Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America's Tea Cups
Today, Americans are some of the world's biggest consumers of black teas; in Japan, green tea, especially sencha, is preferred. These national partialities, Robert Hellyer reveals, are deeply entwined. Tracing the transpacific tea trade from the eighteenth century onward, Green with Milk and Sugar shows how interconnections between Japan and the United States have influenced the daily habits of people in both countries.
Hellyer explores the forgotten American penchant for Japanese green tea and how it shaped Japanese tastes. In the nineteenth century, Americans favored green teas, which were imported from China until Japan developed an export industry centered on the United States. The influx of Japanese imports democratized green tea: Americans of all classes, particularly Midwesterners, made it their daily beverage--which they drank hot, often with milk and sugar. In the 1920s, socioeconomic trends and racial prejudices pushed Americans toward black teas from Ceylon and India. Facing a glut, Japanese merchants aggressively marketed sencha on their home and imperial markets, transforming it into an icon of Japanese culture. Featuring lively stories of the people involved in the tea trade--including samurai turned tea farmers and Hellyer's own ancestors--Green with Milk and Sugar offers not only a social and commodity history of tea in the United States and Japan but also new insights into how national customs have profound if often hidden international dimensions.Book Details
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Publish Date: Apr 16th, 2024
- Pages: 304
- Language: English
- Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.00in - 0.68in - 0.99lb
- EAN: 9780231216678
- Categories: • Beverages - Coffee & Tea• Asia - Japan• International - General
About the Author
Robert Hellyer is professor of history at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640-1868 (2009) as well as coeditor of The Meiji Restoration: Japan as a Global Nation (2020) and Chronicling Westerners in Nineteenth-Century East Asia: Lives, Linkages, and Imperial Connections (2022).
Praise for this book
[A] heady brew of the intertwined history of green tea in Japan, the United States and [Hellyer's] own family . . . there is much to savor in this heavily researched study.--Heller McAlpin "Wall Street Journal"
A well-researched, elegantly written history . . . Highly recommended.--M. D. Ericson "Choice Reviews"
Master storyteller Robert Hellyer draws readers into Green with Milk and Sugar . . . The book serves as a model for those seeking to write a good history of Japan, or any region . . . An outstanding contribution in many fields.--William Wayne Farris "Monumenta Nipponica"
Robert Hellyer is meticulous in describing the relevant history of both the US and Japan of these periods, and most history buffs would enjoy his exploration of the period, through the lens of tea.--Kristen Yee "Asian Review of Books"
Who would have guessed that the American heartland had a penchant for green tea (served with milk and sugar) before World War II and that U.S. tea drinkers contributed to the ubiquity of sencha in modern Japan? This engagingly written, delightfully illustrated, and stimulating book brings a lost world of 'teaways' to light.--Kristin Hoganson, author of The Heartland: An American History
Robert Hellyer's book is a gem--an intriguing story that connects the United States and Japan through 'teaways.' It offers a fascinating entangled, trans-Pacific history of the production and consumption of Japanese green tea through the lens of intergenerational family stories, spanning over one hundred years.--Naoko Shimazu, author of Japanese Society at War: Death, Memory, and the Russo-Japanese War
Beautifully researched and written, Green with Milk and Sugar demonstrates how important Japan has been to developing U.S. tastes and trade and global capitalism. Hellyer reveals a tremendous amount about consumption and trade in Japan and how Pacific influences can be found throughout the American continent. This book will appeal to tea lovers, historians, food scholars, and members of the tea trade.--Erika Rappaport, author of A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World
An unquenchable curiosity--abetted by the author's familial ties--drives this extraordinary story of the Japan-to-America tea trade. Equal parts business and cultural history, with a spoonful of diplomatic history mixed in, Green with Milk and Sugar reveals many surprising as well as previously unexplored effects of international commerce at both ends of the commodity chain. Altogether, a model transnational study.--Leon Fink, author of Undoing the Liberal World Order: Democratic Ambitions and Political Realities Since World War II
Delightfully rich in eye-opening revelations, Green with Milk and Sugar spotlights aspects of the modern history of tea found in no other books on this global drink. It offers a fine example of how the study of the forgotten past can alter our perception of present tastes and places.--Shigehisa Kuriyama, author of The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine
A lively history of tea and its significance in Japanese and American culture. By juxtaposing the stories of those involved in the production, marketing, and consumption of tea, Hellyer makes a clear case that the fortunes of many in Japan rested on the popularity of green tea in the American Midwest, offering a compelling reminder of the global effects of commodification and consumption.--Abigail Markwyn "The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era"
A valuable entry in the growing body of work exploring the ways our food choices are related to social trends, scientific and industrial developments, and political concerns, as well as international relations . . . It will be useful to scholars of food history and both Japanese and American studies, and it is very accessible to nonspecialists.--Jessamyn R. Abel "Journal of Asian Studies"
Hellyer skillfully interweaves the history of two countries by focusing on a product that is iconic of one and has a forgotten past in the other. . .The result is a commercial, social, and personal account of the complex ways that Americans and Japanese have long influenced one another's everyday lives.--Catherine L. Phipps "Journal of Japanese Studies"
Hellyer's thoroughly researched account of the tea trade is as engaging a commodity history as you will find, and one that provides plenty of opportunity to rethink and connect American and Japanese history.--Steven Ivings "H-Japan"
In Green with Milk and Sugar, Hellyer tells a remarkable story, one that has not been explored in any detail elsewhere, which fundamentally alters what we know of both modern American and modern Japanese history.--Rebecca Corbett "American Historical Review"
An excellent and meticulously researched study of interest to anyone immersed in tea culture and/or trans-Pacific history--Lillian Tsay "The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs"
An excellent social history of tea production in Japan and tea consumption in the United States.--Martin Dusinberre "H-Soz-Kult"