The Iwata-en family shop, which had become a franchise of the national tea conglomerate Satsukinou some years earlier, was typical in size, layout and operations to the dozens of other family owned businesses which had sprung back to life in the Azabu High Street in the months after the war. The shop’s façade was only about fifteen feet wide and was composed of two display windows on either side of an automatic door. On the sidewalk in front of the shop, Hisako-san and her nephew, a lackadaisical looking fellow in his fifties with an incongruous pony tail who seemed to be the only permanent help in the shop, would place a portable display unit with bags of tea on it, when the weather was nice. Otherwise, the exterior of the shop, as well as the two-story building that housed it (simultaneously place of business and residence of the Iwata family) was as modest and understated as the proprietors themselves. Various utensils for the preparation or consumption of tea were shown in the shop windows, alongside an eclectic collection of the kind of mementoes and religious figurines that feature in most businesses in Japan – many of which are believed to attract success and fortune, such as the ubiquitous white ceramic cat with a raised paw. The cramped interior of the shop, only about as deep as it was wide, was adorned as well on almost every shelf or in every nook or cranny with an array of tokens of superstition or amulets inviting the favor of the gods of commerce. Given the clearly declining fortunes of the shop – threatened on the one hand by the influx of supermarkets to the neighborhood and on the other by a younger generation’s waning interest in consuming tea – I asked Muneaki-san during one of my visits if he thought that the strategy of seeking business success through religious or superstitious invocation was perhaps not proving to be terribly successful. As he didn’t appear to appreciate the intended irony of my question, I didn’t insist.
The shop was originally founded by Muneaki-san’s grandparents, almost exactly a century earlier, around the corner from its present-day location on the Azabu High Street. The family business had operated first as a grocery store before the couple later decided to specialize in tea. Perhaps the grocery business had not lived up to the Iwata’s commercial ambitions, or perhaps, even in that far removed time, competition in the grocery sector in the neighborhood made prospects less than favorable. Either way, according to the family legend that Muneaki-san shared with me during one of my regular weekend visits to the shop, the decision to specialize in tea came after his grandfather struck up an acquaintance with a prosperous tea merchant from Kyoto, who was visiting the capital. The visiting businessman must have painted a glowing picture of the development of tea consumption in Japan, for that chance encounter was enough to convince the neophyte shop owner of the opportunities in tea, and he promptly shifted his inventory to cater to this national predilection.
From the beginning, the shop stocked teas from all around Japan – and only from Japan. When I asked Muneaki-san one day why the family didn’t expand its selection of teas to the more exotic or even to imports from other lands, he looked at me with a highly quizzical expression, as though surprised by the incongruity of my suggestion. The main source of the tea in the shop was the region of Shizuoka, which produces 50% of all the green tea in the country. According to Muneaki-san, who spoke with the authority of an expert (if not with a wee bit of exaggeration), Shizuoka is known to produce “the best tea in all of Japan... If not the world!” he added with a twinkle in his eye.
In terms of the leading tea-consuming countries on earth, Japan ranks fourth, after India, Russia and Britain, consuming an average total of 142,977 metric tons of tea leaves every year. Tea in Japan is also big business: the country’s 51,930 hectares of tea fields yield 92,630 tons of leaves every year, mostly green tea or o-cha, transformed into a variety of products that are marketed by huge conglomerates such as Ito-en and the franchise to which the Iwata family shop belonged, Satsukino-en. (The suffix “en” means garden or field in Japanese.) Given the gap between the country’s fondness for tea and the volume of domestic production – notwithstanding Iwata-en’s somewhat xenophobic practices – Japan must turn to markets overseas to support the national habit; the country imports annually a variety of teas, while its exports of domestically grown tea are on the decline. In recent years, the popularity of green tea in Japan has undergone a bit of a resurgence as the country’s tea manufacturers have developed innovative new ways delivering tea to consumers, in the form of ready-made beverages, ice cream, biscuits and candies.
Muneaki-san himself claimed a “three-cup a day” tea habit – essentially a cup after every meal. He proudly pointed out that scientific studies have demonstrated that tea drinking is good for one’s health. In fact, he insisted, statistically the residents of Shizuoka – where the plantations are located that provide much of the shop’s teas – have a much lower incidence of cancer than the population at large.
Although the shop carried some of the specialty items of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the finer art of cha-do (or sa-do - the way of the tea) was not the real stock in trade of Iwata-en, which catered instead to the more mundane requirements of the typical Japanese householder’s daily tea consumption. The more traditional specialty items – including a range of expensive bamboo whisks to mix the green tea powder in the boiled water – seem to have been mainly stocked for decorative purposes, or perhaps for the occasional tourists visiting the shop.
The great cultural and philosophical importance attached to the preparation and the serving of tea in Japan has fascinated Western observers ever since the practice of cha-do became known to the outside world – just as Townsend Harris had recorded in his journal the sense of marvel he witnessed in the audience of courtiers who attended the tea service hosted by Prince Shinano, one of the emissaries of the Tokugawa Shogunate who visited the American consul general in the remote outpost of Shimoda. At the time, the New Yorker failed to appreciate at its true value the honor that was being bestowed upon him by having so elevated an official personally prepare and serve tea to the foreign guest. Nor was he able to read into the series of simple yet ritualized gestures the deep significance that the art of cha-do ascribed to them. An ability to experience awe in the contemplation of the simple things in life is one of the first necessary steps towards understanding the culture of Japan. As much as he was to teach me about the history of the street where his family had done business for the better part of a century, Muneaki-san also helped cultivate in me the appreciation of things less obvious.
Absent the ritual and the ceremony, nevertheless Muneaki-san made it a point to put water to boil when I would show up at his shop, and he would invite me to sit at the small table in the back to enjoy a cup of green tea. To accompany this simple gesture of hospitality he would sometimes bring out a small plate of pastries, similar in form and taste to the French madeleine, which for a reason he was never able to explain to my satisfaction were known as “siberias.” Muneaki- san would never serve himself tea during my visits; it seemed enough for him to see that I was attended to. I held the round ceramic cup by its thin rim in my right hand, cradled in my left hand, as I had read was the appropriate way to drink tea in Japan. After the first sip, I would always compliment my host on how delicious his tea was. Invariably, Muneaki-san would seem inordinately delighted by this praise, as though it had been totally unexpected that I would appreciate something as simple and unassuming as a cup of tea.
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