Japanese tea is from China.
As early as the Tang Dynasty, Japan sent Tang envoys from China to return to Japan, and there is an account of presenting Chinese tea to the emperor. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Japanese monks brought back the tea seeds of Jingshan Temple in Hangzhou to Japan, and began to plant tea trees in Japan.
Therefore, Japan also has a thousand-year-old history of tea drinking.
90% of Japanese tea is green tea, and there are very few fermented teas like Chinese Pu'er tea. As a result, Shincha is often considered the best tea in Japan, just like the Longjing tea in Hangzhou, with Shincha as the top grade.
Yesterday, a Japanese customer came to visit, and I gave her a cake of Pu'er tea. She looked at the words "2012" and said, "古いですね" (this tea is very old). I knew she had misunderstood, and told her that Pu'er tea was worth more as she got older.
Her eyes widened in disbelief, as if to ask me, "Can you still drink tea more than ten years ago?"
I gave her a lesson on Pu'er tea, for fear that as soon as she went out, she would throw this cake of Pu'er tea into the garbage.
Finally, she asked me, "How much is this cake and tea worth?" and I said about 100,000 yen (about 5,000 yuan). This scared her.
Therefore, to send Pu'er tea to the Japanese, we must first let them know where the value lies, otherwise there will be a sentence of "ancient いですね" - the favor is gone.
The main production areas of tea in Japan are concentrated in three places: First, Kyoto, the thousand-year-old capital. The second is Shizuoka Prefecture, the hometown of the tea sect. The third is Fukuoka Prefecture, where Chinese tea trees were originally planted.
A tea plantation at the foot of Mt. Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture
So, in the past millennium, foreign coffee culture has poured into Japan, and how many people in Japan still drink tea?
A few days ago, the Shizuoka Prefectural Government conducted a survey on whether you have a teapot at home, mainly in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
The results showed that 60.3% of women in their 50s had a teapot at home. Among women in their 40s, the proportion dropped to 46.0%. The proportion of women in their 20s is 25.8%. Only 41.3% of men in their 50s have a teapot, and only 18.7% of men in their 20s have a teapot.
The results of this survey tell us that the proportion of young Japanese people who return home, make a pot of tea by themselves, and taste it slowly is only 2 percent.
In business reception, tea (84.6%) was the first drink to entertain customers, and mineral water (55.1%) was the second drink. The share of coffee is 28.2%.
Why is it that young people in Japan are becoming less and less accustomed to making tea at home?
The biggest reason is because of the popularity of bottled and canned tea. In 1982, canned tea was sold in Japan. In 1990, bottled tea was sold, especially Chinese oolong tea, which was very popular with young people. By 2007, for the first time, Japanese households were buying more bottled tea than they were buying.
According to a household survey conducted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan, in 2023, the average purchase of bottled tea for households with more than two people will reach 8,290 yen (about 388 yuan). The average cost of buying tea is only 3,214 yen (about 150 yuan), a difference of more than double.
How to pass on the thousand-year-old tea culture is becoming an issue in Japanese society.