their members. The session for the Eastern Region branch this year was held at the Morikami Museum by “Soushou” (master) Michiteru Kumakura, a renowned tea master. After the training session, a demonstration event of the tea ceremony was held to introduce the basics of tea ceremony, accompanied with the taste of matcha tea and Japanese sweets, to local community residents.

Consul General Nakai was very honored to be invited to this demonstration event and, along with the other guests present, thoroughly enjoyed the expertly prepared tea by Master Kumakura, and was delighted to see Japanese culture and the spirt of traditional and authentic tea ceremony being introduced to Florida residents.