Yoshie Doi

April 2, 2025: Wagokoro Izumi

June 21, 2025: Baisa Nakamura

　In the spring of 2025, inbound tourists lined up at the Japanese tea counter of one department store to buy matcha, while other department stores had signs saying that they had run out of matcha and it was no longer for sale. It was not Japanese people, but people from overseas who were buying matcha.

　My daughter’s host during her time studying abroad in the UK loved matcha, so I often sent it from Japan. Apparently, my daughter would prepare matcha for her every morning. In return, she would tell her to drink whatever wine she wanted from the fridge. Apparently, she loved matcha so much that she would say, “The most delicious drink in the world is matcha.”

　There’s a boom in Japanese cuisine all over the world, and so is Japanese tea. With health-conscious trends, lines form before opening at popular Uji matcha shops, where matcha originates, and canned tea sells out in 20 to 30 minutes. The sudden surge in popularity has meant supply can’t keep up, and even with the expansion of matcha production plants, it takes five years from planting the seedlings to serving the tea. I worry about whether demand will be able to keep up. Matcha is also being planted in Southeast Asia, but I worry about whether the standards for matcha are being met.

　When did this matcha boom begin? It has been gaining popularity worldwide for about five years, but matcha ice cream was actually first sold in the US as a Japanese-style ice cream 32 years ago, in 1993. It was made by a company called Maeda-En, run by a Japanese person. Three years later, Häagen-Dazs released GeenTea ice cream in 1996, which caused it to become extremely popular. Its refreshing, natural sweetness was well received around the world.

　Due to the popularity of matcha in Japan, the price has doubled since last year. I myself have been buying more matcha since last year and enjoying it more. However, the matcha boom has actually spread beyond the traditional tea ceremony drink to include sweets, dumplings, ice cream, and soft serve ice cream, and its popularity has grown worldwide along with the health boom.

　While the number of tea farmers is declining due to aging, demand for matcha is increasing overseas, and last year’s export value of Japanese tea reached 36.4 billion yen, a five-year increase. I remembered that in 2013, when I had dinner with a German trading company employee and his wife in Paris, France, they told me that they were planning to change jobs to sell Japanese tea in Germany.

　I also recalled an interview I did with Nakamura Tokichi of Nakamura Tokichi Honten in 2007 at a study group for revitalizing Kyoto’s traditional industries, in which he told me about the hard work he went through in creating matcha soft serve ice cream, making prototypes every day so often that he ruined three bamboo whisks each day. It’s hard to understand pioneers, but if you create a new market, it can become a boom.

　Perhaps it was the expansion of matcha from the formal tea ceremony to the casual act of eating it that captivated people around the world.
 

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Translated by Masami Otani

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