Nancy Hamilton in Japan

Nancy J. Hamilton, MA ’20, is a lecturer and scholar of Japanese aesthetics and traditional practices. Her research focuses on the aesthetic roots of tea practice in medieval poetics and Buddhist thought. In her course on Japanese aesthetics offered during Stanford University’s Bing Overseas Study Program in Kyoto in 2024, she explored with her students the connections between aesthetics, perception, and communication through visits to real-world sites of practice, including the tearoom, pottery studio, and confectioner’s workshop. Nancy is a longtime practitioner and instructor of the Way of Tea. She teaches in the Urasenke lineage, which is based in Kyoto, and has offered numerous lectures and workshops related to Japanese tea practice at Stanford and universities across the country.

Nancy says, “I fell in love with Japanese language and culture during my junior year in Tokyo. However, it wasn’t until I attended my first tea gathering in 2002 that my life was transformed. Deeply moved by the poetry and aesthetics of the experience, I dedicated myself to the study of tea. This has led me to spend countless hours in the tearooms of Kyoto and California as well as in classrooms and archives, as I returned to graduate study at Stanford to explore the roots of tea practice in poetic traditions. I take great delight in the improvised tearooms of campus, where I enjoy mentoring students of Stanford Sadō, a student club devoted to tea practice.”   

During our adventure, Nancy will frame our experience through the lenses of politics, poetry, pilgrimage, and pleasure. As we don our traveler’s cloaks to retrace the steps of poets and pilgrims past, we will add our own footprints—and perhaps even poems—to the storied histories of travelers who have preceded us over these historic paths.  

• Lecturer, Stanford Bing Overseas Study Program in Kyoto, Spring 2024, Spring 2027

• Instructor of Chanoyu (Japanese Tea Practice) in the Urasenke Tradition since 2010; Chamei level certification, receiving the name Sōkei, in 2020

• Member of the Teaching Tea project, a collaboration of scholars and practitioners providing fresh materials on chanoyu for the university classroom

• Author: “Tea as Embodied Practice.” Teaching Tea: Culture, History, Practice, Art. Japan Past & Present. 2025

• Author: “Chill-ing Out in the Tearoom: Hie, Omokage, and the Subtle Art of Connection in Chanoyu,” in Handbook of Japanese Aesthetics, ed. Mindy Landeck (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2026)

• Cultural Consultant for Pencil First Games, Mountain View, CA: Hanafuda, an Edo period card game for gambling masquerading as classical poetry cards; and Diverging Paths (created pilgrim and gambler characters for this game)

• Member of traditional practice groups in Japanese linked-verse poetry, classical poetry card matching, and incense practice 

• Stanford University, MA in East Asian Studies (Japanese literature and poetry focus), 2017–19

• Cambridge University, Graduate Summer School in Japanese Early Modern Palaeography, 2019

• Inter-University Center Summer Program in Advanced Japanese Language Study, Yokohama, Japan, 2018

• Duke University, BA in East Asian Studies, 1987

• One-Year Exchange Student, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan, 1985–86