Matcha madness leaves Japan's tea ceremony pros skeptical

Key Points

• The global surge in matcha's popularity has left traditional tea ceremony practitioners skeptical, as matcha is increasingly featured in mainstream products like lattes and ice cream.
• Japan’s agricultural ministry is actively promoting the growth of matcha tea to keep pace with rising demand, as production of “tencha” used for matcha has nearly tripled in recent years.
• While the matcha craze might attract new interest in traditional tea ceremonies, practitioners caution that it dilutes the purity and significance of their art form.
• Concerns about supply shortages loom as Japan faces labor shortages and competition from other countries producing matcha, threatening the authenticity of Japanese matcha branding.

TOKYO (AP) — Clad in an elegant kimono of pale green, tea ceremony instructor Keiko Kaneko uses a tiny wooden spoon to place a speck of matcha into a porcelain bowl.

She froths up the special powdered Japanese green tea with a bamboo whisk after pouring hot water with a ladle from a pot simmering over hot coal.

Her solemn, dance-like movements celebrate a Zenlike transient moment, solitude broken up by the ritualistic sharing of a drink.

No wonder Kaneko and others serious about “sado,” or “the way of tea,” are a bit taken aback by how matcha is suddenly popping up in all sorts of things, from lattes and ice cream to cakes and chocolate.

No one knows for sure who started the global matcha boom, which has been going on for several years. But it's clear that harvests, especially of fine-grade matcha, can't keep up with demand.

A booming market

Matcha is a type of tea that's grown in shade, steamed and then ground into a very fine powder. It's processed differently from regular green tea, with the best matcha ground using stone mills, and switching from one to the other takes time. No farmer wants to switch and then find that matcha fever has died.

The Japanese agricultural ministry has been working to boost tea growth, offering help for farmers with new machines, special soil, financial aid and counseling to try to coax tea growers to switch to matcha from regular green “sencha” tea.

“We don’t want this to end up just a fad, but instead make matcha a standard as a flavor and Japanese global brand,” said Tomoyuki Kawai, who works at the tea section of the agricultural ministry.

Production of “tencha,” the kind of tea used for matcha, nearly tripled from 1,452 tons in 2008, to 4,176 tons in 2023, according to government data.

Japan's tea exports have more than doubled over the last decade, with the U.S. now accounting for about a third. Much of that growth is of matcha, according to Japanese government data. The concern is that with labor shortages as aging farmers leave their fields, the matcha crunch may worsen in coming years.

Other countries, including China and some Southeast Asian countries, also are producing matcha, so Japan is racing to establish its branding as the origin of the tea.

An art form turned into a global fun drink

Tea ceremony practitioners aren’t angered by the craze, just perplexed. They hope it will lead to people taking an interest in sado, whose followers have been steadily declining. But they aren’t counting on it.

The tea ceremony is “reminding us to cherish every encounter as unique and unrepeatable,” said Kaneko, who is a licensed instructor.

She pointed to the special small entrance to her tea house. Noble samurai had to stoop to enter, leaving their swords behind them. The message: when partaking of tea, everyone is equal.

The purity and stillness of the ceremony are a world apart from the hectic and mundane, and from the craze for matcha that's brewing outside the tea house.

The Matcha Crème Frappuccino is standard fare at the Starbucks coffee outlets everywhere. While matcha, a special ingredient traditionally used in the tea ceremony, isn’t meant to be drunk in great quantities at once like regular tea or juices, it’s suddenly being consumed like other fruit and flavors.

Matcha drinks have become popular at cafes from Melbourne to Los Angeles. Various cookbooks offer matcha recipes, and foreign tourists to Japan are taking home tins and bags of matcha as souvenirs.

It's a modern take on traditions perfected by the 16th century Buddhist monk Sen no Rikyu in Kyoto, who helped shape the traditions of tea ceremony and of “wabi-sabi,” the rustic, imperfect but pure and nature-oriented aesthetic often seen as synonymous with high-class Japanese culture.

Matcha's future

Minoru Handa, the third-generation chief of suburban tea store Tokyo Handa-en, which sells green and brown tea as well as matcha, says the appeal of matcha is in its versatility. Unlike tea leaves, the powder can be easily mixed into just about anything.

“The health boom and the interest in Japanese culture have added to the momentum,” he said, stirring a machine that was roasting brown tea, sending a pungent aroma through the streets.

“It’s safe and healthy so there’s practically no reason it won’t sell,” said Handa.

His business, which dates back to 1815, has a longtime relationship with growers in Kagoshima, southwestern Japan, and has a steady supply of matcha. To guard against hoarders he limits purchases at his store to one can per customer.

Handa, who has exhibited his prize-winning tea in the U.S. and Europe, expects that growers will increase the supply and shrugs off the hullabaloo over the matcha shortage.

But Anna Poian, co-director and founder of the Global Japanese Tea Association, thinks lower-grade matcha should be used for things like lattes, since one has to put in quite a lot of fine-grade matcha to be able to taste it.

“It’s a bit of a shame. It’s a bit of a waste,” she said.

The best matcha should be reserved for the real thing, she said in an interview from Madrid.

“It is a very delicate, complex tea that is produced with the idea to be drunk only with water,” she said.

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Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama