GREEN TEA AND BLACK
(SHIDZUOKA)
Things I would know but am forbid
By time and briefness.
LAURENCE BINYON
More than half of the tea grown in Japan comes from the hilly
coast-wise prefecture of Shidzuoka through which every traveller
passes on his journey from Kobe or Kyoto to Tokyo. He sees a terraced
cultivation of tea and fruit carried up to the skyline. But there is
more tea on the hills than the passenger in the train imagines. When
viewed from below much of the tea looks like scrub. In various parts
of southern Japan patches of tea may be noticed growing on little
islands in the paddies, but tea is a hill plant and it is on the sides
of hills and on the plateaus at the top of them that the plantations
are to be found.
Tea looks not unlike privet and grows or is made to grow like box to a
height which can be conveniently picked over. The rows of neat-looking
plants are half a dozen feet apart. The first picking may take place
when the bush is three or four years old. Bushes may last forty, fifty
or even a hundred years, but the ordinary life of tea is between
twenty and thirty. A bush is usually cut back every ten years or so. A
good deal depends on the pruning. After each picking the bushes are
cut over with the shears just as we trim box. These trimmings may be
used to make an inferior tea for farmhouse consumption, or they may be
utilised in the manufacture of caffeine or theine--the two products
are indistinguishable. Usually the bushes are cut round-topped, but
occasionally they are roof-shaped and sometimes they are like giant
green toadstools.
The characteristic feature of a tea district beyond the rows of tea
bushes is the chimney piping of the farmhouses which manufacture their
own tea. (The word manufacture is used in the original sense, for
farmhouse tea is hand-made.) In a country where the houses are
chimneyless these galvanised iron chimneys are conspicuous.
The picking of the tea seems to be done almost entirely by women and
children. The pickers are supposed to take only the three leaves at
the tips. But the pickers mostly take bigger pieces, for the somewhat
higher price given for good picking is not enough to secure three-leaf
stuff only. It is not absolutely necessary, however, that the leaves
gathered should be all of such a choice sort.
Women and girls come from a distance to pick tea. Picking is regarded
as "polite labour by the daughters of the higher middle class of
farmers." It has also the attraction that farmers' sons have a way of
visiting tea gardens in order to "pick up wives." The girls certainly
give would-be husbands every chance of seeing what they can do, for
they are at work for a long day, often of from twelve to fourteen
hours. In such a day it is possible, I was told, to pick 50, 80 or
even 100 lbs. of leaves. One man put the rate as from 50 to 120 pieces
a minute. Four pounds of leaves make a pound of tea.
In one district the first picking may take place during the first
three weeks of May. In colder districts it is proceeding until the end
of the month. The second season is from the end of June until the
beginning of July. The third is in August. The bushes, after producing
their three crops of leaves, bear in November their seeds, which are
about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and are worth about a sen
a pound. Oil is pressed from them.
Good tea depends on climate and soil, careful cutting over and good
manuring. In some places I saw soya bean being grown between the rows
as green manuring. Like so many other crops, tea is or ought to be
sprayed. The northern limit of tea is Niigata, where the bushes must
be protected from the snow, which may fall in that prefecture to a
great depth. The region in which tea cannot be grown is that in which
the temperature falls below zero for two months. Tea is not grown, as
in India and Ceylon, by tea planters, but in small areas and as a
side-line at that. I never saw a plantation of more than five acres.
Most areas are much smaller. The chief reason for this is that tea is
largely manufactured on the day on which it is picked and the capacity
of a farmer's tea manufacturing equipment is limited. In Shidzuoka
nearly a quarter of the tea is hand rolled and three-quarters made by
machinery. Elsewhere in Japan half the crop may be hand rolled.
When leaves are sold to factors the transactions take place in booths
opened by them in the tea districts. It is a busy scene in the region
of the cottage factories. One is on a wide plateau covered almost
entirely with rows of tea plants. Here and there are parties of
chattering pickers, their heads protected by the national towel.
Against the blue hilltops on the horizon stand out the cottages of the
farmers with chimney-pipes smoking, the booths of the dealers, and, in
every patch of tea, the thatched roof over the precious sunken pot of
liquid manure by which the tea bushes have so often benefited. On the
road one passes women with baskets on their backs, like Scotch
fish-wives with their creels, men carrying two baskets suspended from
a pole across one shoulder, or a man and his wife hauling a barrow,
all heavy-laden with newly picked leaves. Small horse-drawn wagons
carry the manufactured tea in big, well-tied, pink paper bales. On the
whole, although the labour is hard it seemed a better life having to
do with the fragrant tea than with the rice of the sludge ponds in the
valley below.
[Illustration: RACK FOR DRYING RICE.]
[Illustration: VILLAGE CREMATORIUM.]
[Illustration: DOG HELPING TO PULL JINRIKISHA.]
[Illustration: AUTHOR, MR. YAMASAKI AND YOUNGEST INHABITANTS.]
The tea produced in Japan is principally green tea. Most of this is of
the kind called _sencha--cha_ means tea. An inferior article made out
of older and tougher leaves is called _bancha_. The custom is for the
maid who serves _bancha_ to heat the leaves over the charcoal fire
just before infusing. This gives it an agreeable roasted flavour. It
is often served in a darker shade of porcelain than is used for
ordinary tea. There are also the finer teas, _kikicha_ (powdered tea)
and _gyokuro_ (jewelled dewdrops), which is the best kind of _sencha_.
Black tea was being made experimentally when I first arrived in Japan.
Brick tea (pressed to the consistency and weight of wood) may be green
or black. Most of the exported tea, other than brick tea, goes to
America.
[Illustration: "TORII" AT FOX-GOD SHRINE.]
[Illustration: RECORD OF GIFTS TO A TEMPLE.]
It is unnecessary to state that the Japanese tea-tray does not include
a sugar basin, cream jug or spoons. It does include, however, a squat
oval jug into which the hot water from the kettle is poured in order
to lower the temperature below boiling point. Boiling water would
bring out a bitter flavour from the tea. Made with water just below
boiling point the tea is deliciously soft, even oily, and has a
flavour and aroma which cream and sugar would ruin. It is certainly
refreshing, and, when drunk newly infused, relatively harmless.
_Bancha_ is made with hotter water than other tea. The handleless cups
hold about half of what our teacups contain.[201] Tea is not the only
plant used for making "tea." One drinks in some parts infusions of
cherry, plum or peach blossom.
The processes of tea manufacture in farmers' outhouses and in
factories are described in school-books, and I need not transcribe my
impressions.[202] But I may note that some of the money the tea farmer
earns for the country is spent in his interests. There is in Shidzuoka
a well-directed prefectural experiment station which exercises itself
over problems of tea production. Every tea grower and tea dealer in
the prefecture must belong to the prefectural tea guild. He must also
belong to his county tea guild. The rules of the guilds--there is a
central guild in Tokyo--have the force of law. Evil doers in the tea
industry have their product confiscated. Tea dealers who do not carry
their guild membership card are fined. It is not difficult to discover
colouring in tea if it is rubbed on white paper. The Government's part
in subduing tea colouring was to seize all the dye stuff it could lay
hold of which could be used for colouring tea.
The future of green tea depends almost entirely on the demand from
the growing population of Japan, but a taste for the "foreign style"
black tea--with condensed milk--is spreading. The cheap labour of
India and China and the big plantations and factories of India have
diminished the Japanese green tea trade and the effort to produce
black tea is also met by foreign competition. I was told that China
tea receives much sunshine while growing, and that there was most hope
for Japanese black tea when made from leaves grown in the extreme
south. There is a difference between the Chinese and the Japanese tea
plant and it cannot be got over by importing Chinese plants, for the
climate of Japan simply Japanises the imported sort.
I found in the United States that green tea is bought, as it is no
doubt sold in Shidzuoka, on appearance. American housewives were
paying for an appearance that matters little in an article that is not
to be looked at but soaked. Not only is much extra labour required for
sifting the leaf several times in order to obtain a good appearance,
but the bulk is reduced from 5 to 10 per cent. The drinking quality of
the tea also suffers, for the largest leaf has usually the best cup
quality. If teas were bought for cup quality only they might be at
least from 5 to 10 per cent. cheaper.
FOOTNOTES:
[201] At many stations one used to have handed into the carriage for
less than a penny a pot of tea and a cup--you are entitled to keep
both pot and cup if you like. The tea-seller's kettle of water is kept
hot with charcoal. Tea is freshly infused in each customer's pot.
[202] For statistics and theine percentages, see Appendix LVII.
EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO