Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / What do you care about?

Transcript

What do you care about? · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
0:02
My name is Ryan, this is Michael Ho Sungjun.
0:04
Hello. Hello.
0:05
Who also goes by Sam and we're the cofounders of Sanko Matcha
0:08
Products. We launched this podcast to
0:10
discuss our learning journey in Matcha, share startup stories,
0:13
and interview experts. In today's episode, we want to
0:16
spend some time talk about perspectives.
0:19
Essentially, what do you care about?
0:21
As whom? With the subject of Mata, of
0:24
course, and we all care about slightly and sometimes very
0:27
different things. Yeah, or even just at the vendor
0:30
level. And we're going to actually for
0:32
the sake of this podcast that we're going to talk about it
0:36
more about the positioning of the vendor.
0:38
So the person who's actually doing the selling and they can
0:41
have very different values and different companies position
0:46
their sourcing philosophies and their products in very different
0:49
ways. And these philosophies can come
0:51
in many different flavors. And it's not what they say in
0:54
their mission statement, it's not what they say they care
0:57
about and necessarily, but we all care about many different
1:00
things. It's just the farmers that just
1:02
consumer preference such as sustainability, environment, the
1:07
environment, giving things at a good price, promoting a
1:10
traditional heritage product. Everyone cares about these
1:14
things, but it's where you make compromises, where your values
1:18
really shine. It is what you actually care
1:22
about, which we wanted to focus on.
1:24
We've recently received some negative feedback.
1:27
Criticism. Some criticism and it made us do
1:30
quite a bit of reflecting. And some of them we thought we
1:33
were fair and some of them we thought were very unfair.
1:35
And we're not someone to openly complain publicly.
1:38
And we definitely don't want to like quote, UN quote, punch down
1:40
on anyone who's criticizing us now that we have a platform.
1:43
But we had a hard time, like understanding some of the
1:47
perspectives. And we realized that like all of
1:50
the toxicity in the comments section deep on Reddit and
1:54
within the broader Internet community that celebrates Matcha
1:57
all stems from the fact that we care about different things and
2:01
we express that and where we draw the line on making
2:05
compromises. So I'll give a very like
2:07
specific example. If your primary objective as a
2:11
company or as a vendor or even as a consumer is to support
2:15
traditional small Japanese tea farmers, And someone develops
2:21
like fantastic matcha in South Korea and they're doing honzu
2:24
shading, they've imported Asahi cultivar, everything is
2:27
handpicked, they're producing a fantastic product and you have
2:30
the opportunity to buy someone to sell it.
2:32
If your true mission is to help Japanese small farmers, that's a
2:38
compromise you're probably not willing to make.
2:40
But if you're a product focused company trying to source the
2:43
best possible tasting matcha, or some people argue that it can't
2:49
be matcha unless it's grown in Japan.
2:50
But for the case of this argument, let's call it matcha
2:53
grown in Korea. If you're product focused and
2:57
your goal is to source the best, then you should have no problem
3:01
making that compromise. Very true.
3:03
And you have all of these like toxic common threads.
3:06
So accusing someone of cultural appropriation or accusing
3:10
someone of using first harvest matcha for lattes and now
3:14
there's not enough for tea ceremony practitioners.
3:16
But the person using it for a latte in the vendor selling
3:19
first harvest matcha to them might have different values
3:22
making different compromises than you are as a tea ceremony
3:26
practitioner. And we all have to stack rank
3:28
these things. I mean, like this is a very
3:30
extreme example for the a more common dilemma also happens in
3:35
within Japan. Like you can have, you know,
3:38
very also very product focused, very domestic market focused
3:42
company trying to, you know, really stock their portfolio
3:46
with a lot of these very ultra umami bomb matcha, which really
3:52
cannot be created without mountains of fertilizers and
3:55
pesticides. You know, it's really, you know
3:59
it. That's the reality.
4:01
But on the other hand, if you care about, you know, the
4:03
environment and sustainability and you want to move to a more
4:07
organic weight of farming, more sustainable weight of farming by
4:11
using less pesticides and less fertilizers.
4:14
And naturally you end up getting a more bitter and more
4:17
astringent tea. And with the domestic standard
4:21
of judging a matcha that will inevitably falling into a
4:25
inferior quality bucket. I mean, if you really care about
4:29
the environment, you know, that's a compromise that you're
4:31
probably willing to make. You'll go to a place that's
4:34
doing fantastic organic farming and source some things from
4:37
there. And naturally, when you do
4:39
organic farming, that means you're not using pesticides,
4:41
which means you have to use less fertilizer because fertilizer
4:44
contains nitrogen. Everything loves nitrogen.
4:47
It attracts pests. So there's a cycle and it's a
4:50
compromise that's being made. Now.
4:52
People who really focus on just quality of the product and
4:56
things that are going to taste very good usually don't source
4:59
organic matcha. It almost always tastes worse
5:02
and more bitter. And also when you're not using a
5:04
lot of pesticides, the plant needs to compensate for that
5:08
lack of pesticides and basically produce its own both caffeine
5:11
and some other compounds, catechins, catechins, all sorts
5:14
of other things that will deter insects and various pests.
5:18
So, so there's all sorts of things that the plant will adapt
5:21
to naturally because you do that.
5:23
So and also honestly, if you really care about like the
5:26
environment and tea, you maybe shouldn't be consuming like
5:30
really industrial much at all. If you look at agriculture and
5:34
tea agriculture in Japan, compared to a lot of other tea
5:37
producing regions in the world, it is incredibly industrialized.
5:42
When you think about the these gigantic fields that you see in
5:46
these beautiful pictures, like in Chisuoka with Fuji behind it
5:51
or in Kagoshima, it's all a mono crop.
5:54
It's a big mono crop of genetically identical plants
5:58
with very little genetic plant diversity with tons of nitrogen
6:02
pumped into the soil, sprayed that autumn like auto harvested
6:07
it. It is not what we would consider
6:09
as natural farming or something that or something that if you
6:12
really care about biodiversity, that you would want to support
6:16
like it. It's a much more similar to like
6:18
industrial chickens in a gigantic shed right now.
6:21
Obviously, there's not as much animal suffering going on, but
6:25
if that is what you care about, then that's a compromise that
6:28
you should make. And maybe you should only drink
6:31
the seed propagated, meaning you have large amounts of plant to
6:35
plant genetic diversity where they're growing it in a natural
6:38
environment, not this gigantic monoculture, but they're also
6:41
some potentially other crops or trees or various shrubs in
6:45
between. And you know, much more
6:47
sustainable methods. Typically they're quite a bit
6:49
more expensive because they need to be handpicked because you
6:52
can't have these big automatic pickers because they're not in
6:55
these big perfect rows. Typically, you need to require
6:57
natural fertilizer, which is much more expensive than
7:00
synthetic fertilizer. These compromises are important
7:04
because it reflects what we care about as consumers and as
7:07
different businesses. And might I say it is a very
7:11
good thing that we have businesses caring about these
7:13
different. Topics.
7:14
Yeah. I mean, like, thank God for all
7:16
those farmers in Shizuoka and Kagoshima figure out this way to
7:20
producing large amount of consistently tasty matcha out
7:24
there to supply the world. Like without them, like there
7:27
won't be enough matcha. They're already like, we have a
7:30
matcha shortage. But like, imagine like without
7:33
Kagoshima and Shizuoka, probably this short shortage will be
7:37
like, you know, really it will happen probably 10 years ago
7:40
already. Yeah, and let's move to a
7:43
different extreme. Let's say you're a cafe owner
7:46
anywhere in the world and your goal is to really do justice to
7:50
your employees. You are a beat, You're a
7:52
company, you're a business, and you're trying to make the best
7:55
product you can. But really your goal is to make
7:58
the community that you're in thrive and to make sure that
8:01
your employees have a good living wage where your baristas
8:05
and can really make a career out of this thing, right?
8:09
And you're like over here in this corner of the world,
8:11
listening to someone else preach to you that these gigantic
8:15
monocultures are producing a very industrial product and that
8:18
you should just do the natural thing.
8:20
And you're over here thinking like, I can't spend 4 times more
8:24
on this product. And by the way, there's not
8:26
another that product in the world to to.
8:29
Anyways to? Give matcha to everybody.
8:31
It's not a scalable solution. Like yeah, good for you paying
8:35
four times more. I'm glad you can afford it, but
8:37
I got 50, 15 employees to take care of.
8:40
So your values are reflected in the compromise that you're
8:43
making. And of course they probably care
8:44
about the environment, but in the stack rank of things that
8:47
they care about, it's relatively lower.
8:50
It's a really good, fine example.
8:52
And you know, we also are very guilty of like hating on
8:55
something like industrial scale Kagoshima first flash organic
8:59
matcha that's mill on a ball mill.
9:01
And typically the lens that we're filtering it through is a
9:04
product or consumer focused lens like really focusing on like
9:08
flavor expression that can come out of this plant that are
9:12
interesting and unique and terroir expressive and things
9:16
that we like to drink. But it's very much filtered
9:18
through like a specialty product lens.
9:21
And the compromises that we're making there is that we're
9:23
ignoring like really good solutions for small businesses,
9:28
like B to B environments, for people supplying other
9:31
businesses with matcha. You know, we're ignoring and we
9:34
might be ignoring part of the consumer focused lens who might
9:37
not really care about high end matcha and just once nice matcha
9:42
flavor for their bubble tea. So it's, you know, that's I
9:45
think the fruit of where all of this conflict is, where people
9:48
are making judgments on others. And you really have to think
9:51
about what you care. About Yeah, you, it's really who
9:55
you are by the end of the day that defines you, what you care
9:59
about. You have, you have, you know,
10:02
tea practitioners making criticisms on, you know, cafes
10:06
or bubble tea shops consuming too much matcha is like, you
10:10
know, a orchestra concert team, you know, making criticisms
10:14
about, you know, a pop group using too much of the, you know,
10:18
stage time of the stadium. You know they are essentially
10:22
very 2 very different things for two very different audiences.
10:27
And filtered through two very different sets of Stockburn
10:30
priorities. Because you cannot care about
10:33
the environment or health and Wellness or the ceremony and
10:37
culture like the farmers themselves, the product itself,
10:42
much of businesses at various points in the value chain and
10:46
the consumer all in the same breath.
10:49
You have to make compromises. And that is what you care about
10:52
is where you make compromises. So for example, some people
10:56
might hate on this quote UN quote, Chinese bamboo chasuns
11:00
because we're not supporting Takayama chasuns or people in
11:03
Nara making chasuns and that we need to support these
11:06
traditional crafts. And it turns out that from
11:09
purely a small business perspective, people who source
11:12
these things have actually gotten a little bit screwed.
11:15
These producers cannot keep up. There are not enough handmade
11:19
Takayama jasans in the world to meet the current demand.
11:23
And wait lists are huge. And typically when the vendors
11:26
that sell them get them right, they get like, I don't know, 40
11:30
at a time. Like, it's not very much.
11:32
And it's like having an inconsistent supplier to build a
11:35
business on top of. It's hard if you're trying to do
11:37
this and if you're truly consumer focused.
11:41
Not all consumers need a $50 handmade Chasa.
11:46
And by the way, the ones from China that are much cheaper and
11:50
much more available are actually handmade.
11:53
I don't know why everyone thinks and calls them machine made.
11:56
They're not. That's way too intricate for a
12:00
machine to be made. It just so happens that when you
12:02
have someone in a factory in China where a really decent
12:07
lunch cost like $1.00, of course you can cut it, charge less for
12:12
that product than when a Grand Master sitting in the middle of
12:17
like Takayama, who like probably is driving a nice car, right?
12:22
Like it's very different labor requirements.
12:25
Are the Takayama Jasan's better? Yes, there are more thoughtful
12:30
and there are more heritage. The bamboo is higher quality and
12:34
from a structural and functional perspective, like it's subtle,
12:38
but they are definitely better. Who is going to notice that
12:41
difference? I don't know.
12:42
It's a very small group of consumers.
12:44
So like compromises like that. I mean, as long as the, you
12:47
know, Chinese bamboo is not acid wash, I don't see a problem with
12:51
them being used every day in a cafe and, you know, gets
12:54
disposed like in three or seven days because, you know, it's
12:59
really abuse to use. And which is, you know, the, the
13:03
reality of the modern usage of utensils in the modern cafe.
13:07
Tagiyama tasans were made meant for be used in a tea ceremony.
13:11
And ironically, it was a disposable item at the time.
13:16
They were meant to be used only once or twice, but now they get
13:20
to use every day. And if you are trying to use
13:23
that in the modern consumption scenario, which is like, I don't
13:26
know, 30 to 30 * 50 times a day, like, that is really not what it
13:32
was meant for. And using, you know, a cheaper
13:35
and more economical replacement, well, there's really no problem
13:39
with that. And you know, I think people can
13:41
hold different perspectives at different times because we've
13:45
actually hated. I remember on this podcast
13:48
criticizing someone who was advocating for starting
13:52
authentic in your practice. And part of what they were
13:55
advocating for is whisking matcha in a chowan with a bamboo
13:59
chasa. And I remember looking at the
14:01
chasa and realizing this is the 100% not made in Japan, handmade
14:05
in Japan. Like this is absolutely
14:07
industrial quality coming from China, which is decent.
14:10
But like I can tell that it's not by looking at the details.
14:12
And I criticized them, right? And part of the root of the
14:16
criticism was I was putting Japanese ceremony and culture
14:21
first. I was filtering it through that
14:23
lens. And I was filtering through that
14:25
lens because that was what I was primed to do.
14:27
When you're telling someone to start authentic and to do things
14:30
the way they've been traditionally done in Japan,
14:32
right? You're trying to profit off of
14:35
someone else's culture, but not directly supporting it in any
14:38
way by selling a product that's produced somewhere else.
14:41
None of that money circles back. So that's the primary effect.
14:45
But actually there's also secondary effects to all of
14:48
this. Everyone needs an intro Chasen.
14:51
Very few beginners should ever start with the Takayama Chasen.
14:54
So having a bunch of people have these cheaper Chinese made
14:58
Chasen, which you can buy retail for and 1520 U.S. dollars,
15:04
right? That's going to create the
15:06
market that then realize, oh, you know what, I kind of want an
15:09
upgrade. I really like this matcha thing.
15:11
I'm enjoying this every morning. I want an artisanal product.
15:15
I'm going to go out and buy a really nice Raku Bowl and
15:18
support these makers making these $50 chaw scents.
15:21
Yeah, You know, here's an interesting point.
15:24
Like if you really care about, you know, the spread of and the
15:27
preservation of Japanese additional culture, you would
15:32
want to see more people, want to practice, you know, whisking
15:35
matcha with H Hassan. And do you want to see your very
15:40
expensive chasm being used everywhere in the world, like by
15:44
all these beginners trying to, you know, really put force using
15:48
that and scraping the bottom of the people?
15:50
Like this is really the same logic with, you know, like all
15:53
of these quote, UN quote over consumption of ceremonial
15:57
matcha. It's the same thing.
15:58
Words are getting spread, cultural are getting spread,
16:00
people are getting interested. People naturally want to learn
16:03
more and want the best. But you know, without a lower
16:07
tier replacement to to compensate, you know, like and
16:11
stigmatizing and criticizing people for using a lower
16:14
replacement, I think that's not going to do any good.
16:17
So by any means. Well, I totally agree.
16:21
And even like a, another good example of a lot of conflict and
16:24
something that we've talked about before are these
16:26
poetically named matcha blends. Like we took the position in an
16:30
opinion piece that we wrote. Are poetic matcha names harmful?
16:33
You can go back and listen to that if you, if you haven't for,
16:36
for more context, if you're taking a ceremonial or cultural
16:40
perspective and placing it first, of course they're good.
16:44
But it's like a huge legacy of Japan.
16:46
Like if you go to Maruq, right, it's a 300 year old company,
16:50
something like that. Or maybe it's even older.
16:52
It's it's like 17 something or early 1700s writing that culture
16:57
all over the world. Like, great, like if that's your
16:59
primary objective, but if your primary objective is to help
17:03
consumers build preferences so that they can discover what they
17:06
like and dislike based on the specialty principles of the
17:10
product, such as like what cultivar it was from, where it
17:13
was grown, how it was processed, it is harmful.
17:16
So in that stance, we were putting the consumer above the
17:21
ceremony and culture and that offends some people.
17:23
Sometimes we got some hate now recently saying, who are we?
17:27
We're not Japanese speakers. We haven't lived in Japan.
17:30
Why are we belittling and slandering Japanese tea
17:34
ceremony? We need to come in with a lot
17:35
more respect and and show reverence to this art because
17:41
that's what created matcha in the 1st place and they're
17:44
rights. They're you're totally right if
17:47
you're putting ceremony and culture first.
17:50
And by no means we want to disrespect, you know, such
17:53
culture like thank God the ceremony exists so that you
17:56
know, the culture of matcha gets got preserved over the course of
18:01
time. And so are all these art related
18:04
to Chano youth. The very the reason why a lot of
18:07
these matcha got their poetic names was their relationship
18:11
with traditional Japanese literatures and their culture.
18:16
And that was part of the appreciation or the theme,
18:19
setting, progress or procedure doing a channel UA ceremony.
18:23
And of course it makes sense in a channel U or tea ceremony
18:27
context. It doesn't make sense for as
18:30
much as a specialty product complex.
18:32
Yeah, but they're also wrong within the same spirit of what
18:36
they're advocating for, because people are naturally interested
18:40
in different things. And I'm sorry, tea ceremony
18:43
should not be the entry point for the majority of consumers.
18:46
Maybe they like at the surface level like it, but like if you
18:50
attend enough of these things and learn enough about it is not
18:53
like the path to actually learn about the strength.
18:56
It is much, much deeper and philosophical.
18:59
It's actually like pseudo spiritual, I mean like quasi
19:02
religious with all the Buddhism philosophies and Zen really
19:07
closely linked with a lot of the modern day schools.
19:09
And of course there's different schools that have slightly
19:11
different philosophies, but it is way deeper than most people
19:15
realize. It has really nothing to do with
19:18
matcha, but spreading matcha and the love for matcha as a
19:21
product, as a consumer, as a flavor from the people like for
19:24
various reasons, especially the specialty principles where it's
19:28
from, how it was grown, supporting farmers, etcetera,
19:31
etcetera. That is a much larger potential
19:34
market, right? There's a pretty definite
19:36
ceiling on the number of people that are actually going to be
19:38
interested in tea ceremony and John OU and actually becoming a
19:41
student long term. But that ceiling for much as a
19:45
specialty product is huge. It's potentially billions of
19:49
consumers. Naturally, a sub segment of
19:52
those consumers will then become interested in learning the more
19:56
traditional aspects of China Yu and better understanding where
20:00
this product came from historically.
20:02
We're creating another entry point, We're creating another
20:05
marketing funnel for China Yu practitioners.
20:08
Yeah. And from perspective, point of
20:10
view, you know, if you are a tea farmer, if you're a tea maker in
20:13
Japan, of course this is going to be the future that you want
20:17
to see like a much larger market out there in the world versus a
20:22
very confined domestic market that we only use Macha for a
20:26
very specific purpose. Yeah.
20:28
So people, especially in their arguments, can be both right and
20:32
wrong at the same time, depending on whether or not
20:35
you're looking at primary effects or secondary effects or
20:39
depending on how you stack rank your priorities, which is what
20:44
you ultimately care about. And I think that's the root of
20:47
where a lot of this toxicity comes from.
20:50
It's very painful. Some generally it's I think just
20:53
misalignment of, you know, expectation and you know what
20:57
they essentially rooting for. It's a context specific, and
21:02
people frequently do not understand other people's
21:05
context, which is totally fine. Yeah, that's reality of the
21:08
Internet. Well, actually, that's exactly
21:10
what it is. People do not understand other
21:12
people's context, but it's it's the perfect encapsulation of it.
21:17
People who don't do transparent label don't care about matcha
21:21
farmers. If you're in like, if you're not
21:23
sharing who you're sourcing from, that is lower on the stack
21:26
rank than convenient opacity or selling a very cheap product or
21:32
or trying to wrap your brand in mystery and, and the mysticism
21:37
that we are seeing. You really care about the matcha
21:40
farmers. You'd be very transparent.
21:42
You help them create brands for themselves.
21:44
Look at Suji San. Suji San didn't get famous by
21:47
himself and necessarily, I mean, he won lots of awards within
21:50
Japan, very famous within the domestic market.
21:52
But the only reason we know about him is from Kettle is from
21:56
Johnny Macha is from Mark from Ohika.
21:58
It's from pop in Thailand with Kodo T space.
22:01
It's people who source this product and tell their story.
22:05
It's very similar to how like wine producers get very famous.
22:08
The Somalis talk about them, we are talking about them.
22:11
They're stories to be told. And like they lift up these
22:14
farmers to the point where they have a lot more control over
22:17
their livelihoods. And now someone like him has the
22:20
ability to make a lot more investments to raise quality and
22:23
to increase volume so that more of us have a product that's
22:26
coming from him versus a large traditional blend house or from
22:29
a gigantic mass agriculture operation somewhere else in
22:33
Japan or even in China. And so it's it's if you really
22:37
care about the farmers and put them first, that's what you're
22:39
doing. Yeah, it's the reality.
22:42
Or if you are a traditional house and you continue to make
22:46
this product with all of these historical significance, that's
22:50
fine. You know, like this culture
22:52
needs you to continue to exist into the future and it will be
22:56
benefit from more people wanting to drink and try and be
23:00
interested in matcha and Japanese culture.
23:03
Yeah, and there's sometimes a lot of irony too.
23:05
And a lot of this marketing, a lot of vendors will call matcha
23:08
like very environmental and it's very natural.
23:12
You're drinking this leaf and you're drinking the whole leaf.
23:15
I'm like if you learn anything about tea farming and other
23:18
places, matcha is literally like one of the most unnatural forms
23:24
of tea cultivation that there are.
23:26
Yeah, or like not just tea, agricultural cultivation, even
23:30
if you compare to like grapes and the coffee are the beverage
23:33
category like matcha is hyper, hyper engineered.
23:37
Yeah, it's shaded and like plants have like natural
23:40
rhythms, just like we have circadian rhythms.
23:43
Plants have natural rhythms that have a lot to do with the light
23:46
and the sun. When you shade it, it's very
23:48
hard on the. Plant basically suffocating the
23:51
plant. Like, you know, one thing that
23:53
really surprised me like Ryan and I both came from a Kung Fu
23:56
like Chinese tea education background.
23:58
And one thing that really caught me off guard is that when
24:02
farmers tell me that these tea plants have a they have a
24:05
lifespan. They will die in like 30 or 40
24:09
years. And then before, you know, at
24:12
the end of their life cycle, they would just basically kill
24:15
the plant and replace it with new bushes.
24:17
Yeah, they don't live very long. Yeah.
24:19
And that's not the case for a lot of people growing in Korea
24:23
and China. Yeah, where it's much more
24:25
biodiverse. We were just in Ennui province
24:29
checking out a bunch of royal tea farms there.
24:31
I'm just out of our own personal interest because we're really
24:34
into Chinese tea as well. And like, the biodiversity is
24:37
insane. They were like, yeah, we planted
24:40
these evergreens here. We planted this other camellia
24:44
plant here. And we actually noticed that
24:46
like a lot of the tea tastes different when it's by all these
24:49
other plants. It's not just this big giant
24:52
mass agriculture. Yeah.
24:53
You see the same thing happening in Yunnan, like, a different,
24:57
you know, vegetations in different mountains will
24:59
actually have a pretty obvious impact on the tea Bush.
25:03
And, like, those are not tea Bush.
25:05
They are tea trees. Like, they live for hundreds of
25:08
years, and they're part of the forest.
25:10
Yeah, that's not something that you will see easily in Japan.
25:16
They do exist in Japan, just, you know, in much smaller
25:19
quantity. And we were asking some of these
25:21
farmers in Huangshan, like, how long do your green tea, the
25:26
bushes that you use for green tea, how long do they live?
25:28
We've been very Japanese focused, obviously for a while.
25:32
So it was like top of mind for us.
25:33
And they were like, they don't die.
25:35
What are you talking about? Don't die.
25:38
We were, like, very much in a very different mindset.
25:41
Yeah. They were like.
25:44
Wow. Yeah, right.
25:45
You're right. And actually we've recently been
25:47
translating some Japanese literature about shading,
25:50
because we're really a lot more interested in that process from
25:53
an agricultural perspective. And the practice and shading and
25:57
its stress on plants do get talked about in all these
26:01
Japanese literatures to like it's aware, well aware within
26:06
the industry. And something that Ian from You
26:08
Know Me has talked about too is that some of the very large
26:12
players in Japan who are buying up lots or leasing land from
26:16
smaller tea farmers and kind of plugging it into their
26:18
operations are shading now into the fourth harvest, right?
26:22
That's like forcing a tea plant to run a marathon four times in
26:26
a row. Well, because when you do this
26:28
shade cultivation, you're depriving it of nutrients.
26:31
Photosynthesis matters. That's why all the best tea
26:34
producers in Japan from a product perspective, are only
26:38
shading once a year to allow a full year of recovery for that
26:42
plant. And some people do 2 harvests
26:45
and so there's a little more recovery time, but it can be
26:48
driven into three or four. And those plants do not live
26:51
very long. And also if you wean them off of
26:54
fertilizer, a lot of these plants are addicted to
26:56
fertilizer. There's a episode deep in the
26:59
archives from Ricardo's podcast, My Japanese Green Tea podcast on
27:03
organic matcha farming. I think it might have been the
27:05
second episode they ever did where Ian from, you know me, was
27:08
invited to talk and he was saying that when you transition
27:14
a non organic garden into an organic garden or tensha slash
27:18
matcha production, there's a lot. 1 a lot of the tea plants
27:22
die, and two, the ones that do live are very sick and have
27:26
almost no yield for a very long time, and it takes years before
27:30
you can harvest them because they're like drug addicts.
27:33
So I almost they need to go through a detox.
27:35
Yeah, they're going through a withdrawal.
27:37
So anyway, it's a long rant. We don't want to sound like some
27:41
sort of them eco maniac that care about, you know, like these
27:45
plants are suffering, but in a way they are suffering, right?
27:48
But but also at the same time, like shading technology is
27:53
really the very reason why matcha tastes like matcha.
27:56
If you don't shade matcha or the tea Bush, it's not going to
27:59
taste like matcha at all. So there is a fine balance I
28:03
would say between, you know, how do you shade and how you grow
28:06
and how you treat Mata as a plant and as a living thing.
28:10
Yeah, From an environmental perspective, it's kind of
28:13
disastrous. You need to use tons of
28:14
fertilizer and because you use tons of fertilizer, you need
28:17
tons of pesticides in this very high intervention process of
28:20
making tea. So you can criticize it with
28:22
that lens if that's what you care about more.
28:24
But if you care about human health outside of the negative
28:27
externalities of like the the nitrogen and the waste, the
28:31
runoff that's produced from that type of agriculture, let's say
28:34
you don't live in Japan, those environmental factors don't
28:37
affect you. It's not immediately, but you
28:39
care about health, right? You don't get those levels of LC
28:42
Guinea, you don't get those extremely high levels of egg.
28:44
So you're now producing tea leaves even from an exhausted
28:49
plane, you're producing tea leaves that are way more
28:51
nutritious than before it went through that process.
28:54
So if you care about nutrition first, you know, who cares about
28:57
that other stuff? We're now getting something
28:59
that's very good for human health.
29:00
Actually, the Global Japanese Tea Association does a
29:04
conference every year. They do one in Tokyo, one in
29:07
Kyoto and it's fantastic content by the way.
29:11
And they invite 3 keynote speakers.
29:13
They each have about 1/2 hour talk that's consecutively
29:15
translated between Japanese and English.
29:18
And one of them was actually exactly on this topic was over
29:21
fertilization and all this nitrogen.
29:23
And something that Ian also from Unami talks about a lot is like
29:27
the pesticide residue requirements in Japan are some
29:31
of the, it's very well regulated, but it is they're
29:36
very not conservative with the amount of legal pesticides
29:42
allowed. Actually, especially some of the
29:45
like ridiculous fruits, like if you ever hear about like a $200
29:49
melon made in Japan, those are all hyper pesticide, very heavy
29:54
use of pesticide. My girlfriend went to
29:56
agricultural school in France, but she did a year of study in
30:00
Tokyo and agricultural food food program there and learned all
30:04
about this. And she was horrified.
30:07
Like someone coming from France in the EU where there's really
30:10
strict rules around residue requirements is horrified to
30:13
learn that. And in Taiwan and in mainland
30:16
China, all very relaxed places in general in terms of like
30:20
legal requirements. And apparently a lot of some of
30:23
the Japan's best tea, like apparently Suji San's teeth is
30:26
not EU compliant. So everything that's coming in
30:28
is coming in in very small quantities.
30:30
And all of the large houses like Maruchu basically have two
30:33
separate arms and two separate production, one that's EU and
30:36
European compliant and one for domestic consumption and for the
30:39
rest of the world. You know, this whole EU policy
30:42
has really did something good to the environment as a whole.
30:46
Farmers and all of these manufacturers trying to be EU
30:50
compliant, they are using less pesticides.
30:52
So you see that happening in Japan.
30:54
You see that happening in China too.
30:55
Like in order to meet the EU standard, they, the local
30:58
government, are incentivizing farmers to use less pesticides
31:02
and less fertilizers in order to meet the exportation
31:06
requirement. And you see some really
31:08
heavy-handed policy being applied in some area in Japan
31:11
and China too. Well, isn't that ironic of us to
31:14
say? The two people who really hate
31:16
on organic matcha because from a product perspective it tastes
31:20
worse. It does taste worse.
31:22
So we're all kind of hypocrites in this way.
31:25
And that's where all of this conflict comes from because you
31:27
and I could get into a legitimate argument right now
31:29
about this. And like we would both kind of
31:32
be right. We're just stock ranking and
31:34
prioritizing different things. I'm advocating for the consumer
31:37
and a specialty product with interesting flavors coming from
31:41
all of this process and nature and the things that go on to,
31:44
you know, bring matcha to life. And organic almost always means
31:48
lower quality. And at the same time, right,
31:50
it's having all of these other positive externalities.
31:53
And I'm sure there's secondary and tertiary effects to both of
31:56
these arguments as well. Like the reality is, is that
31:59
reality is complicated. I mean, so is the matcha
32:02
industry. And people get so easily
32:03
offended, especially online. And we think they're literally
32:06
talking past each other because they care about different
32:09
things. We cannot say that we care about
32:11
the consumer, matcha businesses, the product, the matcha farmers,
32:14
ceremony and culture, health and Wellness and environmental all
32:19
fit in the same level. At the same time, that's just
32:21
not possible or not possible for now because, you know, consumer
32:26
preference is going to change too, right?
32:28
Like in the future, Like people nowadays care about certain
32:31
things. And, you know, the only way to
32:34
achieve those sweetness, those mommy bond is not using
32:38
sustainable ways of farming. But you know, people's
32:41
preference might change in the future for more bitter, more
32:44
pungent flavor coming up from tea plants might be a trend into
32:48
the future. We don't know.
32:49
And for that to happen, you know, like naturally you don't
32:54
need to use over fertilization or over pesticides.
32:58
And if there is a future that, you know, all of these things
33:01
that people care about might converge.
33:04
Yeah, very possible. You know, consumers aren't a
33:06
monolith either. You're very experienced
33:08
consumers with tons of context that value different things and
33:11
people who have a little context just looking for a quote, UN
33:14
quote ceremonial grape product. And you have people that don't
33:16
even know what matcha is, right? Consumers aren't a monolith.
33:19
And by the way, not there are tea farmers, also not a
33:22
monolith. And so, you know, you got like
33:24
really successful rock star farmers winning competitions
33:27
against like grandma and grandpa who have no retirement plan, who
33:31
don't know what to do with this farm.
33:33
There's like thousands of these people and you know, end up
33:35
making some sort of deal or just abandoning it all together
33:38
because there's no succession plan.
33:40
And then you have like gigantic businesses who are doing mass
33:45
scale agriculture to make tons and literally many, many metric
33:49
tons of much a year. And they're very different
33:52
people. And by the way, so is ceremony
33:54
and culture everyone talks about, like when we were being
33:56
accused of slandering tea ceremony and tea culture.
33:59
I recently was reading a book that I think I've talked about
34:02
before called Making Tea, Making Japan, and it's kind of the
34:05
history of ceremony in Japan and how it's been shaped over the
34:10
years. And I didn't realize that I was
34:12
putting Urasenke and Motasenke and Senuriku up on this giant
34:17
pedestal. And it actually turns out that
34:19
the Sun Sanke, these three schools that all descended from
34:21
Senuriku, actually like waxed and waned in promenades over the
34:26
years. So not only were there tons of
34:27
other samurai schools, but at some point they were kind of
34:30
very marginalized and had very little influence.
34:33
And there's some very interesting maneuverings that
34:35
they did to regain power. So the the ceremonial
34:38
institutions and schools are not a monolith either.
34:42
And reading this book was very illuminating.
34:45
Like Hideyoshi in the way that he was doing tea at the time.
34:48
And like all of these other warlords, it was almost a big
34:51
show and tell. Like you took all the expensive
34:54
stuff that you got from China, mostly all these expensive
34:58
ceramic and we're showing it off.
35:00
And even this like the Meiji era, when all of the barrens,
35:05
like the oil barrens, the steel barrens, the textile barrens, as
35:08
Japan was undergoing massive industrialization, they weren't
35:13
necessarily attached to the tea ceremony schools either.
35:16
And they were hosting their own tea gatherings, kind of doing it
35:18
their own way, which were also some kind of big show off of
35:22
wealth and cultural capital and to build some social capital and
35:25
to do networking, and had really nothing to do with the
35:28
philosophical underpinnings that we all think of as tea ceremony.
35:32
And this, this was when Meiji, Meiji very recently.
35:37
Yeah, 150 years ago in the 1800s when Japan was going under this
35:41
rapid industrialization. And actually it turns out also
35:45
during this period, I think that Ersenke wanted to get much
35:48
closer to the emperor and to be have much greater proximity and
35:52
and cultural relevance there. And they quote UN quote
35:56
rediscovered some ancient temai or practice that Senoriku did in
36:01
their documents. Very timely.
36:03
Very, very convenient. There was it was any criticism
36:08
of this was implicit in the book, but they left room for
36:11
interpretation that it was very convenient timing because the
36:14
book was also written by an Arisenke student.
36:16
So I'm sure she had a very difficult time threading that
36:19
needle. We both being historically
36:21
accurate and being a member of this institution.
36:23
But I mean, these these institutions are not perfect and
36:26
a lot of valid and a lot of valid criticism around sexism,
36:29
especially. I mean they like flat out like
36:32
Arisenke and Motisenke and a lot of these schools.
36:34
Or sexist. As a woman, you have an absolute
36:37
ceiling where you cannot raise past certain levels.
36:39
Some of the most advanced timeline, the most advanced
36:42
teachings are all reserved the top for men and at the very
36:46
highest level. The Iyamoto system has actually
36:49
been criticized as one of the last vestiges of feudalism in
36:52
Japan. Patriarchy at its finest.
36:55
Right. It's really what Warren Buffett
36:57
would call the divine right of the womb.
36:59
The only way that you're able to get that is to be born and to
37:03
inherit this position, which is an interesting cultural legacy,
37:06
but it's far from egalitarian or meritocratic or fair.
37:11
But you know, if your life goal and passion is drawn on you as a
37:14
woman to progress, it's absolutely a ceiling.
37:17
And most of the reason why women are encouraged in Japan to study
37:21
tea ceremony is basically to become quote, good wives and
37:26
wise mothers. This was actually a policy, very
37:29
famous policy, which started about 100 years ago.
37:32
And that's basically the reason why ersinka is so prevalent
37:35
everywhere today is because it had a whole new influx of young
37:40
girl somewhere. This was basically finishing
37:42
school which became the current practitioner.
37:45
Basically tread wife readiness school.
37:47
So yeah, basically it's a very different type of culture and
37:51
that still lives on today. We actually recently got a
37:54
message from someone who's Japanese and kind of like,
37:57
doesn't love the traditional aspects of Japanese culture.
38:01
And he was like, yeah, I thought, like, tea ceremony was
38:03
for women. If you spend any time in Japan,
38:05
it's very easy to get this impression.
38:07
Yeah, very stereotypical. Yeah, but it's also on a
38:10
monolith too. I mean, there's other schools
38:11
and samurai schools, and actually, to be honest, I don't
38:14
know very much about them or their philosophical
38:16
underpinnings, but they might be very different.
38:18
It's really weird to me honestly.
38:20
Like it's a thing for women, but the leader can only be male.
38:25
And the top leadership can only be mailed.
38:26
Yeah. It's really weird.
38:28
And weirdly enough, the Iyamoto himself does almost no teaching.
38:32
It's all the direct level underneath him that have the
38:35
direct interactions with the students.
38:39
And it turns out too, that you can accelerate your licensure
38:43
within within Arisenke. I've learned within this book is
38:46
that if you are a person of prominence, let's say you're a
38:49
director of the museum or something, the Iyamoto can
38:53
bestow upon you certain licenses and you can sort of accelerate,
38:59
would normally take someone 20 years or 30 years to achieve.
39:04
But it's actually really interesting maneuvering to make
39:07
sure that these institutions remain culturally relevant
39:10
because you're connected and how have influence over all of these
39:14
other people with both hard and soft power and within society.
39:18
So it's actually, if you think about it from an institutional
39:21
preservation perspective, incredibly smart, very smart and
39:26
no one talks about it. Just like the Benicers, the
39:28
Jesuits, the Church. In Dune.
39:30
In Dune. Yes, exerting power with the
39:33
names of culture and religion. So these, these places are very
39:38
far from, from pure and, and now I am talking from the
39:42
perspective of a consumer and someone who loves this product
39:45
and not as a member of these institutions, right.
39:48
But like, if I really care about like keeping it pure in a
39:51
ceremonial perspective, of course I'm wouldn't talk about
39:54
this argument. And I'm sure maybe we'll receive
39:57
some hate now for talking about this.
39:59
But anyway, in this thing, I really highly recommend both
40:01
making tea, making Japan. It really broke down a lot of
40:05
assumptions that I about the evolution of tea ceremony and
40:08
how it's not a monolith either. And you know, on the other hand,
40:12
really makes us become more understandable why, you know,
40:16
certain people got triggered so much when we talk or sometimes
40:19
criticize Japanese TCM. Oh yeah, that's actually the
40:23
reason why I've read this book. It's really it's so intertwined
40:27
with the Japanese Ness, the Japanese identity and the
40:31
Japanese as a nation, that when you are trying to make any
40:35
criticisms of any of its cultural elements, a lot of
40:40
people will naturally think that you are attacking this whole
40:43
idea, this whole community as a whole, which is understandable.
40:49
Yeah, and the Japanese government has put in tons of
40:52
policies to select chanoyu and tea ceremony as the embodiment
40:58
of japaneseness. And that was not only done with
41:01
the modern government, but also with eras before this in the
41:05
Meiji and Edo as well. Compared to the length of the
41:10
tea and tea culture, you know this is really nothing.
41:14
Yeah, and there's something. Traditional about it.
41:16
And very weirdly too, if you look at the histories of these
41:20
institutions, like if you read the history books that are
41:23
closely associated with Thoracenque, for example, you
41:25
basically learn about Sanyoricu Hideyoshi.
41:28
Many one who's taken tea ceremony lessons have certainly
41:31
heard these names. And it's kind of the great man
41:33
theory of history. And there's remarkably little
41:35
accounting for of everything after Riku.
41:39
And a lot of scholars are speculating that even Riku and
41:42
during Riku's time and there were, he was pulling a lot of
41:45
philosophy from a lot of other places.
41:48
And that like there were a lot of other voices and perspectives
41:51
that have contributed into what is this actually a very
41:55
beautiful art of Chanoyu into nowadays.
41:58
But it's been kind of reduced down to this great man theory of
42:00
history that's easy to explain and to have a narrative around.
42:04
Because when you actually learn Japanese tea ceremony lessons as
42:07
a student, the way the school was structured is it's kind of
42:10
an oral tradition. It used to be, it used to be.
42:14
I think there's exceptions now, but I was, I remember being told
42:17
by my instructors that you're not allowed to take notes during
42:19
the lessons. So it's a completely
42:21
experiential type learning. I mean, typically you're not
42:23
allowed to ask questions. And I remember her telling,
42:25
telling me she would go to lessons, she would really try to
42:28
remember and repeat the steps over and the corrections that
42:31
the teacher were making over and over her head.
42:33
And on the subway ride home, she would like be jotting down notes
42:37
endlessly to then study because she wasn't allowed to take them
42:41
during the lessons. Zen Buddhism, the kind of.
42:43
Practice, yes, extremely Zen, very not direct learning, much
42:48
more experiential. You have to live it and when you
42:51
have many instructors all over the world in different languages
42:54
and or even before it spread internationally, you need to
42:57
have easy to remember stories and narrative to tell your
43:00
students. And it's actually something that
43:02
we all kind of share. Anyone who's been through this
43:04
training, kind of this one big family, we all sort of have
43:08
heard the same stories and philosophies.
43:10
And it's actually a very beautiful thing.
43:12
And something that was written in this book, Making Tea, Making
43:14
Japan, is that if you compare it to other institutions, Chana Yu
43:19
has even with all of this drama that we're talking about
43:22
negative externalities has done remarkably little harm, but that
43:26
you can directly point to it's largely benefit Japanese society
43:30
and is actually relatively innocent.
43:32
So when we're criticizing it, we're very much criticizing it
43:34
through the lens of the consumer.
43:36
And but you know, we bounce back and forth and we've talked to
43:38
tea ceremony practitioners on this podcast and really respect
43:42
it and want to learn more about it.
43:44
Actually, the single greatest barrier for promoting much as a
43:47
specialty product is all of this quote UN quote cultural baggage,
43:51
which isn't cultural baggage at all.
43:53
It's like a lot of like Japanese Ness and its philosophies and
43:58
its aesthetics, etc. And you cannot understand how
44:02
much it can evolve in the future without deeply understanding its
44:05
past and understanding where all of this inertia comes from and
44:09
why it exists. That no one wants to be the
44:12
idiot in the room stumbling around with no context.
44:15
So actually, in the Season 3 of this podcast, we want to do a
44:19
lot more learning going back in time through Shanau history and
44:23
tea history in Japan, but to better contextualize how the
44:26
future can be made and to better understand why some of these
44:29
barriers exist. Where do these poetic names come
44:32
from? Where do these institutions come
44:33
from? Where do all of these beliefs
44:35
come from? But you know, calling it a
44:37
baggage or calling it inertia, I think it's very context
44:41
specific. It's a inertia when we are
44:44
viewing matcha in the lens of the specialty product.
44:48
It's all of these cultural contact is essentially really
44:52
inhibiting matcha being enjoyed and consumed as a specialty
44:56
product in a lot of ways. But it's not a inertia or a
44:59
baggage as a Japanese cultural element.
45:03
Like it will exist and it will continue to exist.
45:06
I hope it will continue to exist into the future and make more
45:09
people enjoy and be curious about Japanese culture as a
45:13
whole. Yeah, and it can swing back.
45:16
That's the second order effect. So really, a lot of these things
45:20
can be true at the same time, depending on whether or not you
45:22
look at it as a company and as a podcast and as a specialty
45:26
movement. But we deeply care about the
45:28
product quality itself and the consumer, and we're putting that
45:32
before history and culture, at least in a primary sense of the
45:36
word. All of these institutions and a
45:38
lot of companies are doing great work spreading the direct
45:42
culture itself. If you're interested in culture,
45:44
don't enroll yourself into a tea ceremony school.
45:48
But for everyone else, there's this huge vacuum which the
45:51
specialty movement can fill and grow and ultimately swing back
45:55
to these other people. And we think all of this online
45:57
negativity and conflict comes from this misalignment.
46:01
And people do not recognize that people are operating and
46:05
prioritizing and optimizing for very different sets of context,
46:09
ranging from the consumer to being a small, much of business
46:13
somewhere in the supply chain, the farmer, the farmer, big,
46:17
small, medium, old, retiring, one that has no succession plan
46:20
or the product itself and product quality, the ceremony
46:24
and culture or the health and Wellness aspects of it or the
46:27
environment. And that these things can both
46:30
contradict each other or reinforce each other.
46:33
And when you put on the lens of time and cause and effect, maybe
46:36
it's temporarily negative, but could then be very positive.
46:40
Yep, and they will be forever intertwined with each other, and
46:43
they might converge or diverge and hopefully converge again
46:47
into the future. Yeah.
46:48
So what do you care about? That's the That's a fine
46:53
conclusion. I care about getting over from
46:55
this podcast recording and get some dinner on green.
46:58
Sounds good. Sounds good.
47:00
So if you enjoyed this podcast, please consider sharing the
47:03
friend and we'll see you on the next one.
47:06
See you. Thanks.