日本では、急須で淹れるお茶を「煎茶」と呼びます。しかし「煎じる」とは煮出すことであり、急須のお茶は「淹れる」と呼んだ方が正確です。中国の唐時代、固形茶を粉末にして煮出して飲んでいた時、お茶を詠んだ漢詩では「煎」の文字が使われていました。江戸時代、中国にあこがれをもった急須のお茶を楽しんでいた時、古典に登場する「煎」の文字を使っていたため、「煎茶」の呼び方で定着したのです。
When Japanese people make tea in everyday life, they prepare tea leaves in a tea pot and add hot water. This way of making tea is called “sen-cha” (“boiled tea”) in Japanese, but it should be called “brewed tea”. Genuine boiled tea was made in Tang China, where people ground brick tea into powder and then boiled the powder in water. Chinese poets of those days often composed poems about this boiled tea, using the Chinese character “sen”. From the 18th century, Japanese people came to drink tea brewed in a tea pot. Some Japanese who particularly admired Chinese culture liked to use the expression “sen-cha” for brewed tea because the character “sen” reminded them of refined Chinese classic poems. Since then Japanese people have continued to call brewed tea “sen-cha”.
