From Bancha to Sencha--The International Contexts of Tea Consumption in Modern Japan

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 trans-Pacific tea trade from the eighteenth century onward, this talk will show how interconnections between Japan and the United States have influenced the daily habits of people in both countries.

Bio: Robert Hellyer is associate professor of history at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640-1868 (2009) and coeditor of The Meiji Restoration: Japan as a Global Nation (2020).

This talk is co-sponsored by APSI and the Carolina Asia Center at UNC Chapel Hill.

Members of the Duke community may attend this event in-person. We kindly ask all others to please register for the Zoom meeting: https://bit.ly/JapanForum21-22.