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Matcha's Past, Present, and Future · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
0:02
My name is Ryan, This is my Coho Sunjin, who also goes by Sam and
0:05
we're the cofounders of Sanka Matcha Products.
0:08
We launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
0:10
Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
0:13
And today's episode, we want to give it a comprehensive review
0:18
of what Matcha was in the past, what it is nowadays, and what it
0:22
could be in the future. I feel like that there are
0:25
already 1000 articles and podcasts online talking about
0:28
the history of Matcha. And, you know, Ryan let's, you
0:31
know, try to create something new, I guess for our audience,
0:34
that's a little bit more refreshing.
0:36
Yeah, you're totally right. And, you know, both you and I
0:39
tend to be a little more reserved about covering topics
0:42
that a lot of other people have just simply because there's so
0:45
much good information out there. Do we put a unique spin on it?
0:48
But I do think it's worthwhile, at least in the Specialty Much
0:51
podcast, to have at least one episode dedicated to the history
0:54
of Matcha, as certainly not a comprehensive 1 which cannot be
0:58
done with any reasonable length of time.
1:01
I'm ready for two hour recording, Ryan, or three hours
1:04
but. Something where, you know, for
1:05
talking with coffee people or industry friends that aren't
1:08
into matcha and they were like, hey guys, like what's the deal?
1:11
Like where is matcha? Where did it come from?
1:14
What's the status quo, and where do you think it's going to go in
1:16
the future? And this is sort of our response
1:18
to a question like. All right, so where do we start?
1:22
Yeah, so let's start at the very beginning.
1:24
One of the interesting things about tea in general is that
1:27
there is very little dispute about the cultural origins of
1:32
this plant of this product. Basically the only country that
1:36
holds any claim to the being the first people to cultivate tea
1:39
are in China and Chinese people. Unlike the coffee world where
1:42
there's a little bit of debate between Yemen and Ethiopia.
1:46
And supposedly the scientific evidence shows that it was first
1:50
discovered and, and naturally growing in in Ethiopia.
1:54
But then in the very, very early days that no one was really
1:57
cultivating it to make it into what is we know as coffee now
2:00
until the, until some Arab people brought it to Yemen and
2:04
planted it there. And we're really the first
2:06
people to do actually any real coffee cultivation.
2:09
So it's a little bit more of a complex history, but within the
2:12
case of tea, it's pretty much undisputed, except for a few
2:16
crazy people in Korea who claim that tea has always been there,
2:22
that tea is a Chinese product and was first cultivated by
2:25
Chinese people. Very unpopular idea even in
2:29
Korea too, as we study under a few Korean tea ceremony masters.
2:34
But yeah, you're totally right, not only culturally but also
2:38
biologically that, you know, many proofs exist for tea to
2:41
being, you know, first cultivated and consumed in and
2:46
even to this stage you can still find a lot of the specimens that
2:51
kind of lies in between, you know, completely wild T before
2:55
you get the domesticized and semi wild and you know, wild
3:00
camellia sentences. Those are very different things
3:02
for some of the cousins defaulting to the similar family
3:06
that were not domesticized. Those are actually semi or very
3:11
poisonous. They're still growing in the
3:14
wild in Yunnan along with all the tea bushes that are getting
3:18
harvest. Very interesting to visit those
3:21
places with with the locals. When I was in Yunnan.
3:23
They look very different in the way that the size is.
3:28
Those really like wild cousins of camellia sentences are huge
3:33
but the leaves are very similar so I can almost cannot tell the
3:36
difference between a camellia sentences and their wild
3:40
cousins. But the locals told me that some
3:43
of them can be processed into tea and is drinkable and some of
3:47
them are just really poisonous and will make you very dizzy and
3:51
very sick. So very, very interesting to see
3:55
them in person. Yeah, yeah.
3:57
So for those of you who don't know, you know, matcha comes
3:59
from a plant called Camellia senensis, which was originally
4:04
discovered, grown, cultivated and as a natural part of the
4:07
forest in southwestern China. And one of the first things you
4:10
learned about in any T education is that all T needs to come from
4:14
the genus and species Camellia sinensis.
4:16
And in a previous recording, we said that's about 99% true,
4:20
which leads to an interesting question.
4:21
And what's the other 1%? And it's exactly what Zhongjun
4:25
was talking about. There are other species,
4:29
Camellia species that are very similar to tea.
4:32
So if you go to some of the very Yunnan focused vendors that sell
4:36
tea, they have something called Camellia italiansis.
4:39
It is one of the other common species.
4:41
It's basically tea and processed into things like poor and some
4:44
other things. So there's some other Camellia
4:46
varieties. Technically, that's the wrong
4:48
way of putting it. There's some other Camellia
4:50
species, genus Camellias, and then various other species from
4:54
sinensis to Taliansis and a few others that are edible.
4:57
Some are poisonous and they all originate in southwestern China.
5:00
And of course, these plants are part of the forest.
5:02
They don't know the boundaries. So, you know, part of those
5:05
forests extended into Myanmar and Laos and and into northern
5:09
parts of Thailand where a lot of tea gets processed.
5:13
And actually a lot of it gets smuggled across the border,
5:15
especially as poor prices in China have gotten very high.
5:18
And where that stuff doesn't get even labeled as originating from
5:22
that place. And most of it gets smuggled to
5:25
a city in Yunnan called Sichuan Bana.
5:27
More than the poor traders buy it and blend it.
5:30
We've talked about sort of tea laundering within the case of
5:33
China and Japan for matcha, But it's also happening where people
5:37
want to create something that is what people think of as a
5:40
Chinese product and a very different part of the tea world.
5:44
All the time off with all kinds of teas, not just in matcha, but
5:48
we see that in poor, we see that in Long Jing, which is another
5:52
very expensive Chinese green tea that is cultivated and processed
5:56
in Hangzhou and and a lot of these regions in Sichuan and
6:01
Guizhou supplies all of these famous production area and get
6:06
turned into these much more expensive tea by the end of the
6:09
day. We kind of see that within Japan
6:12
too, you know, like Kagoshima and gold supplies all the way
6:16
into a Wuji proper and gets processed.
6:19
You just got to import the aricha into Kyoto Prefecture and
6:23
boom, you got wujicha. Yeah, same thing.
6:25
Same thing. Same, same.
6:27
It's a big problem in the SeaWorld.
6:29
So anyway, the origins of Macho's past are in southwestern
6:33
China, where then tea eventually spread to the rest of the world.
6:37
At least the Chinese varietals did.
6:38
But the earliest tea cultivation was done in China, and then
6:42
later spread through Zen Buddhism to Korea and to Japan.
6:47
And the earliest documentation of tea moving to Japan, I
6:52
believe is in the Tang Dynasty, which is around 1000 years ago.
6:55
But it didn't really stick in any meaningful way until a monk
6:58
named Asai, who you can read all about online, Buddhist monk
7:02
studying Buddhism in China, brought it back to Japan, where
7:08
then it really stuck. And he's kind of considered the
7:10
one of the godfathers of, of Japanese tea, bringing over
7:14
those tea seeds. Yeah, there were predecessors of
7:17
the SI in the past trying to bring tea into Japan from China,
7:21
but he was the only one that really made the Bush and the
7:25
culture of drinking it took roots within Japan.
7:28
So that's I think around Song dynasty.
7:33
Yeah, during the Song dynasty. So Zhengjiang, before we talk
7:36
more about the spread of tea throughout East Asia and the
7:38
move of what it was essentially Song dynasty Mota into Japan,
7:43
let's talk about the mythical origin stories for tea.
7:46
So if you learn anything about tea history, typically you
7:48
encounter 2 origin stories for the way how Tau T was
7:52
discovered. Do you want to recount the the
7:56
tale of the mythical Emperor Shannon in his discovery of T?
8:01
Yeah, Shannon. Wow.
8:03
It's basically not a real person, but let's, you know,
8:06
treat him as a real person for the sake of this story.
8:10
But he's one of the mythical legendary emperor of China
8:15
thousands of years ago and basically had this vision, the
8:19
mission of trying all kinds of vegetations that were native to
8:23
China at the time to test their effects and compile them into
8:28
knowledge and educate his people.
8:30
And when he was on this mission of finding all of the, you know,
8:36
medicinal and agricultural effect of all these vegetations,
8:39
he often times run into poisonous ones and got very
8:43
sick. And one day he end up trying
8:46
this, you know, this leaf coming from this tree and all of a
8:51
sudden all of his illness and pain went away.
8:55
It's really a panacea at the time for him.
9:00
And he gave very, you know, high praise to this vegetation and
9:06
what is to be understand nowadays as tea.
9:10
Tea as a cure all goes all the way back to the mythical origins
9:14
of its discovery. Yes, yes, yes, the OG snake oil.
9:18
Did Shannon lose 20 lbs after he started drinking it every day?
9:22
Yeah, he doesn't need to eat anymore, actually.
9:27
But yeah, that's one of the very trustworthy, credible origin
9:32
story of tea that goes all the way back.
9:34
The other one, I think it's incredible.
9:36
I'll let you tell the story. The other origin story,
9:39
competing origin story, is much more realistic, I think, where
9:44
Bodhi Dharma, the the guy who brought Buddhism from India to
9:48
to China, was said to have been meditating in a cave.
9:51
He was so upset with he fell asleep.
9:53
So he was so upset with himself for falling asleep that he
9:56
ripped off his eyelids and that where his eyelids landed, the
9:59
first tea trees grew. And thus we are all drinking
10:02
plants that are descendant from Bodhi Dharma's eyelids.
10:07
Wow, much more likely. Wow, it's almost like the
10:10
Christian story of the bread turning into Jesus, God's flesh.
10:14
That's an interesting parallel. Very, very interesting.
10:19
But that's the other story that's far more trustworthy, in
10:24
my opinion, than the panacea of Sheno.
10:27
Yes. So those are the two origin
10:28
stories. And you know, basically tea is
10:30
undisputedly Chinese. And then, as I said, you know,
10:33
it spread to other parts of East Asia in the Tongue and Song
10:37
dynasties, respectively, into Korea and Japan, mostly through
10:42
the spread of Zen Buddhism, where Buddhist monks traveled to
10:46
China to go to temples to learn and kind of discovered this new
10:49
wonderful plant, brought it back with them.
10:51
So that's approximately how that happened and spread.
10:54
So Sam, let's pivot to Chinese, a little bit of Chinese tea
10:58
history, which is important to contextualize matcha and its
11:01
origins. So can you add a little color
11:04
about what tea was like and how it was served in the Tong
11:08
dynasty and then in the subsequent dynasty of the Song
11:11
afterwards? Yeah, for sure.
11:13
So tea was actually consumed and there there were very early
11:19
archaeological discoveries of tea being compressed into cake
11:23
forms all the way back to the Han dynasty, which is almost
11:27
2000 years ago. And the exact way of consuming
11:30
tea at the time was largely unknown.
11:34
But there are descriptions of how people consume tea in Tang
11:38
Dynasty, which is 1000 years after Tang Dynasty.
11:42
So it's a long time, but tea got consumed along the way too.
11:46
But you know, there, there there were too few archaeological
11:49
proofs and records of how exactly or if there is any
11:53
ceremonial ways related to that. At Tang Dynasty, people still
11:57
consume cake teas, you know, tea are compressed into this form of
12:03
they call it long Tuan Phong bee.
12:05
So the cake of phoenix and the dole of Dragons.
12:09
So they're basically either in a cake form or in a dole form, and
12:13
they will be sealed a pattern of phoenix or a dragon on top of it
12:18
as tributed to the monarchs. And it was around the Tang
12:23
Dynasty that people started to consume tea in a more fragmented
12:29
form in boiled water. It's almost drinking a soup.
12:32
So they have a giant pot of boiled water.
12:35
They take some pieces, chunks off from the cake or the dough,
12:39
and then they will roast the chunk on top of the charcoal
12:43
fire to kind of revitalize the fragrance and the flavor of the
12:47
tea. And then they put it into a
12:49
wheel grinder and then they grind them into smaller chips.
12:54
And then they toss the chips into the giant boiling pot along
12:59
with the gingers and a bunch of other spice.
13:02
And then they drink the soup. So it's, it's more like a soup
13:06
at the time. Then, you know, the tea that we
13:08
are familiar with nowadays. And that was how people consume
13:11
tea back in Tang dynasty and Song dynasty, the way it is much
13:15
more elaborate. So people are starting to form
13:18
this, you know, single origin, single ingredient concept that
13:22
they are starting to consume tea on itself without other spice
13:26
and other ingredients in the soup.
13:29
So tea was largely processed the same.
13:32
It's still being compressed. And then they would, you know,
13:36
grind the compressed tea into a much finer powder in a stone
13:41
grinder. So what we call ishiyusu in
13:44
Japanese, it's called shizuo in Chinese.
13:47
But the Chinese character, the kanji is the same.
13:49
And they would grind them into much finer powder, and then they
13:52
will whisk it in the tea bowl with a much paler, whiter color
13:59
compared to today's matcha. So a lot of the theories were
14:04
suggesting that, you know, the song Diners tea, mocha powder
14:08
tea is much closer to today's white tea baicha versus, you
14:13
know, a Japanese or matcha or green tea.
14:17
So people at the time, usually the monarchs and the literatis,
14:21
they would do this very interesting competition, they
14:25
call it Doja tea competition or tea battles, where they would
14:27
gather together and then they would try to whisk, whisk the
14:31
tea so that it will form the thickest foam.
14:34
And then they compete on whose foam last the longest.
14:38
And sometimes they will use calligraphy brushes or their
14:41
fingers to try to do calligraphy on the film.
14:44
And there is this very famous artist at the time who can write
14:48
a entire poetry on a very small mall with very thick foam.
14:53
And it was considered to be a celebrity at the time, so.
14:57
Original latte art throwdown. Original latte art, Very true,
15:02
very true. Although they don't add milk,
15:04
but they do compete with buy buy the film.
15:06
And that's how people enjoy mortar or Sung Dynasty matcha
15:10
back in the days. And then TE got introduced into
15:14
Japan around the same period of time.
15:16
But in China, something big really happened.
15:19
So it was the downfall of Song dynasty because of the Mongolian
15:24
invasion. But the Mongolian dynasty only
15:26
lasts for 88 years. So they it did some damage to
15:29
the Chinese culture. But a lot of the habits are
15:32
large, largely still preserved. But at the downfall of the
15:36
Mongol dynasty, the Yuan dynasty, this very interesting
15:40
guy prevailed amongst all of the warlords.
15:43
Julian Zhang or the first emperor of Ming dynasty.
15:46
He was a peasant, not really a peasant.
15:49
He was a beggar. He was like from the lowest
15:53
possible, like, you know, social hierarchy at the time.
15:56
And he had seen the worst out of how people got treated by the
16:02
society elites at the time in China, by the Han people
16:06
themselves and also by the Mongols.
16:09
So relating back to tea culture. So he he really had some pretty
16:14
iron fisted policy against, you know, overconsumption and
16:18
elitism in China when he took the throne to become the first
16:23
emperor of Ming Dynasty. And one of the target was tea.
16:27
So manufacturer of mucha very similar to early days and even
16:33
nowadays of how people manufacture matcha in Japan was
16:37
very laborious, very tedious, very time consuming.
16:40
And it was all these people, these farmers, peasants, workers
16:45
making something that they themselves are not able to
16:49
afford. It's reserved for the top of the
16:52
society, for the elites, for the monarchs.
16:54
And Julian Zhang, the first emperor of Ming Dynasty, hated
16:58
that. Like, he hates the idea of, you
17:01
know, overworking and, you know, exploiting the lower class.
17:07
And he hated so much that he essentially banned the
17:10
manufacturer of morcha in China. And from since Ming Dynasty from
17:16
Ming dynasty, morcha completely disappeared for hundreds of
17:19
years in in China. So it was banned and you know,
17:23
loosely tea became the mainstream.
17:26
But luckily or unluckily, the culture guy introduced into
17:30
Japan. Luckily it was preserved in in
17:32
Japan. Unluckily, you know, the same
17:35
kind of tedious and laborers work and culture got preserved
17:40
and got thrown to the Japanese people and it was basically the
17:44
same story. It was a product reserved for
17:47
the world Lords the the monarchs and the literatis.
17:50
But on the other hand, luckily the very reason that we can
17:54
still enjoy this beverage to this day, we got to thank the
17:57
Japanese that they helped to preserve this culture.
18:00
You know, unlike, you know, the Tang Dynasty tea, Ginger 5 spice
18:05
soup that we will never know what the taste of those
18:09
beverages are. We we can still have some sense
18:12
of what matcha or matcha taste like to this day.
18:16
Yeah. So just to do a quick compare
18:18
and contrast moment between Malta and modern matcha,
18:22
actually, before I'll do that, I will say that the only reason
18:26
that the majority of the people listening to this podcast can
18:29
drink and try matcha is because of the industrial revolution.
18:33
Matcha is so insanely laborious. And now that we're learning
18:37
quite a bit more about the insurance and outs of matcha
18:39
production, it is so incredibly energy intensive.
18:44
And from like a physics point of view and the amount of heat that
18:47
you need, the amount of energy that you need to keep everything
18:50
cold and to mill it, it is like probably from a carbon footprint
18:55
perspective, one of the worst types of decultivation, at least
18:58
in its processing. Yeah, Phil and John had a point.
19:03
Not even to mention the the labor requirements to do the
19:06
type of Labor before any type of mechanization.
19:09
So mucha and matcha until the industrial revolution were not
19:14
in every man's tea. It was really an elite culture
19:17
and a lot of these stories that are told within China U cultural
19:21
tea contacts are probably more vanity than substance about the
19:25
types of people that were enjoying tea at the time and who
19:27
could actually have afforded it. It's very nice that they have a
19:30
very inclusive spirit, but the historical realities were
19:33
probably that you had to have a fair bit of money to enjoy it.
19:38
Didn't put it quite frankly, even today, you have to have a
19:41
fair about a fair amount of money to enjoy it.
19:43
It's still expensive, but at least it's accessible.
19:46
But to compare and contrast Song Dynasty, Mucha and Mucha, some
19:50
people will say, and actually Mark from Ohika recorded a real
19:54
his hot take and he said his hot take was that Mucha is Japanese
19:59
and not Chinese. And I actually totally agree
20:02
with his argument. Is that what we know of and
20:05
think of as much of today, there is very little resemblance to
20:10
what mocha was and how it was processed.
20:12
So back in Song Dynasty, no one was shade growing their tea, at
20:16
least not intentionally. And they were not processing it
20:19
the same way, although they were steaming it, but it was not, you
20:22
know, this very green would not have been this very green color.
20:26
It's been pretty well documented that it was a very white.
20:28
Fake foam. So there's clearly some very
20:30
different types of processing. So the major innovations which
20:34
make matcha, it's give it its physical characteristics and
20:40
flavor characteristics and we're really refined and invented by
20:43
the Japanese. So where you draw that line is,
20:46
you know, up to the audience. So we don't have a stake in that
20:49
battle. But they were probably very
20:51
different products, but they did share steaming in common and
20:55
they were both powdered. So there were suspension of
20:57
particles and you were adding water to tea.
21:01
They shared that step as well. But Ryan, you know, shading tea
21:06
in Japan is also fairly new compared to the long history of
21:11
tea. If you go back to the time of
21:13
Sinolique, you know, like they were not shading tea at the
21:15
time. It was really until there is
21:18
this very interesting. I think it's Portuguese or
21:21
Jesuit in the 19th century who went to Japan that first
21:25
documented that the tea was being shade ground in Japan.
21:29
And then there are archaeological discovery of
21:33
some, you know, carbon layers related to rice straw being used
21:37
in tea gardens that dates back even 100 years earlier than
21:41
that. But still, that's, you know,
21:44
fairly recent when we're talking about the long history of tea
21:47
being consumed in Japan, in the region.
21:50
And just a cool shout out to the research that you were talking
21:53
about and some of those discoveries that were made that
21:55
were dating, potentially dating or provided some evidence for
22:00
Honzu Reichstraw shading 100 years before it was documented
22:03
by the Portuguese was discovered in the Okunoyama tea garden from
22:08
Hori Shimaya where the that famous cultivar was from, which
22:12
is a super cool. So every time anyone you're
22:15
drinking Okonoyama cultivar and from Hori Sisimaya and you're
22:19
actually drinking tea that is genetically descended from that
22:24
400 year old Bush in that garden dating all the way back to that
22:29
point, which is quite an interesting piece of living
22:32
legacy. And the fact that you can drink
22:33
that when buy that retail in Japan for about 25 bucks is so
22:38
incredibly special. And so take an extra moment to
22:41
enjoy that. Yeah, it's a piece of living
22:43
history. Absolutely.
22:44
That's, that was a quick compare and contrast.
22:47
So when tea then entered Japan, it was really cemented into a
22:50
tea serum. And by the way, we're going to
22:52
the Japanese tea history part you could write PhD
22:56
dissertations on. So we're going to give a little
22:59
more of a faster overview of it, especially since everyone
23:03
listening probably has heard a lot about it.
23:06
But in Japan, basically we cemented into a ceremony by a
23:10
guy named Senoriku at the the the three core schools that are
23:15
descended from Senoriku. Senoriku is a Moto Senke Ersenke
23:20
and Musha Koji Senke, which are collectively known as the Sen
23:24
Senke that all derived from Senoriku who has many, many
23:29
things that you can research, who is famous for promoting the
23:32
wabi aesthetic. And to sort of move away from
23:35
these very affluent motifs and decorations and T utensils that
23:39
were being imported from China at the time and really created
23:43
aesthetic movement, the wabi sabi wabi aesthetic.
23:47
So these three schools are the primary institutions in which
23:50
tea ceremony has lived and evolved.
23:52
It's under a leadership system called the Iyamoto system.
23:56
So Iyamoto basically means grandmaster and it's father to
24:00
son lineage. And after each generational
24:04
change, they're allowed to make one change, one fundamental
24:07
change to the ceremony. So it is thus always living and
24:11
adapting and not completely rigid throughout time.
24:14
And then you also have all of the samurai schools.
24:16
And then you also historically have had a lot of people just
24:18
practicing tea sort of in their, in their own way that we're not
24:22
necessarily ever tied to one of these tea ceremony institutions.
24:25
Their their influences waxed and waned over the years.
24:29
Well, we both had been Omoto Sanki students at some time.
24:32
I consider some self belonging to one of the school.
24:35
Ryan, I don't know about you, but.
24:36
Yeah, well, I mean, we're both, I don't know, we're not active.
24:40
We're maybe former a Moto Psyche students.
24:43
I I still have gone to a couple of their gatherings in recent
24:46
years and and still really quite enjoy it, especially as a guest.
24:52
It's being a host is learning to be a host is very challenging.
24:56
Honestly, from an educational perspective, it is just a
24:59
fantastic thing to be a competent guest in a tea
25:04
ceremony, which by the way, would probably take years of
25:07
being a properly competent guest to all the manners and formality
25:12
that's required. But it's a really wonderful
25:14
cultural thing to experience when when you have arrived at
25:18
that point in your educational journey.
25:20
It's honestly not for me. I'm care much more about the
25:23
product of matcha than the ceremony itself.
25:26
And so I learned enough to know that it was not definitely not
25:28
my path, but I certainly appreciate it but for the art
25:31
that it. Yeah.
25:33
And you know, thank God that, you know, this culture still
25:36
exists today that really helped to preserve Mata for the longest
25:41
time that, you know, because right now we have all these
25:45
demands coming from all corners of the society and all corners
25:48
of the world consuming this product.
25:50
But you know, for the longest time, tea ceremony
25:54
practitioners, tea ceremony schools, were the sole buyers of
25:58
matcha. Thank them that you know matcha
26:00
can still exist until this day. And so this is where we arrive
26:04
at a very interesting point because we've talked about tea
26:06
ceremony in the preparation of tea, but we've also talked about
26:09
the processing of tea. And the processing of tea I
26:11
think is very underappreciated within the broader Hicks history
26:15
and context of Japan. And Mark from Oika said
26:18
something very interesting that really stuck in my mind was he
26:21
was describing these rice straw shading techniques, the honzu
26:25
shading techniques as endangered was the adjective that he used.
26:29
I thought what what a really nice, interesting way of putting
26:31
it is that with all this industrialization that allows
26:34
all of us to drink matcha is that a lot of the traditional
26:37
methods that are less efficient are becoming in danger and
26:40
losing this tradition. And one thing that's very
26:42
interesting is I think with it, when most people think of
26:44
Japanese tea, especially in Japan and in the United States,
26:48
is that there's very little thought historically given to
26:51
the farmer. I read a book called Making Tea
26:53
Making Japan and the subtext is cultural nationalism and
26:57
practice. It's the history of Chana Yu and
27:00
Japanese tea ceremony and how it was used to to form the idea of
27:04
Japanese in this in the modern Japanese nation and culture and
27:08
not once. And this is not a criticism,
27:10
it's more of an observation. In this entire book did they
27:13
ever talk about the people who are actually making the tea?
27:19
The title Making Tea, Making Japan, not once or maybe very
27:24
briefly, and I had forgotten, but it really was not a topic of
27:27
this book where the farmers or the producers of this product.
27:31
This is a really interesting observation.
27:33
It's well, for the longest time, they are largely, you know, I'm
27:37
just going to be very frank and blunt, the, the lowest of the
27:41
social hierarchy of, you know, the tea making chains, you know,
27:47
the, although they are the beginning part that like they,
27:50
they, they are really the cornerstone and the foundation
27:52
of why other people can have something to drink.
27:57
But in terms of social hierarchy, they are, they're
28:00
really the at the bottom for for the longest time.
28:04
And it's really until very recently that social media kind
28:08
of gave them a mic to, to have other people hear their voices.
28:12
Yeah. It's, it's a very weird change.
28:16
Zhengjun zooming back around Sanya Riku's time, can you talk
28:19
a little bit about what was the utility of tea ceremony at the
28:23
time, about the samurai class and and a lot of the stories
28:28
told around some tea ceremonies and why the Japanese took this
28:32
Chinese tradition and and made it their own?
28:34
Well, that's actually a very interesting angle to, to
28:38
understand tea and it's historical meaning in different
28:43
era in Japan. Because in, in the very
28:45
beginning, it's just a beverage that people like to consume.
28:49
And after Sinoliku kind of formalized and ceremonialized
28:53
the consumption of this this beverage into a culture, it kind
28:59
of became a a a safe space, A foundation for people,
29:05
especially the warlords, to have conversations with each other.
29:10
Because, you know, at a time when you enter into a tea room,
29:14
actually still to this days, you are not allowed to bring any
29:17
weapon. You need to surrender your swore
29:20
your Cortana outside of the tea room.
29:22
And then instead you bring a little very cutesy fan as a
29:28
symbolism of your weapon. Yeah, to and then you enter into
29:33
the tea room. And it was really trying to, you
29:35
know, prevent these samurais, the these warlords from warring
29:40
swore against each other during a dispute.
29:42
You know, you still got to come to a agreement or, or a
29:46
disagreement at the end of the day.
29:47
But, you know, you need to work out of the tea room alive.
29:50
So that was kind of the purpose of a lot of these tea gatherings
29:54
at the warring state period of Japan.
29:57
But the purpose definitely changed after the development of
30:02
Japanese society. It was really a interesting
30:05
point that you know, the book you've been reading, Ryan Making
30:08
Team Making Japan, that later on tea ceremony kind of served as a
30:13
foundation for nation building for almost a umbrella structure
30:17
to kind of contained and preserve all of the cultural
30:20
element that can be described and defined as Japanese and can
30:25
be used as a reference for Japanese Ness.
30:29
And tea ceremony kind of served a wonderful umbrella structure
30:33
for that purpose. Yeah, it's, it's interesting.
30:36
Most of us in studying history, nationalism is a relatively new
30:41
concept, believe especially just to use Europe as an example,
30:45
Italy was basically a bunch of little fragmented, you know,
30:49
tiny little regional centers of power in the, in the early, I
30:53
think it was in the 1800s, at some point, the unifiers that
30:57
kind of brought Italy together enter to 1 country, said great,
31:00
we've created Italy, now we have to create Italians.
31:03
And very similar stories are true in France and in Germany
31:07
too. This idea of being German or
31:09
this idea of being French or Italian is actually a relatively
31:13
historically new concept. And Japan was definitely not
31:16
immune from this. So both in the Meiji period and
31:20
the more modern period, you know, Japanese tea ceremony tea
31:25
macho was kind of chosen as this element that totally embodied
31:30
Japanese Ness. And it it really stuck.
31:34
And it was a really wonderful encapsulation of so many
31:38
different crafts and arts that that it touched.
31:42
And I'll read a line here from the book.
31:44
You may find it. No worries.
31:46
So, she writes, what renders the tea ceremony a quintessentially
31:50
Japanese experience is not it's fixed or apartness from the
31:55
ordinary routines of living, but rather the alternation between
31:59
the everyday and the exceptional differentiation and distinction
32:03
that is inscribed in the practice.
32:05
And then she goes on to say it's in it's combination with
32:09
practice. 1 reaching out in a self reinforcing matrix of other
32:13
items defined as quote UN quote Japanese culture sustain these
32:18
resonances before it takes far more than T Typically ceramics,
32:23
scrolls, lacquerware, kimonos, tatami and even kaiseki cuisine
32:27
to make a tea serum. In the moment to moment
32:30
unfolding of the ritual, the stage, the props and the
32:33
scripted roles conspire to create a seamless flow that not
32:37
only naturalizes a very unnatural conduct, but also
32:43
momentarily veils the oddness, apartness and distinctive
32:47
Japanese of what's going on. So it's really is the perfect
32:51
encapsulation of Japan. Yeah, that was a very long wait
32:54
of saying, you know, tea Ceremony being a almost a, a
33:00
gallery of all of these Japanese cultural elements, a very well
33:06
curated gallery experience for people to experience and learn
33:12
about Japanese culture and for Japanese to learn about their
33:16
own identity. Yeah.
33:18
And to make Japanese people to culturally Japanese people and
33:23
they were saying, you know, especially after World War 2IN
33:25
finding and creating a strong sense of national identity,
33:29
especially in light of the new global world order and all of
33:32
the internationalization that was happening.
33:35
Creating a new generation of Japanese Japanese people to be
33:40
molded into the cultural standards that they wanted to
33:44
imbue to that generation, especially in such a conformist
33:48
society, was very rigidly structured.
33:50
And Chano you was perfect. It taught you how to sit, how to
33:53
act, your manners. So for example, and within a
33:56
Japanese tea ceremony, you have to apologize to the person who's
33:59
going to have their bowl after you because you're drinking it
34:02
before them and you think the host and you're taught ought to
34:05
respect the wares and you're taught aesthetic appreciation.
34:08
So after you drink the matcha, you put the ball back down to
34:11
Tommy. You look left, you look right,
34:13
and you pick it up, but not too far off the floor to examine the
34:17
bowl. And you can ask questions about
34:19
it and look at its different aesthetic subtleties and learn
34:23
to appreciate them. And on top of that, when you
34:26
learn Japanese tea ceremony, it is incredibly hierarchical and
34:29
top down. You were told what to do, what
34:31
to act, how to act, how to respond.
34:33
It's perfect training ground to create a more conformist society
34:38
that Japanese Japan is famous for, and that's actually one of
34:41
the biggest critiques of Japanese tea ceremony in
34:44
contemporary culture today for people who are have no interest
34:48
in learning or studying it. Yeah, really.
34:52
You know, a Japanese society in a nutshell.
34:54
Almost. Yeah, there's a very funny line.
34:58
Oh yeah. Here is so part of this book.
35:00
She did research kind of talking with everyday normal Japanese
35:04
people to get their set, especially people who are not
35:06
tea people at all about what they think of chanayu in Japan.
35:09
So this is more like current day matcha, but looking at it from a
35:13
very like ordinary Japanese person's lens and to give you a
35:16
sense of why it might be a dying art.
35:19
One reason she writes this, one reason why the practice is so
35:23
insistently promoted as relaxed in the experienced tourism
35:27
industry is because as a as a representative of the Kyoto
35:32
Tourism Board put it quote, tea is a hierarchical world with a
35:37
strict relationship between teachers and students.
35:40
Most people nowadays don't want that.
35:43
They just want to try it out easily sitting in a Tatame room
35:46
and enjoying a bowl of tea. So a lot of the, you know, that
35:51
they recognize this at least within the tourism boards and
35:55
really stress and have done a lot of modifications for for
35:58
foreigners to have a less rigid experience.
36:00
And so there's definitely some self-awareness even within
36:03
these. Cultures, yeah, I, I mean, like
36:05
even within Japan too, as we talked to some of the younger
36:09
generation in Japan who are Japanese, they they don't want
36:13
to go through this whole process either.
36:15
In a way it really becomes a this is highly contacted again a
36:20
cultural baggage that the preventing people to really
36:23
enjoy matcha as it is just matcha.
36:26
Another contemporary criticism of Japanese tea ceremony is the
36:30
insane value and price of what they would call a lot of the T
36:33
dogu or T utensils, ranging from the cha ones, which are tea
36:38
bowls or the scoops or the natsu maze, can go for really crazy,
36:43
insane prices. And someone that she interviewed
36:46
in the book said you should be able to do it, referring to cha
36:50
na Yu with any sort of utensil. But no one, no one does that
36:53
now. And there's this idea around
36:55
stuffiness around like what? What what can and cannot be used
37:00
and this kind of this accumulation culture of wanting
37:03
to buy the nicer and more expensive thing within Japanese
37:07
tea practitioners and someone that she also interviewed that I
37:11
really like and got a good laugh of this is someone she
37:14
interviewed. They said quote people, people
37:17
who don't know T just say without any interest when you
37:20
tell them a bamboo scoop cost $10,000, they just say, oh,
37:25
$10,000. To this, her mother burst out
37:28
into laughter and said, yeah, for an oversized earpick for one
37:32
of the great Buddha. A statue in Nara, I suppose.
37:34
Ridiculous. How dare you A?
37:40
Earpick. Earpick for oversized Earpick
37:43
for the Great Buddha. And this is a Japanese person
37:48
saying it, so it's. He has a pass or she has a pass.
37:53
They have a pass, but backing up a little bit in the history.
37:56
So you have the Sen Senke, you have these three schools and
37:59
they have been active. I believe they're on the like
38:02
the 15th and 17th generations now in the past in this podcast,
38:07
I said 14 and 16, but I think there were generational changes
38:10
since my memory of learning this.
38:12
And those have always existed, but they weren't always the only
38:16
way that tea was done in Japan. So as long June, let's back up a
38:18
bit and talk a little bit about the histories of tea and matcha
38:23
in the Meiji era as Japan was industrializing from a
38:26
practitioner's perspective, from from the book making tea, making
38:30
Japan, what was sort of the lay of the land that was going on in
38:32
the, you know, around the 1800s. Yeah, there's a very interesting
38:35
paragraph that I can just read it from the book that talks
38:39
about this very topic. So here it goes.
38:42
Industrialists and politicians were drowned to Channel U for
38:47
many of the same reasons I stand Daniel and warriors.
38:50
Steinman being the warlords at the time at once being.
38:54
It offered a symbolic link to prior rulers for purposes of
39:00
legitimating power. A social space for networking
39:03
with other elites, as I was talking about, you know, like
39:06
offering a space for the samurais and the diamond to have
39:09
conversations with each other without weapons and and continue
39:14
in the book and and a means for displaying a superior refinement
39:20
alongside the pleasures of an afternoon of elegant
39:24
entertainment. Meanwhile, beneath this
39:26
oligarchy, the school system, always a central forge of
39:30
national identity transmitted to the population below a knowledge
39:35
of T bovent into a distinctively National History.
39:39
Girls were encouraged to take up T as a hobby in training for
39:43
their role as being, you know, good wives and wise mothers.
39:48
The tea ceremony was not simply a flat symbol but a lift
39:52
practice with bodies conveying it's national dissemination.
39:56
Whether by business leaders or classroom leaders, tea continued
40:00
to be done. The variously gendered balances
40:04
of the nationalized result stood in a productive tension.
40:09
Women's practice transmitted popular understanding of the
40:13
tea. Ceremony to households across
40:16
the nation, while men's tea, often reacting to women's
40:19
practice, stamped such understandings with the higher
40:22
legitimacy of status and power. Very interesting.
40:26
It is very interesting. Like the Japanese society in the
40:30
nutshell, almost the reason why you know, like we are perceiving
40:34
Japanese, you know, in a lot of stereotypical way nowadays from
40:40
a outsider point of view. And something very interesting
40:43
in this book that we don't need to quote is apparently to this
40:46
day for college entrance exams, one of the topics that you need
40:50
to know and basically do some brute memorization has to do
40:54
about the history of Senor EQ. So like this is ingrained within
41:00
every Japanese person and a lot of people, especially young
41:03
girls were encouraged to study it.
41:06
And part of it really make up the vast majority of the
41:09
practitioner base today and to become like good Japanese
41:13
subjects basically and the good the good wives and wives, wives,
41:16
mothers policy that the government took.
41:19
And so it's really a very long legacy.
41:21
Why you but mostly mostly see upper to middle class housewives
41:25
in Japan are the primary practitioner base of these
41:28
schools, which is interesting. Another thing that this book
41:32
goes on to tell that leads us to the modern day status quo of
41:36
macho and Japanese tea ceremony was used as a means of cultural
41:41
was kind of chosen as a cultural element to share with the rest
41:44
of the world. So when Japan came to the Paris
41:47
World Expo over 100 years ago, a tea house, that was one of the
41:51
things that they brought. When royalty and dignitaries
41:54
come to Japan there, serve tea in a tea ceremony, it's really
41:57
has been chosen as this cultural exchange element that's
42:01
distinctively Japanese that they can share with the rest of the
42:04
world. Interesting.
42:05
So almost like the Confucius Institute of China, but much
42:09
more successful. Much more successful than the
42:11
Confucius Institute, whose branch was recently shut down at
42:15
Penn State for reasons we. Won't and a number of other
42:18
universities. Different history, not quite as
42:20
pure as the chana Yu cultural spreading, but it it's actually
42:27
interesting you go back to the history books.
42:29
There's a really cool photo of Ronald Reagan sitting on a
42:32
tatami mat with the Prime Minister of Japan at the time
42:35
where he took him to his home and made matcha for him.
42:38
So there's all sorts of these really cool pictures of of it
42:41
being used as this type of element of cultural exchange.
42:44
So Sam, this leads us to a wonderful segue of, of the
42:50
status quo of matcha today. And the modern history is, I
42:55
think all of this toxicity around people, especially in the
42:59
US, accusing others of cultural appropriation and how a lot of
43:05
traditionalists are not very open to the ideas of innovation
43:08
or changing or, you know, people's conservative mindsets.
43:13
It's always been this way. It should stay this way.
43:16
Matcha in so many ways is just so fundamentally untouchable
43:21
because it is distinctively wrapped in this Japanese Ness
43:26
and it has intentionally been that way for hundreds of years
43:30
where it's literally used as a subject to create Japanese
43:35
cultured people. A Japanese person that grows up
43:38
in the States and grows up and away from their original culture
43:42
is not the same level. They don't have the Japanese
43:45
Ness that you would have if you grew up in Japan.
43:49
The manners, the sensibilities, the aesthetic preferences,
43:53
etcetera. Yeah.
43:54
I mean, like this whole movement of essentially enshrined matcha
43:59
or tea ceremony into this very elevated status, I think it's
44:03
what's making anything that related to matcha or tea
44:07
ceremony so untouchable. I mean, like matcha being just a
44:11
element of this whole idea, it's really the most controversial
44:16
side because you know, like it, it really is not no longer part
44:22
of Japanese exclusively anymore. It's so internationalized
44:27
nowadays for people that are still kind of beholding it as
44:31
part of something that's essentially very Japanese,
44:34
essentially part of this Japanese narrative, are
44:38
obviously would feel offended by people repurposing it for other
44:43
usage. And when they are doing so, they
44:46
are often getting accused of appropriating this thing.
44:49
And just to give this some gravity and for some further
44:52
context for everyone listening, I don't know if they if you know
44:55
this story. So just to further, just to
44:57
further contextualize this and how important matcha and tea
45:00
ceremonies to the Japanese that during World War 2, the the air,
45:05
the inheritor of the Urasenke lineage to to the Iyamoto was
45:10
part of the Air Force and actually ended up being part of
45:12
the kamikaze unit during World War 2.
45:14
And it was chosen that that he was not going to, to, to commit
45:19
suicide in that way because he was too culturally important to
45:23
the Japanese nation. So what they had him do is
45:26
perform tea ceremonies for the kamikaze pilots.
45:30
So that that was sort of their last ceremonial gesture and
45:34
salute to those pilots was they experienced a tea ceremony, had
45:37
a bowl of matcha, and then went off to die during World War 2.
45:41
And so there's an incredible cultural weight and importance
45:44
behind tea ceremony which which lives on to this day.
45:47
It's a very interesting story and actually he later he
45:52
survived and went on to become the Iyamoto and is actually one
45:56
of the greatest spreaders of Japanese culture and messages of
45:59
peace. After the war, he traveled to
46:02
many, many, many different countries doing all sorts of
46:04
public demonstrations at Iyamoto and has been very praised in in
46:08
talking about his messages for peace and is it became a very
46:11
important man within Japanese tea history.
46:14
So it is very importantly and distinctively Japanese and it,
46:18
it has a huge cultural weight behind it to this day, which
46:21
leads us into this very interesting dilemma into the
46:24
future to, to, to segue into sort of the contemporary history
46:28
of matcha. The industrial revolution was
46:31
brought, which brought a lot more mechanization.
46:34
Obviously, you know, before World War Two, you had the
46:36
invention and discovery of the Haber Bosch process.
46:41
It's a chemical process that allows us to take to fix
46:44
nitrogen and basically with a lot of energy, take hydrogen and
46:48
nitrogen and create ammonia, which then can be then further
46:52
reacted to create both bombs and industrial fertilizer.
46:56
And so with this industrial fertilizer, you had this Agri
46:59
mass agriculture boom along with all these new mechanical devices
47:05
that allow mass agriculture. And that very much hit the tea
47:07
industry, which is now how the majority of the world can even
47:11
consume matcha is because of all of the wonderful inventions and
47:14
the scale of agriculture that happened after the industrial
47:18
revolution. So at one point the West starts
47:22
to take a pretty big interest in matcha.
47:24
And that's actually a pretty more recent history.
47:29
I've, I've done quite a bit of searching to the New York Times
47:32
archives looking for early mentions of matcha.
47:36
There's not very many and they're rather obscure, but it
47:39
really didn't start to really become a thing and as far as I
47:43
can tell, until around the early 2000s.
47:46
And any sense of scale where you started to see it in cakes and
47:50
and bubble tea stores and ice cream and Starbucks.
47:53
I believe the first Starbucks in North America to serve a matcha
47:56
latte was like in 2004, 2005. And a lot of new consumers got
48:02
exposed to it in countries all over the world, developed a huge
48:05
love for it. And then basically the market
48:07
got flooded with a bunch of crap, very industrial stuff.
48:11
So the term ceremonial grade was invented to kind of distinguish,
48:14
you know, matcha that was more meant and designed to be put
48:17
into a cake with a bunch of sugar to help mask the
48:20
bitterness. And matcha that was meant to be
48:22
consumed on its own. People started abusing that
48:25
term. And that's kind of the status
48:27
quo that we are in now because there's a lack of regulation
48:31
around who can use that term. But matcha has become incredibly
48:34
popular. And at the same time, Japan is
48:38
literally a dying country from a demographic perspective.
48:41
The average age of a tea farmer, and she's a local prefecture in
48:45
Japan, is, I believe, 67 years old.
48:49
Very few of those players are, very few of those farmers have a
48:52
succession plan. So not only do you see both
48:55
declining and abandoned tea plantations all over Japan, but
48:59
you also see this mass consolidation that's happening
49:02
where larger companies are buying up or leasing property or
49:05
existing land from farmers. And the statistic is, I think in
49:09
the 1980s you had about 200,000 tea farms in Japan.
49:13
Now it's under 12,000. That's an insane shrinkage.
49:17
Although you should put an asterisk next to that and
49:20
recognize 1980s were an incredibly weird time in Japan.
49:23
Japanese were among the richest country, one of the most rich
49:27
countries in the world, and you know, in the late 90s if you
49:31
were talking to someone in business or was it apparently
49:33
early career? I've heard all of the management
49:36
books about how to be a good manager and how to rise to the
49:39
ranks. Were all Japanese books Japanese
49:42
management the Toyota way? But definitely not the case
49:46
today. No ones copying the playbooks of
49:48
what's happening in Japan anymore.
49:50
So this decline is natural and expected.
49:53
When you move from a growth economy that's extremely wealthy
49:57
that values things that they'll spend $10,000 on a tea scoop for
50:01
sure they can support so many different farmers across Japan,
50:05
but it's just not the case today anymore.
50:07
So you start to see a lot of the rise of the specialty movement,
50:10
specialty food movement, single origin products, single cultivar
50:13
products, better movement in the late 90s in the West of wanting
50:17
to know where your food came from.
50:19
And you think see the rise of specialty coffee, bean depart,
50:21
chocolate and then tea and then eventually spread to matcha
50:24
where it was really spearheaded by a bunch of Western people are
50:28
going to Japan making relationship with Japanese tea
50:30
farmers, asking more in depth questions about their product
50:34
and doing a lot more storytelling.
50:37
And historically created around matcha product positioning that
50:42
were mostly controlled by large institutionalized blend houses
50:45
and that just gave all of their products and poetic name.
50:48
And they had very close relationship with large
50:50
institutional buyers or people in powerful positions that had a
50:53
lot of influence over consumer buyers such as Iamoto's or, or
50:58
people, people who ran temples, for example.
51:00
So to this day, you go to some of the older traditional blend
51:03
houses, you see all sorts of products that are endorsed by
51:06
this school of chanoyu or this temple or this, this thing or
51:10
that thing. And the idea of having matcha
51:14
being a very consumer focused thing where you know, you know
51:18
what you're drinking and to develop a set of complex
51:21
preferences is a relatively new topic.
51:24
And the idea of much as a specialty product is relatively
51:27
new, which brings us to approximately the status quo,
51:30
which where I'd say we're in the early stages of a specialty
51:33
market where people really want to understand and and
51:36
differentiate much of products based on the fact that it comes
51:40
from this leaf that is descended from Bodhi Dharma's eyelids and
51:45
all of the nature and nurture processes that can lead to
51:48
interesting and unique flavors or stories.
51:50
Yeah, wow. We really came through 2000
51:56
years of the journey of this tea leaf and we are landing to this
52:00
day of this very interesting mose, a dilemma of Mata being
52:06
both a very, you know, specialty product and a also very legacy
52:13
product that served the two very, very different audiences.
52:18
On all of the growth is going to lie outside of Japan because
52:22
it's a demographically dying country.
52:24
There are fewer quote, UN quote, as this book put it, bodies out
52:28
there symbolically and literally representing Japanese Nists.
52:32
And it's a very different consumer base.
52:34
You know, it's your average office worker who's working in
52:38
tech and and metro Bangkok. It's someone, you know, it's an
52:42
artist walking around Brooklyn, NY, You know, it's, it's someone
52:46
down in Santiago, Chile, that's running a interesting, cool
52:51
Japanese fusion restaurant. It's a really different mix of
52:55
people now. And, you know, back in the days
52:57
in which this was practiced in Japan, any of these
53:00
practitioners probably could have never imagined that such a
53:04
diverse group of people would fall in love with this this
53:07
product and that came out of their culture.
53:10
So how do we thread this Needle Matcha is both untouchable and
53:14
very difficult to criticize or improve upon or iterate on,
53:19
especially from the outside. And certainly within the inside.
53:22
It's very difficult in Japan. It's seen as an industry you
53:26
can't easily break into, particularly because of all of
53:29
these cultural associations. So how do we go from here?
53:33
Well, I would say that's actually not entirely true.
53:37
It's untouchable outside of Japan and inside of Japan by a
53:43
group of people holding a very strong narrative, a strong
53:47
discourse, or holding a authority to define this
53:50
product, but not necessarily those people who grows and farms
53:55
much and not necessarily the people who consumes matcha
53:59
outside of Japan nowadays. And the whole specialty movement
54:03
kind of bridged the gap between all of these people, consumers
54:07
that you were just talking about, Ryan, in all corners of
54:10
the world enjoying matcha and the tea farmers in Japan who
54:15
have been largely omit and kind of, you know, disregard by a lot
54:20
of parties within and outside of Japan.
54:23
And actually by talking, you know, in person with all these
54:26
tea farmers in Wuji, in Yamei, in, you know, a lot of different
54:30
parts in Japan, I would say that they are very open minded and
54:34
they're very practical and they really care about the products
54:37
that they're making, the tea that they're farming.
54:39
And they are just happy that people are enjoying their
54:43
creation. They don't necessarily have
54:46
this, you know, matcha being untouchable, matcha being
54:49
unchanged kind of mentality. In fact, when we were in Holi
54:54
Shitiman's retail store, they were like, yeah, these T are
54:58
great for latte. You should try it.
55:00
We like matcha latte too. So, you know, like, I think
55:04
that, you know, there is going to be a very segmented consumer
55:09
cohort and narrative going into the future.
55:12
And I don't think the gap between these two cohorts can be
55:18
diminished one way or another. But the good news is 1 cohort is
55:23
definitely growing than the other one by a very large
55:26
percentage. And I think, I think that, you
55:29
know, like the future of matcha really lifts the demand, really
55:33
lifts outside of Japan. But, you know, for the moment,
55:37
you know, the production and the manufacture of matcha inside of
55:41
Japan is still going to be, you know, the status quo in the near
55:45
future. But we don't know.
55:46
But there are many other places outside of Japan that also grows
55:50
tea. You know, why not matcha too?
55:52
Yeah, just like the idea of you have like new world wine, old
55:55
world wine, very similar concept could be put onto something like
55:59
matcha doesn't necessarily especially with the global
56:02
shortage, the the producers can't keep up as a lot of
56:05
structural problems in that industry.
56:07
So from people in the West, what are some things that we can do
56:10
to promote the future for Matcha that we think is like very
56:14
constructive? Like where are we stepping on
56:17
our own feet as foreigners and as outsiders in the spreading of
56:22
matcha and this culture to the rest of the world?
56:25
I think one thing that would be very valuable or beneficial for
56:30
us as people outside of Japan is to build matcha as a cultural
56:35
element and as a product. So as a cultural element, I
56:39
think that's where all of these accusations of cultural
56:44
appropriation becomes relevant, right?
56:47
You know, forming your own school of Chanu Yu outside of
56:50
Japan as a foreigner claiming your way is, you know, the the
56:54
way of making tea probably be, you know, cultural
56:58
appropriation. But viewing matcha as a product,
57:02
finding a usage of it as a beverage or as a ingredient in
57:07
various way, I think that's that's something that's outside
57:12
of the discussion of matcha being a culture.
57:15
We spent a lot of time talking about matcha as a culture in
57:19
this episode, but the really the status quo of matcha today is
57:24
that it's no longer being tight by one culture.
57:28
It's imbued into the daily life of many cultures around the
57:32
world. It has been internationalized
57:34
and it's no longer, you know, being abound by, you know, tea
57:39
ceremony in Japan, being confined as part of the Japanese
57:44
cultural element. But, you know, it has been
57:47
spread across the world thanks to Ola Senke, thanks to, you
57:51
know, all of these, you know, specialty movements or these
57:55
beverage companies like Starbucks, you know, making
57:59
delicious beverages using matcha as ingredient.
58:02
You know, matcha has been preached outside of Japan and
58:07
one party can no longer hold or hold a narrative or hold the
58:11
authority to define what much Chinese anymore.
58:15
I couldn't agree more. There should be a huge
58:17
separation between macho ceremony and much as a product
58:21
and much as a specialty product. Is certainly not fighting
58:25
against ceremony in any way. And this self policing that's
58:29
going on around accusing people of cultural appropriation, I
58:33
think will really inhibit the growth moving forward.
58:36
It's kind of like is what we discussed in the authenticity
58:40
trap, you're using accusations of, of cultural appropriation as
58:46
a weapon against other people, which can be very non
58:49
productive, especially it's very commonly used with the reference
58:54
of race. Like this guy looks South Asian
58:57
to me. He has no right to do this
58:59
stuff. You know, it's like, why is that
59:02
the first place you go? And the next thing that comes
59:04
out of some people's mouths is, well, my grandmother's Japanese
59:07
and, you know, it's just inviting a fight.
59:10
You know, I can say, wow, OK, my, my dad's father, my grand,
59:14
my, my paternal grandfather is from Korea, but he was born in
59:17
Pyongyang, which is now North Korea.
59:20
But at the time it was actually part of the Japanese Empire.
59:23
Does that make me Japanese? Like, I don't know.
59:26
It doesn't give me any more rights than than anyone else to
59:30
promote matcha as a specialty product or or even matcha
59:34
ceremony. A lot of my Emoto Senke teachers
59:37
were white Americans. The racial component to this is
59:41
so weird to me and very hostile territory, and I think we're
59:46
really stepping on our own feet. And the cultural component too,
59:50
I mean, like if there is anyone or any entity or group of people
59:53
can claim, you know, other people culturally appropriating
59:57
this beverage will actually be the Chinese.
59:59
You know, like they invented powder green tea or powder tea
1:00:02
in the 1st place. They just don't drink it or make
1:00:05
it anymore. But you know, it's really
1:00:08
bothersome that you know. People are so weaponizing this
1:00:13
term and using it to attack other people in a way that
1:00:17
honestly sometimes it's the party being attacked.
1:00:23
Probably legitimately made a bad product or it was bad marketing
1:00:28
or it was bad usage of words, but accusing them being cultural
1:00:32
appropriation. I think it's just far, far, far
1:00:35
too severe of the term of a condition.
1:00:38
It's a bad product, but you know, it's not, you know,
1:00:41
attacking Japan, it's maybe attacking your stomach the least
1:00:46
or the worst, but but, you know, elevating it to such a strong or
1:00:51
severe status, I think it's really unnecessary.
1:00:55
Well, creates a US versus them mentality.
1:00:58
There's us, we're the ones who are respectful of culture and
1:01:01
trying to preserve this, but they're they're just trying to
1:01:04
profit off of it. And there's 1000 different ways
1:01:06
you can slice that. But this implicit division of US
1:01:10
versus them is not good in in the conversations that move us
1:01:13
forward. And you know, this
1:01:14
conversation's super long and it's not even close to a
1:01:18
detailed history. You know, the future really much
1:01:21
depends on everyone not only understanding the past to
1:01:23
contextualize everything, but also not endlessly looking
1:01:27
backwards either to cast judgement on other people's
1:01:30
practices today. It's, you know, macho is very
1:01:32
much now belongs to the world, even though it is distinctly
1:01:36
Japanese. But you know, it's not under
1:01:38
anyone's control anymore, now that in the same way that
1:01:43
chocolate isn't under anyone's control, or just tea in general,
1:01:47
or coffee. Do you have producers?
1:01:49
You have blenders, you have people selling it, you'll have
1:01:53
consumers, and it's all super organic now.
1:01:57
It's not this sort of insular beverage that existed in a
1:02:00
famously insular culture historically that has all these
1:02:05
rules and rigidity about ritualized ceremonial practices.
1:02:10
Well, people like to. Those stereotypes really came
1:02:14
from people who had the voice at the time because when we were
1:02:18
talking to the farmers, they were happy that the matcha was
1:02:21
so internationalized. They were like friends from
1:02:24
apart Come and enjoy the tea that we growed and come and
1:02:28
enjoy this beverage with us. And we are happy that you are so
1:02:32
curious and want to learn more about the tea that we are
1:02:35
farming. Yeah, and those farmers are the
1:02:37
ones who never get talked about. Yeah.
1:02:40
So they do not have a, they do not have a voice back in the
1:02:43
days. It's a very, very much a very
1:02:46
recent change that we are seeing right now thanks to Internet and
1:02:50
social medias. Thank goodness that's what the
1:02:52
West cares about. We care about the farmers and
1:02:55
productions and the product itself.
1:02:57
So, you know, the specialty matcha movement is really a
1:03:01
movement about people, about the farmers, about the product,
1:03:05
about the consumers and creating the best product possible that
1:03:09
meets the right consumer preference.
1:03:10
And those products have interesting stories to tell from
1:03:13
the cultivar, from the production methods of the
1:03:17
terroir, all all these types of things.
1:03:19
It's actually peeling back the layers of the onion.
1:03:22
Matcha has all of the superficial vanity and cultural
1:03:26
associations with it. And those ceremonies go super
1:03:29
deep. Don't get me wrong, they have
1:03:31
their own like inner parts of the onion.
1:03:33
But if you look at matcha itself and you peel back the layers of
1:03:37
the onion that what you get out is a really interesting human
1:03:40
story just like any other specialty product.
1:03:43
And that's what the specialty much in movement, which I
1:03:47
believe is the future or one of the futures that will live
1:03:50
alongside tea ceremony as much it continues to to be in the
1:03:54
future. But I hope in 20-30 years from
1:03:57
now we're talking about new experimental cultivars or new
1:04:01
crazy shading styles. Maybe someone takes a new
1:04:05
wavelength of light in a greenhouse and and does some
1:04:10
weird shading, but they expose it to, I don't know, 500
1:04:14
nanometer lights and it produces.
1:04:16
Some interesting flavor. There's all sorts or matcha
1:04:19
being grown in new and different terroir in places by, you know,
1:04:23
very different group of people. And it's this like rich,
1:04:26
thriving, diverse thing that that people can love and enjoy
1:04:31
and benefit from. How should we hope the future
1:04:33
is? Yeah.
1:04:35
And we are almost talking about, you know, this specialty
1:04:38
movement and Channel US two parallel universe.
1:04:43
But I bet they will converge at some point.
1:04:45
You know, naturally some group of people from, you know, loving
1:04:48
drinking matcha from the group of, you know, the special
1:04:53
specialty movement cohort will inevitably find curious about
1:04:57
Channel U and about the traditional side of Japanese and
1:05:00
tea culture. And I think that's a good thing.
1:05:02
And then drawing tunnel you learning more, want to learn
1:05:07
more about traditional Japanese culture.
1:05:10
I think that's, you know, beneficial for, you know, Japan
1:05:14
and Japanese culture as a whole, too.
1:05:16
The ultimate moment will be when we can get the Iyamoto's
1:05:20
interested in Matcha as a specialty product.
1:05:24
That could be a very interesting cultural moment for recognizing
1:05:28
Japanese tea farmers and the hard work that they do versus
1:05:31
some poetically named product that no one knows what they're
1:05:34
drinking because they don't have transparent label and no one
1:05:37
tells you. That would be the the ultimate
1:05:40
goal, I think, of these two worlds converging.
1:05:42
And transparent, labeled and poetic names doesn't necessarily
1:05:46
contradict each other. That either but.
1:05:49
There's really no reason why these two words won't converge
1:05:54
and handshake with each other at the end.
1:05:57
Yeah. I mean really, if you want to
1:05:59
see the traditional players really dominate, just imagine
1:06:02
all the blend houses to start giving radically transparent
1:06:06
labels. Boom.
1:06:07
It's actually going to be a very difficult marketing position.
1:06:10
Then for everyone else focusing on specialty, that would be the
1:06:14
ultimate. When that pendulum swings back
1:06:16
to them will be a very interesting same day.
1:06:19
Yeah, that, that, that'll be. Cool, we are happy to see that.
1:06:23
Oh yeah, love for that. That'd be very cool.
1:06:25
I mean any Matcha brand anywhere, I mean your primary
1:06:28
value is you're bringing the customers, right.
1:06:31
They although they are getting much more international
1:06:33
distribution and awareness than ever before.
1:06:36
But really, like everyone who's listening that owns a Matcha
1:06:38
brand in their country, they know their consumers better than
1:06:40
anyone else and are able to curate and produce and pick
1:06:44
things and select product for them in a way that like a
1:06:47
Japanese person literally probably couldn't comprehend
1:06:51
someones preferences in Santiago, Chile, or in Riyadh,
1:06:55
Saudi Arabia, or in Manila and the Philippines.
1:06:58
Like the very different cultures, different preferences,
1:07:01
different everything. Yes, indeed.
1:07:03
Yeah. All right, apologies for the
1:07:04
Super long and semi unstructured slash structured conversation.
1:07:08
Hopefully with some editing this wasn't too long.
1:07:10
But I think this is really a self embodiment of what the
1:07:14
future of macho will look like. Too super fluid, no one can
1:07:17
define it. So if you enjoyed this thing,
1:07:19
please consider showing friends giving us five stars on the
1:07:22
platform you're listening to, and we'll see you on the next
1:07:25
one. See.
1:07:25
You in the next episode.