the book The wind through the pinesby Malena Higashi talk about a lesson that seems forgotten: relearning to breathe. In its pages, the tea ceremony—the chado, or “tea path”—is a metaphor for slowness, for respect, for what the Japanese summarize in four words: wa, kei, sei, jaku (harmony, respect, purity, tranquility).
That ancestral stillness contrasts with the present. In just a decade, matcha—that green powder that for centuries was ground in temples and served in silence— has become in a global phenomenon. Coffee shops in New York, Paris or Madrid offer it with vanilla, banana or oat milk. There are numerous videos on social networks of people drinking matcha with hundreds of millions of views.
However, behind that vibrant color and perfect foam there is something broken: “The matcha market is cracking under pressure.”
From the temple to the algorithm. For four centuries, matcha was reserved for formal ceremonies and high tea craftsmanship. Today, as explained in The New York Times: “Harmony has been replaced by discord, respect by unscrupulousness, and purity by fraud.”
Historical companies such as Marukyu Koyamaen, founded in 1704, They fight fakes of their tea on Amazon or Facebook Marketplace. Some sellers offer yellowish powder—ordinary ground tea—in fancy packaging, while others market an “imperial grade” or “barista grade” that do not exist in the Japanese classification. The global boom has created a demand that Japan cannot satisfy. “It’s like the Old West,” points out the merchant Sebastian Beckwith, faced with a deregulated market where matcha has become a label rather than a quality.
The numbers in a bubble. The data does not deceive anyone. In just one year, Japanese exports of green tea powder have grown by 75%reaching almost 27,000 million yen, about 165 million euros. But enthusiasm has its price: a kilo of tencha leaves – the base of matcha – already exceeds 14,000 yen (about 85 euros), almost triple what it was a year ago. It is the highest price in memory and a clear sign that global demand is pushing the limits of tradition.
Japan today exports more than half of the matcha that it produces, but that has not resolved the imbalance. In Uji, the birthplace of green tea, the shops limit the sale to one can per customer and farmers reject new orders until the next harvest. Jiro Katahira, a producer from Shizuoka, says to have received requests from all over the world: “Even from Benin. But I can’t mass produce. You can’t speed up a process that takes years.” For its part, in Los Angeles, the crisis is felt differently. At the Kettl Tea bar, only four of the 25 varieties on the menu remain. “There is nothing more to buy”, confessed its founderZach Mangan.
The result is a fractured market: large wholesalers like Marukyu Koyamaen cannot cope, and small producers struggle to maintain quality while prices rise and there is a lack of young hands in the fields.
An unsustainable boom. Matcha cannot be grown like corn or coffee. The tencha leaves They need weeks of shade before being collected, steamed and slowly ground between granite stones. Five years can pass from sowing to the first harvest, and many Japanese farmers – with an average age of 69 – lack generational change. The Japanese government has launched subsidies to modernize factories and increase mechanization, but that, experts warnyou could sacrifice the artisanal quality that distinguishes Japanese matcha.
Meanwhile, China, Korea and Australia are taking advantage of the vacuum. According to FTChinese producers are introducing matchas “dyed” with chlorophyll to achieve a brighter green. “If everything becomes matcha, nothing will be,” a merchant tells the newspaper.
The loss of value: from ceremony to latte. In the chadoeach movement has a meaning. In the global market, everything is measured by likes. “Using first-harvest matcha in a latte is like using Burgundy wine to make sangria,” Zach Mangan denouncedfounder of Kettl.
The big chains have turned it into a trendy flavor. starbucks launched matcha protein drinks with banana cream; Blank Street Coffee removed the word “Coffee” of his name and embraced the “matchacore” aesthetic; the influencers they mix matcha with collagen. In this new context, matcha is no longer a drink, but a texture, a color, a mood.
Master Rie Takeda, founder of the Chazen tea room, prefers to see it from an optimistic perspective: “Yes, there are concerns, but if this trend sparks interest in the tea ceremony, welcome. Our challenge is to share the essence of tea without losing its spirit.” Others, like Shihori Suzuki, warn of the risk of confusing spirituality with aesthetics: “Matcha has become a mass product, alien to the ceremony. If it becomes just a business, we will lose quality and meaning.”
What is at stake. The rise of matcha not only threatens to deplete the fields, but to disfigure a cultural identity that took centuries to build. Farmers, like Katahira, they see it with ambivalence: Thanks to the boom they have paid off debts, but many feel that the spirit of tea is diluted between influencers, baristas and designer packaging. “Those who rush to produce don’t think about tradition. They only think about lattes,” he says.
However, other people see it as a phenomenon that could save the tradition: more visitors flock to authentic tea rooms, seeking the calm that social media does not offer. After the pandemic, says Atsuko Morifounder of Camellia Tea Ceremony in Kyoto: “Visitors don’t just want to taste matcha, they want to understand it. They value its sense of presence and attention.” But that balance is fragile. The same tea that calms is also exhausting those who grow it. Producers face a paradox: commercial success can destroy what made it valuable.
Return to the dô? Matcha was born to stop time, not speed it up. The tea master Sen no Rikyū, in the 16th century, said to serve a perfect cup was an act of harmony between host and guest. Today, that harmony is sought between saturated markets, influencers and automated factories.
Maybe the answer lies in what said teacher Ann Abe: “The important thing is not the green dust, but what happens when we share it.” The world may continue to churn its matcha, but Japan seems to remember something deeper: that tea is not produced to yield, but to gather.
In chado there is an essential principle: ichi-go ichi-e —“once, one encounter.” Each cup is unique, unrepeatable. Perhaps the matcha market, like tea itself, needs to learn to breathe again.
Image | freepik
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