The Book of Tea, Audio Edition About the Author About the author, Kokuro Okakura Kakuzo Okakura, also called Tenshin Okakura was born in Yokohama Japan on February 14th, 1863. He attended Tokyo Imperial University, and soon after graduating in 1880 met and was heavily influenced by Ernest Fenollosa, an American art critic, a defender of Japan's traditional art forms against the early Meiji Restoration's impetuous for westernization and modernization. Okakura was one of the principal founders of the Tokyo Fine Arts School, which opened in 1887, and of which he became head in 1888. He and Fenollosa, also teaching there, intentionally omitted Western art from the curriculum. In the late 1890s he established the Nippon Bijutsu-in (Japan Academy of Fine Arts) with the help of colleagues Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunso. At the turn of the century, Okakura became the curator of Oriental Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He wrote many works in English in order to share his enthusiasm for traditional Japanese art among the West. His works include The Ideals of the East (1901), The Awakening of Japan (1904), and this work, The Book of Tea (1906).