Uji, Japan: Where Matcha Culture Was Born

Uji is a town of about 180,000 people in southern Kyoto Prefecture. Most visitors come for the Byōdō-in temple, the 11th-century Pure Land masterpiece printed on the back of every Japanese ten-yen coin. They leave knowing the town for tea.

**The 12th-century origin.** Matcha — powdered shade-grown green tea — was first brought to Japan in the 12th century by the Zen monk Eisai, who returned from China with seeds and a method. The seeds were planted at the Kōzanji temple, near Kyoto. Within a few generations, Uji's slightly cooler climate, riverside soil, and morning mist had turned out to be the ideal environment for shade cultivation. By the 14th century, Uji matcha was supplied directly to the imperial court and the shogun.

**The unchanged craft.** The method has not changed dramatically in the eight hundred years since. Tea bushes destined for matcha are covered with shade structures (originally bamboo and rice straw, now usually black mesh) for the last three to four weeks before harvest. The shading deprives the plant of sunlight, forcing it to produce more chlorophyll and L-theanine and less of the bitter catechins.

**The leaves are harvested by hand**, steamed within hours, dried into flat fragments called *tencha*, and stone-ground into the bright green powder we now recognise. The stone-grinding step is famously slow. A single granite mill produces about 30–40 grams of matcha *per hour*. Industrial matcha is made by ball mills and air mills; the difference in flavour is significant.

**The family shops.** A walk along Byōdō-in Omotesandō, the main street between the JR station and the temple, takes you past at least a dozen matcha shops, several of them family businesses going back four hundred years. Tsuen Tea, founded in 1160, claims to be the world's oldest continuously operating tea shop. Marukyu Koyamaen has been in the same family for 300 years.

**If you visit.** Take the JR Nara line south from Kyoto Station. The trip takes 25 minutes. Walk fifteen minutes from Uji station along the river. Order a bowl of *koicha* (the thick, ceremonial preparation) from any shop with a stone mill visible in the window. You will taste, in concentrated form, what eight centuries of accumulated craft tastes like.