Nishio Remains at the Center of Matcha Production in Japan

Nishio City has been a matcha producer for more than a century but remains relevant and dominant by expanding cultivars, combining traditional and modern production methods, focusing on quality over quantity, and educating children on proper plucking techniques. By Yumi Nakatsugawa

Nishio City in Aichi Prefecture, located in central Japan close to the Pacific Ocean, has been a traditional and authentic matcha producer for more than a century. The significances of the matcha industry in Nishio are the focus on quality and the participation of the municipality, including school children.

Matcha is finely ground tencha which is specially grown and processed green tea differently from regular sencha. When making tencha, tea leaves are grown under the shade for 30 to 40 days. After harvesting by hand or machine, the green leaves are immediately carried to a tencha factory where they are steamed and dried within 30 hours of being plucked so as not to degrade the quality. Tencha doesn’t have a rolling process, and has flaky and flat appearance, which makes it easier to grind. However, tencha is not suitable for brewing in a teapot as it takes longer to infuse.

It has been reported that a Zen priest introduced the first tea seeds to Nishio from China in 1271. The foundation of today’s tea industry was formed around 1884, after the chief priest of the Kohjuin temple in the city, Adachi Jundo, brought tea seeds from Uji, Kyoto in 1872, and sowed them on the premises in the following year of 1873, which triggered the expansion of the tea cultivation in the area. Nishio currently has about 180 hectares of tea fields from 87 growers, and produced 334 tonnes of tencha in 2024,the figure accounts for about 95 percent of the green tea manufactured in the city.

The main tea fields in Nishio are spread over a gentle slope called Inariyama, which is 15.7 meters above sea level. The tea fields are equipped with shelf-shading structures which normally furnish with double-layered black synthetic fabric. When the tea bushes are about to flush in April (just before or soon after they bud), the fields are covered with the outer cloth for two weeks, which shields nearly 70 percent of sunlight. Then the inner cloth is added for another two weeks resulting in blocking 95 to 97 percent of the sun’s rays. Some farmers go further, adding a third layer or natural materials such as reed.

Shade-grown is a tough environment for tea leaves to grow, so they will enlarge themselves to survive under the limited light, enhancing a deeper green colour and producing larger, thinner and tender tissues. If someone unfamiliar with shade-grown tea fields were to come to Nishio in late April or early May and see large black huts lining up on the hill, he or she would wonder what is happening in these strange huts, unthinkable for tea.

School Tea-Plucking

Unlike the traditional tencha-producing districts such as Uji and Nishio, newer tencha producers including Kagoshima or Shizuoka commonly practice direct covering whereby black fabric is spread over the tea bushes without installing shelves. This can also block sunlight but somehow prevents the free growth of buds. This is one reason why Nishio is proud of its shelf-shading that helps to grow better leaves.

Matcha and sweets served at Aoi Seicha’s tea room.

“Yabukita is the most popular variety of Japanese green tea”

Quality tencha producers pluck leaves only once a year in spring, the first flush. After harvesting all the new shoots of the year, the tea bushes are pruned to a height of 30 to 40cm from the ground, in order for bushes to start to prepare producing high quality leaves in the next spring.

In this crucial harvesting period, the fourth to sixth graders of a primary school and all students of six junior high schools in the city come to pluck tea leaves as part of the compulsory curriculum. The fourth graders in the primary school watch an introductory video before coming to the tea fields for the first time, in order to learn how to pluck properly and what not to do. They work in the designated tea field from 9am to 3pm for two days during the season, which is well planned and coordinated with the growers and schools in advance. In the course of plucking, school children are taught to understand the importance of plucking each leaf without damaging or spoiling it. If they harvest carelessly, it might slash the growers’ income of the year. Therefore, children keep plucking quite seriously all day long without unnecessary chatting, and they considerably improve their skills year after year. This is called ‘school tea plucking’ in the city, and has an 85-year history, except for only two years when it was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The school tea-plucking is one of the first events of the new school year that begins in April, and it helps to unite the class with new classmates. They set the target for the class as well as for each individual and seriously work to achieve them,” said Kyohei Ishikawa, a sixth
grade teacher at Nishinomachi primary school.

“I grew up in Nishio and practiced the school tea-plucking by myself. So, I understand the school tea-plucking is a sincere work and has various educational meanings for children.” A sixth-grader plucks 4kg to 5kg per day on average, and some can manage to pluck as much
as 10kg a day. Even for some students who didn’t like tea plucking or who later moved away from Nishio, the experience is deeply remembered for the rest of their lives.

Expanding Cultivars

Nishio used to grow nearly 100 percent yabukita cultivar several decades ago, which placed a heavy burden on the tencha factories in those days. Since each cultivar has a particular flushing period of about one to two weeks, the tencha factories needed to operate 24 hours a day to process the yabukita leaves, which was suddenly rushed to the factories within a few weeks.  Sometimes the amount of yabukita green leavesharvested in a day exceeded their operational capacity, resulting in a decline in quality.

Therefore, farmers started to replant from yabukita to samidori, which flushes earlier than yabukita, or to okumidori which starts to shoot after yabukita. As a result, there are three main varieties grown in Nishio now, with samidori accounting for 30 percent, yabukita at 50 percent, and okumidori at 20 percent.

Consequently, tencha factories can suspend their daily operations for four to five hours these days and start to manufacture at the end of April for samidori, then yabukita until the beginning of June for okumidori.

Below and right: Primary and junior high school age students annually pluck tea leaves as part of a compulsory curriculum in Nishio City.

“Samidori was originally developed in Kyoto to be suitable for gyokuro, a shade-grown sencha, and needs to be harvested at the right time without delay. Yabukita is the most popular variety of Japanese green tea, with strengths in disease resistance and high yield, and its quality is good not only for sencha but also for tencha. Okumidori has deep green leaves, so some buyers prefer matcha made from okumidori to use as an ingredient in cooking or sweets,” explained Tadateru Honda, chairman at Aoi Seicha Co Ltd, and chief director at the Nishio Tea Cooperative Association.

Honda showed the basic tencha manufacturing process at a tencha factory next to the Aoi Seicha’s head office. An average tencha factory has a production line with a capacity of 100 to 400 kg per hour. The first process is steaming to deactivate the enzyme in the leaves to maintain the green colour. 100⁰ steam is applied for 10 seconds for tender leaves, slightly longer for thicker leaves. All leaves should be evenly steamed, and it is judged and carefully adjusted by an experienced tea maker mainly by smell. If the harvested green leaves are wet, drops will lower the steam temperature and disturb proper steaming. That is why they do not harvest green leaves on rainy days.

After steaming, the leaves are dried by beating, blowing and heating. First, the wet leaves are beaten by a machine called ‘ha-uchi’ (leaf beating) to remove drops on the surface, then blown by a strong air current in a tower called ‘sancha-tou’ (leaf-blowing tower) to cool down and separate stuck leaves, and then they are put into a five chain, brick-walled dryer for 30 minutes. Lastly, the made tencha is refined and cleaned as extracting stalks. After all the manufacturing process, 100kg of green leaves become 20kg of tencha.

Newly made tencha in the spring is kept in a cool place such as in a refrigerator, for about a half a year to mature. Then, matcha merchants start to blend several batches of tencha and grind them to sell as matcha products. Since matcha powder deteriorates faster, they grind a reasonable quantity of tencha without having an excessive stock of matcha. It also helps them to supply matcha products of consistent quality. Similarly, consumers are recommended to buy and consume matcha constantly and not to buy too much at once.

Aoi Seicha has more than a century of history, and a producer, seller and exporter of matcha. “Our sales have been growing in recent years driven by exports. However, we are also suffering from the rising production costs such as energy and fertiliser,” said Honda. He noted that he views the differences in the quality preferences of matcha between the traditional Japanese tea ceremony and as an ingredient in food and beverages, especially those of overseas buyers. “What we call umami, a natural faint sweetness in matcha, seems to be difficult to understand for international buyers, and the green colour and pleasant bitterness unique to matcha seem to be more important to them. In addition, the production of matcha and its market have become increasingly competitive recently,” Honda explained, adding, “I believe Nishio should continue producing high-end quality matcha, and the collective promotion to establish the Nishio matcha brand is crucial for our future.”

In fact, a number of promotional efforts of Nishio matcha are carried out by both the public and private sectors. The Nishio City Tourism Association organises various matcha-related programs or events for domestic and international tourists. The largest tea company in the city, Aiya Co Ltd, operates the Matcha Museum Saijoen Wakuwaku, which receives 1,000 visitors per month .As such, matcha is the specialty of Nishio and will certainly remain the
pride of the city.

Yumi Nakatsugawa has been working as a freelance writer specialising in food and restaurant management. While freelancing, she developed a love of black tea as well as tea-producing countries and tea people. Her passion for black tea has brought her to Sri Lanka, India, Kenya, Indonesia, Nepal, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea to see tea production firsthand. Based in Japan, Yumi may be reached at: [email protected].