Japan Club, ISCO bring Japanese culture to Troy with Tea Ceremony
The Japan Club and International Student Cultural Organization (ISCO) brought the Japanese Tea Ceremony to Troy University as a part of their Japan Night last Wednesday night.
For over 1,200 years, Japan has been performing tea ceremonies known as Sadō, translating to “The way of Tea,” where they make matcha in a highly choreographed fashion.
“It’s a pretty strong tradition in Japan,” said Kobe Dozier, a senior interdisciplinary studies major from Columbus, Georgia. “It’s not something people do every day, but it’s something they’ve maintained.”
One of the most important parts of the ceremony is keeping quiet, which allows the person making the tea to not be disrupted and the people receiving the tea to listen to the tea-making process.
“I think it’s new that we have to stay quiet throughout the ceremony, so I think teaching that to American students is the thing you have to bring from Japan,” said Kanako Saito, a participant of the ceremony and sophomore business major from Tokyo, Japan.
The student making the tea, Yuki Uehara, is a transfer student from Nagasaki International University, where performing a tea ceremony is a part of the curriculum.
Barrett Heusch, one of the Japan Club’s faculty advisers, met Uehara while teaching in Japan.
“I told him, ‘bring your tea stuff, because you’re going to have to demonstrate how to do the tea ceremony,’” Heusch said.
Uehara said he was nervous when performing the ceremony.
“I was so nervous, because this is my first time doing the tea ceremony in front of all of the people,” said the Okinawa, Japan native.
Overall, the tea ceremony not only let American students witness something they may not have experienced before, but it also allowed Japanese students to bring part of their culture they can’t readily access in America.
“We don’t really have the opportunity to see the tea ceremony live here in Troy,” Saito said. “It’s been in our culture for a long time, people drink matcha.
“Also, I see matcha in the states and in other countries, too.”
According to Bella Stevens, president of ISCO and sophomore anthropology major from Auburn, Alabama, the tea ceremony helped spread representation of Japanese culture by allowing students to interact with a part of Japanese culture that isn’t always shown in media.
“I think, sometimes, we only really associate [Japanese culture] with anime or reality TV shows,” Stevens said. “We forget that they’ve had long traditions and large cultural exchanges.
“Doing the tea ceremony reminds everyone that [Japan] is an old nation that’s deep and enriched, with a lot of philosophy, and is very organized.”
ISCO and Japan Club plan to have more events throughout the semester. If you want to get updates on future events, follow ISCO and Japan Club on Instagram @isco_troyu and @ troy_japan.club2026, respectively.
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