Yuyadani, The Birthplace of Japanese Green Tea

Ujitawara, Kyoto’s Hidden Gem: The Birthplace of Japanese Green Tea

Yuyadani, a small village in Ujitawara, on the outskirts of Kyoto, may be little known to the general public, but it is renowned among devoted tea enthusiasts around the world as the birthplace of Japanese green tea as we know it today.

In 1738, a local tea farmer named Nagatani Soen is said to have developed the ao-sei sencha method, a process that became the foundation of modern Japanese sencha.

At the time, Japan did not have a free-market economy as we know it today. The privilege of selling matcha was largely held by a select group of tea merchants known as ochashi, based in neighboring Uji and Ōbōji villages.

Excluded from these established commercial networks, Nagatani Soen and his descendants, who were tea farmers in Yuyadani (then known as Yugo Village), took a different approach. Around 200 years ago, they brought about what could be considered a disruptive innovation in the world of Uji tea.

Rather than competing in the matcha market, where the ochashi held considerable power, they focused on sencha, which was beginning to gain popularity. With the support of Yamamotoyama, a tea merchant in Edo (present-day Tokyo), they established a distribution route that brought their tea all the way to the capital.

Whether Soen and his descendants truly originated this production method, as tradition holds, cannot be conclusively established from surviving primary sources. However, historical documents preserved by the three Nagatani family lines indicate that, by the 19th century, more than half of the tea shipped from the Kyoto–Osaka region to Edo passed through this small village. Records also suggest that Yuyadani alone produced around 10,000 kan (approximately 37.5 metric tons) of tea.

For a small village to achieve such prominence, its sencha must have offered a distinctive quality capable of winning over consumers and displacing competing products. Whatever the precise origins of the method, the historical record strongly suggests that Yuyadani sencha earned a remarkable reputation.

Yet within roughly a century, Yuyadani lost its dominant position in the tea trade.

Following the opening of Japan to the outside world, the old social hierarchy collapsed and distribution networks changed. Yamamotoyama, wary of the risks associated with maritime transport, gradually shifted its sourcing to Sayama. Meanwhile, as Japan emerged onto the world stage as a modernizing nation, tea became one of its few important export commodities, and Shizuoka Prefecture rose to become the country’s leading tea-producing region.

Today, only around ten tea farming households, including my own, remain in this small village of Yuyadani.

Sencha originated before Japan’s modernization, and although production has since become mechanized, the fundamental principles of making sencha remain remarkably close to those practiced in Nagatani Soen’s time.

For centuries, our ancestors have cultivated tea on fields passed down through generations from the Nagatani family.

Our mission is to preserve these traditional tea fields, established around 200 years ago, and to continue cultivating tea without pesticides, just as our ancestors did. Above all, we are committed to carrying forward the fragrant, authentic sencha that represents the original spirit of Uji tea.