Yakushima Organic tea garden by the Watanabe family

Japan: YAKUSHIMA ORGANIC TEA GARDEN BY THE WATANABE FAMILY

The Watanabe family’s organic tea garden is located on Yakushima, a small, subtropical island to the south of Japan’s main islands.

More about Mankichi and Keita Watanabe’s organic tea garden: watanabe-yakushima.com

The natural paradise of Yakushima

The island of Yakushima is located 160 kilometres south of the city of Kagoshima and is part of Kagoshima Prefecture, where tea cultivation has played an important role for decades.

Yakushima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, and a large part of the island has been designated a nature reserve. Yakushima is home to countless unique animal and plant species; among them are probably the oldest cedars in the world, said to be up to seven thousand years old. One beach is visited every year by hundreds of sea turtles that lay their eggs there. Macaque monkeys and Yaku deer live in the deep green mountain forests.

Because the island rises up mountainously in the middle of the Pacific, it’s said that all clouds stick to it. With plenty of rain, high humidity and warm temperatures all year round, the climatic conditions are ideal for growing tea. But since there are literally 35 days of rain a month, it is not easy to find dry days for harvesting and production.

In addition, the island offers only a few locations where tea garden plots could be planted. There is only one relatively flat narrow coastal strip. Beyond this, the landscape quickly changes into steeply rising, densely forested mountains. The centre of the island consists of several volcanoes, the highest of which is Mount Miyanoura-dake with a height of 1,935 metres. It is also the highest mountain in the Kyushu region.

Three friends start a tea garden

In the midst of Yakushima’s magnificent natural landscape, Mankichi Watanabe founded the tea garden with two friends in the mid-1980s. The three of them had already cooked up all sorts of ideas together at school, and now wanted to set up an agricultural project. After some preliminary studies and field research, they bought a twelve-hectare area that was completely forested. In annual steps of a half to one hectare, they reclaimed the land, planting tea plants of various cultivars until about 6.5 hectares were created. The remaining area still consists mainly of forest today.

After a few years, one of the co-founders moved on to other work. The second of the three friends unfortunately died young. Yet Mankichi was not discouraged. With his wife Hiroko and dedicated helpers, he continued to develop the tea garden.

Mrs Goto’s inspiration for organic farming

Mankichi Watanabe has never been interested in conventional farming. Under pressure from the agricultural co-operative, at the very beginning he used pesticides on a trial basis. But dragging the sprayer by hand through the subtropical heat for hours on end did not suit him at all – not to mention the effects it had on people and the environment.

An important employee, Kumiko Goto (third from left in the photo), joined the tea garden team in the early 1990s. At the time, she was also reading a book about changing Japanese dietary habits, which got her thinking. The book dealt with the preparation of traditional foods – even then consumed almost exclusively in processed form in Japan – and about food additives, which are used to an astonishing extent in the country.

As she read, Mrs Goto hit upon the idea of organic farming. Mankichi Watanabe, who already had a strong connection to nature, was quickly inspired. Since then, the Watanabe family have cultivated their tea garden organically. The plants were still young and had only come into contact with pesticides for a short time, so that the changeover was fortunately straightforward. The tea bushes have thrived in a harmonious natural balance ever since.

Once the legal framework was in place in Japan, Mankichi was able to have his organic tea garden certified. Kumiko Goto was responsible for all aspects of organic certification for many years since then.

Keita’s return to Yakushima

Keita, the son of Mankichi and Hiroko Watanabe, grew up on Yakushima. However, as there was no secondary school on the small island, he had to move to the city of Kagoshima as a teenager. From there, he moved to Tokyo to study, where he stayed and met his wife Mariko. In Tokyo, he not only trained as a Japanese tea instructor, but also opened a small shop where he sold the teas from his parents‘ tea garden. On the one hand, this allowed him to support his family. On the other hand, he was keen to make the wonderful, natural Yakushima teas accessible to city dwellers.

In 2018, Keita decided with mixed feelings to turn his back on the metropolis and to move from Tokyo to Yakushima with his wife Mariko and their two children. The distance, and the contrast between the hustle and bustle of the big city in the north and the natural idyll on a remote, subtropical island in the south of Japan, could hardly be greater. But for Keita’s wife Mariko, who comes from Tokyo, and their children in particular, the move to the countryside was the start of a wonderful adventure that the family has never regretted.

Since Keita returned to the island, he has helped his father Mankichi by working in the tea garden and in the small tea factory wherever he can. Mankichi, now over seventy, feels great relief that his son is helping him out and will be able to take over the tea garden in the future.

Earliest harvest in Japan – Kuritawase, Sae Midori and other tea bush varieties

Due to the subtropical climate, Yakushima is the tea-growing region with the earliest harvest in all Japan. The first day of harvest in the Watanabe family’s tea garden is sometimes as early as the end of March. This is when the earliest bush variety in the tea garden, Kuritawase, is ready for harvest.

All the tea garden plots are within walking distance of the small tea factory. After twenty years without planting any new bushes, Keita Watanabe enlarged a plot of the Sae Midori bush variety for the first time in 2023. In the same year, the young tea farmer also planted a new field with a newly bred, particularly floral-scented variety. However, the little plants still have to grow up and receive five years of patient care before they can hopefully be harvested for the first time.

Natural cultivation and aromas

Grasses, clover and reeds grow at the edge of the tea fields. They are an important habitat for dragonflies, beetles, and many other insects. Just before harvesting, the tea bushes are painstakingly cleared of weeds by hand and the edges are mowed with a brush cutter to prevent other plants from getting into the finished tea. The Watanabes then use the mown greenery to mulch between the tea bushes. This keeps the soil moist and prevents weeds from growing, at least to some extent.

To preserve the originality of the teas, Mankichi Watanabe has always taken care not to interfere with their growth with too much fertiliser. Instead, he ensures strong plants that are firmly rooted in the soil. With a dense and well-anchored root system, they can absorb their nutrients themselves, also from deeper layers of soil. In this way, the tea leaves also develop a unique flavour that is typical of the location.

Keita Watanabe greatly appreciates and respects the nature of Yakushima. It is important to him that the tea plants are part of the island’s natural balance – and that you can taste the nature of Yakushima in the teas.

Keita has expanded his father’s organic farming methods to include the concept of “natural cultivation” (shizen saibai). With shizen saibai, the focus is also on local cycles: fertilisers are not bought externally, but procured or produced locally wherever possible. These can be grasses cut from the edge of the field or the growers’ own compost. For some fields, Keita produces a special fertiliser from leftover tea leaves: This consists of tea dust and sorted hard leaves from processing, as well as cut leaves from pruning the bushes. All these leaves are composted in a corner at the edge of the field and gradually incorporated into the soil. The result is a tea that doesn’t overpower with exuberant umami, but instead impresses the drinker with its fine, versatile nuances.

His own tea manufactory

In the early days, Mankichi Watanabe processed the fresh tea leaves in a factory belonging to the agricultural co-operative, which was not too far from the tea garden. Yet this was only to be a temporary solution, as he dreamed of having his own tea factory.

Little by little, Mankichi collected used equipment from other tea gardens. In 1993, he had finally made it, and was able to set up his own processing plant with the hodgepodge of machines he had painstakingly acquired. Luckily, Mankichi had trained as an electrician at a young age, so he was able to tinker around in many places and customise the system himself.

Little has changed since then at the small factory with corrugated iron walls, wooden floorboards and bare concrete floors. Here, Mankichi, with the help of his son Keita, now carries out all the steps based on his own ideas, from pre-processing to sorting and final heating. The Watanabes mainly produce green tea in unshaded cultivation (roji saibai), but also in shaded cultivation (kabuse saibai).

During the tea season, Mankichi Watanabe spends whole days and nights in the factory; guided by his intuition, he is inspired by the leaves and the moment. For Mankichi, tea production is not a science but an intuitive process. His wonderfully lemony, fresh-smelling black tea, for example, is the result of such inspired experiments.

The next generation

After returning to the island, Keita Watanabe first started working in the tea fields and helping with the harvest. But in every free minute, Keita looks over his father’s shoulder to learn the finer points of tea processing.

Keita’s own experiments have already resulted in a black tea from the first harvest, as well as a top-class white tea. Just before the long, turbulent working days of the first harvest really start, Keita always tries to take as much time as possible for such special projects. However, white tea in particular is so time-consuming to produce that only a few kilograms are produced each year. Keita uses an old wooden drawer dryer that he originally purchased years ago for drying black tea.

Keita’s wife Mariko also lends a hand and, with her capable and cheerful nature, not only ensures a positive atmosphere, but also manages organic certification and many other administrative tasks that she has taken over from Mrs Goto. It’s obvious that the young couple are growing into their tasks year by year while bringing a breath of fresh air and colour into the tea garden.

Mankichi is happy, and certainly a bit proud, that his son and daughter-in-law are well prepared to take over the family tea garden, and to continue creating natural teas from the beautiful island of Yakushima in the future.

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Organic green and black teas from the Watanabe Family