JAPAN: KIRISHIMA ORGANIC TEA GARDEN BY SHUTARO HAYASHI
Shutaro Hayashi belongs to the fifth generation of tea gardeners to work the land founded by his great-great-grandfather in 1897, which is located on a plateau at the foot of the Kirishima Mountains. Most of the family’s tea garden plots are located on a large area almost completely surrounded by forest. The family’s small hall, where the tea processing takes place, is located in the centre of the relatively small tea garden plots. The freshly harvested leaves thus have exceptionally short transport routes to the steaming process, allowing the tea to be produced without any traces of oxidation. In addition, the large variety of tea cultivars, including Asatsuyu, Yabukita, Kanaya Midori and Zairaishu (plants grown from tea seeds), form the basis of a very wide range of teas.
Organic cultivation then and now
Shutaro’s father Osamu started pesticide-free cultivation in 1993. His unease about the use of pesticides in tea cultivation had grown from year to year. On the one hand, he was afraid of the effects on his own health if he regularly spent several days spraying the gardens of the family farm. On the other hand, he had noticed that the use of pesticides was having less and less of the desired effect. This prompted Shutaro’s father to gradually convert his gardens to organic cultivation. Ultimately, there was only a short interim phase of non-organic cultivation during the third generation. This was because the first and second generations of the Hayashi family also ran their Kirishima tea garden organically, as was customary at the time.
Thanks to their father’s return to organic farming, Shutaro’s generation – the fifth – grew up with organic cultivation. Despite the resulting everyday challenges, Shutaro and his siblings have been accustomed to organic methods in the tea garden since they were children. Compared with the fourth generation – who had to put all their energy into renewed realisation of pesticide-free cultivation – for this fifth generation, organic cultivation is second nature. This seems to provide the tea garden with the potential that is crucial for bringing the first-class teas to life in this mature form.
The fifth generation: Shutaro Hayashi
After studying tea science as the main focus of his agricultural studies, Shutaro Hayashi returned to his family’s tea garden. Since then, he has been responsible for managing the tea garden. Shutaro’s father now devotes most of his energy to the production of black tea and is on hand to advise his son. This gives Shutaro every opportunity to utilise the knowledge he acquired during his studies to produce the perfect tea. He likes to use the Asatsuyu tea variety, which is not surprising since it is known for its natural sweetness and fantastic green colour in the cup.
Best pre-conditions
While Shutaro Hayashi has access to the extremely rare tea variety Asatsuyu in organic farming thanks to his father’s experience, he also has at his disposal the family’s first-class processing facility. The tea garden has existed for over five generations, meaning that it can draw on a wealth of experience gained over many years – in addition to the machinery, which, due to its high acquisition costs, would hardly be available to a young company. Shutaro Hayashi uses this ideal foundation in a special way: he rethinks the usual processing procedure and skilfully varies time intervals between steaming, rolling and drying, in addition to modifying the temperature curve during tea production.
Three siblings, one team
After completing his studies, Shutaro’s brother Kenji also returned to the family tea garden in 2015. Together with Shutaro and his sister Momoko, the three of them make a great team. Momoko takes care of organic certification and shipping to Europe. During the harvest phases, Kenji is mainly responsible for the harvest, while Shutaro can concentrate fully on perfect processing, which requires deep dedication.
Overview of some of Shutaro Hayashi’s teas
KIRISHIMA TOKUJOU SENCHA (Organic)
The Kirishima Tokujou Sencha is a very elegant and well-rounded composition, using exquisite leaves of the first harvest of several tea bush varieties in the Hayashi family’s tea garden. Leaves from shaded cultivation (kabuse saibai) as well as leaves from shaded cultivation (roji saibai) are both part of this Tokujou Sencha from Kirishima.
In the cup, it has an intense green colour, neither too light nor too deep, just perfectly balanced. Sweet nuances (amami) harmoniously accompany the umami, which is easily noticeable yet not dominating. A truely elegant tea, which however, is not too sensitive with water temperature and infusion time, such resulting in a perfectly suited high-class everyday tea.
The leaves include the tea bush varieties Asatsuyu and Yabukita, among others.
MIUMORI KIRISHIMA SENCHA (Organic)
The Miumori Kirishima Sencha is a fascinating tea in many ways. The leaves go back to an old tea tradition. While the first tea plant seeds came to Kirishima about 700 years ago, the leaves for this tea do not originate from the plants which came from Uji then, but from seeds of plants which the founder of the Kirishima tea garden brought from Shizuoka around 1900. It is exactly these leaves that Shutaro and Kenji Hayashi continue harvesting and processing today, to make this special tea.
ASANOMI KABUSECHA KIRISHIMA MIUMORI (Organic)
In his organic tea garden, Shutaro Hayashi cultivates, among others, two types of cultivars bearing the prefix „asa“, which means „morning“ in Japanese: Asatsuyu and Asanoka. Both cultivars have a smooth, fresh and light character, with nice fragrance and sweetness. The Asanomi Kabusecha is a well-balanced composition of these two impressive tea bush varieties.
KIRISHIMA MIUMORI KOUCHA (Organic)
For this elegant and aromatic black tea, Shutaro Hayashi decided to exclusively use leaves from the Benifuuki variety. Contrasting with most black teas from other countries, this tea can be infused several times; enfolding its impressive aroma with each new infusion.
KIRISHIMA MIUMORI MIZUCHA® (Organic)
In Japanese, „mizu-dashi-cha“ refers to infusing tea with cold water, in general. The new word „mizu-cha“ refers to tea that has been specially designed for brewing with cold water. Shutaro Hayashi from Kirishima uses finest leaves mainly from the shaded tea bush variety Asatsuyu and the unshaded variety Yabukita. To complete the composition, Shutaro adds a small amount of matcha from the shaded Kanaya Midori variety to this Mizucha®.
KIRISHIMA TENNEN GYOKURO (Organic)
The tea bush cultivar Asatsuyu is rather rare in organic cultivation, as it is known to be very sensitive and hard to protect from pests. Yet, the Hayashi family in the Kirishima mountains succeeded in growing the sensitive Asatsuyu bushes in their organic tea garden, and preserving their good condition even when shading them.
Asatsuyu is known as a sweet, delicate and elegant tea variety – characteristics which emerge even more beautifully thanks to the long shading of this tea.
KIRISHIMA MIDORI MATCHA (Organic)
Shutaro Hayashi’s Midori Matcha is gently ground from leaves of the Kanaya Midori variety. Before harvesting, the tea bushes are shaded for a long time, so that the leaves have acquired an intense green color. This is where the name of the tea comes from: „Midori“ is the Japanese word for an intense green. The Kanaya Midori variety is accordingly known for its intense leaf color. Therefore, this tea is a please both pure, e.g. whipped with a bamboo whisk in a matcha bowl, but also for mixed drinks.
NOMIKOTO – KIRISHIMA MATCHA (Organic)
For this fine organic matcha, only the best leaves of the first harvest in the Hayashi family’s tea garden are milled; all of them shaded before harvest. The resulting tea has a fruity aroma, complemented by a well-rounded fine umami. The vibrant green colour of the Kirishima Matcha Nomikoto makes it perfect for whipping with a bamboo whisk: enjoying it as a classical matcha.
MIUMORI KIRISHIMA MATCHA (Organic)
The Miumori Kirishima Matcha is a brilliantly processed matcha made from first-class leaves of the Oku Midori variety. The sweetness and umami of this tea are as impressive as its vibrant green color, its smooth feeling when drinking, and its over-all elegant flavour.
The Miumori Kirishima Matcha is a very high-quality matcha, suitable as a sophisticated everyday matcha for demanding tea consumers as well as for Japanese tea ceremony.
The Dream of a Trip to Kyushu and the Way to the Tea of Kirishima
2006, when we first came to Japan for about two weeks, we just had the chance to visit some places on the biggest main island, Honshu. Our home base was the grandmother’s house of a friend, whom we knew from Berlin. There he was an exchange student one year before and in 2006 he invited us to visit him in Tokyo. It took all our money to buy the flight tickets and a Japan Rail Pass for travelling within Japan, so the budget was too small to pay for additional hotels. That is why we just made one-day trips from Tokyo. By train we travelled to Kyoto, Uji and also to Mie. At the train stations we saw wonderful pictures of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost main island, and got the dream to go there. Indeed Kyushu was much too far away for a one-day trip.
It took about one year before we once again had the chance to travel to Japan and to finally see Kyushu. In Germany, we already had heard about tea cultivation in Kagoshima and in particular about the area of Kirishima, which made us come up with the idea of visiting a tea garden in that area. After riding the train for some hours from Honshu, we arrived in Kagoshima, where we looked for places in which Kirishima tea might have been grown on a map in the train station. We took another train headed for the Kirishima Mountains in the hopes of somehow finding a teagarden. We got completely lost. Only a hiking road into the mountains started at the station and on top of it all rain began to fall. But thanks to the rain on that day, we were able to meet Narieda Shinichiro and his unique ceramics. He told us that there was not a single tea garden to be found anywhere near his pottery workshop. Since that day we have visited Narieda each year and also started to explore the volcanic scenery of the Kirishima Mountains. We still have not found even one tea garden this way.
Seven years later, during the preparation of a university seminar on the identity and philosophy of founders of organic tea gardens, we came across a tea garden in Kirishima. The student working on this topic held a presentation on the ideas and the philosophy the Hayashi family held during their conversion to organic cultivation. This report got us interested in the passion Osamu Hayashi showed in restructuring his tea garden, during which he also convinced his brother and his son Shutaro of the ideals of organic tea cultivation.
Another year passed, before we finally had the chance to meet this family in person. As fellow green tea enthusiasts and advocates of organic agriculture, a tight bond swiftly formed between this family and us. We found a good friend in Shutaro Hayashi, Osamu’s oldest son, who is almost exactly our age and who also cannot imagine a life without green tea. Now, every time we are in Kirishima, we have not only formed the habit of visiting the ceramicist Narieda and going to an Izakaya (a smaller Japanese bar) together with Shutaro, but also to make short group trips to other tea gardens. Topics like Japanese tea cultivars, the facets of green tea processing and conversations about different preferences in taste are a vital part of our trips together. We are often listening intently to Shutaro’s explanations, which are not only based on experience, but also on the knowledge he gained while studying agriculture and tea cultivation at university. This makes the development of new teas one of many topics which connect us with Shutaro Hayashi.