I’m always happy to read books about tea, and finding free books about tea makes me even happier. A Bowl for a Coin by William Wayne Farris is a commodity history of tea in Japan, an angle of Japanese tea history that I’ve not really seen outside my Japanese tea instructor textbook (and even then, my textbook isn’t focused on the commodity angle the way this book is – the information just happens to be included).

But first, what is a commodity history? For Farris, it’s a focus on the following three aspects – the production of tea (how it was grown and how production methods have changed), the tea market (what are the lives of the tea farmers like, and how has the market for tea developed?), and the role that tea may have played in Japan’s economic history. By referencing a variety of documents, including those relating to land and taxes, Farris manages to connect the dots to create a history of tea that complements the cultural histories of tea and the tea ceremony that we might be more familiar with.

A Bowl for a Coin is broken into four main chapters:

1. The Prehistory of Japan’s Tea Industry (750 – 1300)
2. Tea Becomes a Beverage for a Wider Market (1300 – 1600)
3. Tea Triumphs during the Edo Period (1600 – 1868)
4. Modern Tea (1869 – modern-day)

I highly encourage you to read the book (especially since it’s free – I found it on Amazon) for all the details, but in short: Farris argues that tea may have made its way to Japan in the eight century, where it was regarded as a medicinal beverage, farmed in a small scale, and used mainly as a gift between elites. From there, tea farming and consumption continued to grow and between the 14th to 17th century, “the production, exchange, and consumption of tea in Japan began to undergo a thorough transformation”, in order words entering the second stage of its development. The production of tea increased, tea processing improved and the peasant started to drink tea (especially since many farms also started growing tea, which means that the farming class would be able to drink their own tea). And when we enter the Edo period, we enter what Farris calls the “third stage” of tea’s development, as sencha is developed and tea becomes an integral part of Japanese economy and culture. Finally, in the modern period, the modernisation of tea production carries on and tea is being consumed and marketed in new ways.

Personally, I appreciated the emphasis on the development of tea’s cultivation and farming methods, which is information that I’ve not really seen being shared in English. I also learnt about a few new aspects of Japanese tea history, such as the Bunsei Tea Incident of 1824, where tea producers from Shizuoka fought a thirty-three year legal battle against the merchants who were misappropriating their teas and pretty much cheating them of the money they should have earned.

Personally, I don’t have any quibbles with this book. I read this while also studying for my first module of the Japanese Tea Instructor course, which covers the history and production of tea, and so far none of the information conflicts. As far as I can tell, this book is well-referenced, with most sources being Japanese academic works, and the information in it is reliable.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to people who are looking to delve deep into the history of Japanese tea. While the history of tea cultivation and its economic market is admittedly a very niche topic, there is a lot of useful information here that I’ve not really seen in English works, which would make this a valuable reference for tea enthusiasts.