Matcha's Past, Present, and Future

Ryan · 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha Podcast. My name is Ryan, This is my co-founder Zongjun, who also goes by Sam and we're the cofounders of Sanko Matcha Products. We launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey, Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.

Zongjun · 0:13

And today's episode, we want to give it a comprehensive review of what Matcha was in the past, what it is nowadays, and what it could be in the future. I feel like that there are already 1000 articles and podcasts online talking about the history of Matcha. And, you know, Ryan let's, you know, try to create something new, I guess for our audience, that's a little bit more refreshing.

Ryan · 0:36

Yeah, you're totally right. And, you know, both you and I tend to be a little more reserved about covering topics that a lot of other people have just simply because there's so much good information out there. Do we put a unique spin on it?

Ryan · 0:48

But I do think it's worthwhile, at least in the Specialty Matcha Podcast, to have at least one episode dedicated to the history of Matcha, as certainly not a comprehensive 1 which cannot be done with any reasonable length of time.

Zongjun · 1:01

I'm ready for two hour recording, Ryan, or three hours but. Something where, you know, for talking with coffee people or industry friends that aren't into matcha and they were like, hey guys, like what's the deal? Like where is matcha? Where did it come from?

Ryan · 1:14

What's the status quo, and where do you think it's going to go in the future? And this is sort of our response to a question like. All right, so where do we start? Yeah, so let's start at the very beginning. One of the interesting things about tea in general is that there is very little dispute about the cultural origins of this plant of this product. Basically the only country that holds any claim to the being the first people to cultivate tea are in China and Chinese people. Unlike the coffee world where there's a little bit of debate between Yemen and Ethiopia.

Ryan · 1:46

And supposedly the scientific evidence shows that it was first discovered and, and naturally growing in in Ethiopia. But then in the very, very early days that no one was really cultivating it to make it into what is we know as coffee now until the, until some Arab people brought it to Yemen and planted it there. And we're really the first people to do actually any real coffee cultivation.

Ryan · 2:09

So it's a little bit more of a complex history, but within the case of tea, it's pretty much undisputed, except for a few crazy people in Korea who claim that tea has always been there, that tea is a Chinese product and was first cultivated by Chinese people. Very unpopular idea even in Korea too, as we study under a few Korean tea ceremony masters.

Zongjun · 2:34

But yeah, you're totally right, not only culturally but also biologically that, you know, many proofs exist for tea to being, you know, first cultivated and consumed in and even to this stage you can still find a lot of the specimens that kind of lies in between, you know, completely wild T before you get the domesticized and semi wild and you know, wild Camellia sinensis. Those are very different things for some of the cousins defaulting to the similar family that were not domesticized. Those are actually semi or very poisonous. They're still growing in the wild in Yunnan along with all the tea bushes that are getting

Zongjun · 3:18

harvest. Very interesting to visit those places with with the locals. When I was in Yunnan. They look very different in the way that the size is. Those really like wild cousins of Camellia sinensis are huge but the leaves are very similar so I can almost cannot tell the difference between a Camellia sinensis and their wild cousins. But the locals told me that some of them can be processed into tea and is drinkable and some of them are just really poisonous and will make you very dizzy and very sick. So very, very interesting to see them in person. Yeah, yeah.

Ryan · 3:57

So for those of you who don't know, you know, matcha comes from a plant called Camellia sinensis, which was originally discovered, grown, cultivated and as a natural part of the forest in southwestern China. And one of the first things you learned about in any T education is that all T needs to come from the genus and species Camellia sinensis.

Ryan · 4:16

And in a previous recording, we said that's about 99% true, which leads to an interesting question. And what's the other 1%? And it's exactly what Zongjun was talking about. There are other species, Camellia species that are very similar to tea.

Ryan · 4:32

So if you go to some of the very Yunnan focused vendors that sell tea, they have something called Camellia taliensis. It is one of the other common species. It's basically tea and processed into things like poor and some other things. So there's some other Camellia varieties. Technically, that's the wrong way of putting it. There's some other Camellia species, genus Camellias, and then various other species from sinensis to taliensis and a few others that are edible.

Ryan · 4:57

Some are poisonous and they all originate in southwestern China. And of course, these plants are part of the forest. They don't know the boundaries. So, you know, part of those forests extended into Myanmar and Laos and and into northern parts of Thailand where a lot of tea gets processed.

Ryan · 5:13

And actually a lot of it gets smuggled across the border, especially as pu-erh prices in China have gotten very high. And where that stuff doesn't get even labeled as originating from that place. And most of it gets smuggled to a city in Yunnan called Xishuangbanna.

Zongjun · 5:27

More than the pu-erh traders buy it and blend it. We've talked about sort of tea laundering within the case of China and Japan for matcha, But it's also happening where people want to create something that is what people think of as a Chinese product and a very different part of the tea world.

Zongjun · 5:44

All the time off with all kinds of teas, not just in matcha, but we see that in pu-erh, we see that in Longjing, which is another very expensive Chinese green tea that is cultivated and processed in Hangzhou and and a lot of these regions in Sichuan and Guizhou supplies all of these famous production area and get turned into these much more expensive tea by the end of the day. We kind of see that within Japan too, you know, like Kagoshima aracha supplies all the way into Uji proper and gets processed.

Ryan · 6:19

You just got to import the aracha into Kyoto Prefecture and boom, you got Ujicha. Yeah, same thing. Same thing. Same, same. It's a big problem in the tea world. So anyway, the origins of Matcha's past are in southwestern China, where then tea eventually spread to the rest of the world.

Ryan · 6:37

At least the Chinese varietals did. But the earliest tea cultivation was done in China, and then later spread through Zen Buddhism to Korea and to Japan. And the earliest documentation of tea moving to Japan, I believe is in the Tang Dynasty, which is around 1000 years ago.

Zongjun · 6:55

But it didn't really stick in any meaningful way until a monk named Eisai, who you can read all about online, Buddhist monk studying Buddhism in China, brought it back to Japan, where then it really stuck. And he's kind of considered the one of the godfathers of, of Japanese tea, bringing over those tea seeds. Yeah, there were predecessors of the SI in the past trying to bring tea into Japan from China, but he was the only one that really made the Bush and the culture of drinking it took roots within Japan.

Ryan · 7:28

So that's I think around Song dynasty. Yeah, during the Song dynasty. So Zongjun, before we talk more about the spread of tea throughout East Asia and the move of what it was essentially Song dynasty matcha into Japan, let's talk about the mythical origin stories for tea.

Zongjun · 7:46

So if you learn anything about tea history, typically you encounter 2 origin stories for the way how tea was discovered. Do you want to recount the the tale of the mythical Emperor Shennong in his discovery of tea? Yeah, Shennong. Wow.

Zongjun · 8:03

It's basically not a real person, but let's, you know, treat him as a real person for the sake of this story. But he's one of the mythical legendary emperor of China thousands of years ago and basically had this vision, the mission of trying all kinds of vegetations that were native to China at the time to test their effects and compile them into knowledge and educate his people.

Zongjun · 8:30

And when he was on this mission of finding all of the, you know, medicinal and agricultural effect of all these vegetations, he often times run into poisonous ones and got very sick. And one day he end up trying this, you know, this leaf coming from this tree and all of a sudden all of his illness and pain went away.

Zongjun · 8:55

It's really a panacea at the time for him. And he gave very, you know, high praise to this vegetation and what is to be understand nowadays as tea. Tea as a cure all goes all the way back to the mythical origins of its discovery. Yes, yes, yes, the OG snake oil.

Zongjun · 9:18

Did Shennong lose 20 lbs after he started drinking it every day? Yeah, he doesn't need to eat anymore, actually. But yeah, that's one of the very trustworthy, credible origin story of tea that goes all the way back. The other one, I think it's incredible.

Zongjun · 9:36

I'll let you tell the story. The other origin story, competing origin story, is much more realistic, I think, where Bodhi Dharma, the the guy who brought Buddhism from India to to China, was said to have been meditating in a cave.

Zongjun · 9:51

He was so upset with he fell asleep. So he was so upset with himself for falling asleep that he ripped off his eyelids and that where his eyelids landed, the first tea trees grew. And thus we are all drinking plants that are descendant from Bodhi Dharma's eyelids.

Zongjun · 10:07

Wow, much more likely. Wow, it's almost like the Christian story of the bread turning into Jesus, God's flesh. That's an interesting parallel. Very, very interesting. But that's the other story that's far more trustworthy, in my opinion, than the panacea of Shennong.

Zongjun · 10:27

Yes. So those are the two origin stories. And you know, basically tea is undisputedly Chinese. And then, as I said, you know, it spread to other parts of East Asia in the Tongue and Song dynasties, respectively, into Korea and Japan, mostly through the spread of Zen Buddhism, where Buddhist monks traveled to China to go to temples to learn and kind of discovered this new wonderful plant, brought it back with them.

Ryan · 10:51

So that's approximately how that happened and spread. So Sam, let's pivot to Chinese, a little bit of Chinese tea history, which is important to contextualize matcha and its origins. So can you add a little color about what tea was like and how it was served in the Tong dynasty and then in the subsequent dynasty of the Song afterwards? Yeah, for sure.

Zongjun · 11:13

So tea was actually consumed and there there were very early archaeological discoveries of tea being compressed into cake forms all the way back to the Han dynasty, which is almost 2000 years ago. And the exact way of consuming tea at the time was largely unknown.

Zongjun · 11:34

But there are descriptions of how people consume tea in Tang Dynasty, which is 1000 years after Tang Dynasty. So it's a long time, but tea got consumed along the way too. But you know, there, there there were too few archaeological proofs and records of how exactly or if there is any ceremonial ways related to that. At Tang Dynasty, people still consume cake teas, you know, tea are compressed into this form of they call it long Tuan Phong bee.

Zongjun · 12:05

So the cake of phoenix and the dole of Dragons. So they're basically either in a cake form or in a dole form, and they will be sealed a pattern of phoenix or a dragon on top of it as tributed to the monarchs. And it was around the Tang Dynasty that people started to consume tea in a more fragmented form in boiled water. It's almost drinking a soup.

Zongjun · 12:32

So they have a giant pot of boiled water. They take some pieces, chunks off from the cake or the dough, and then they will roast the chunk on top of the charcoal fire to kind of revitalize the fragrance and the flavor of the tea. And then they put it into a wheel grinder and then they grind them into smaller chips.

Zongjun · 12:54

And then they toss the chips into the giant boiling pot along with the gingers and a bunch of other spice. And then they drink the soup. So it's, it's more like a soup at the time. Then, you know, the tea that we are familiar with nowadays. And that was how people consume tea back in Tang dynasty and Song dynasty, the way it is much more elaborate. So people are starting to form this, you know, single origin, single ingredient concept that they are starting to consume tea on itself without other spice and other ingredients in the soup.

Zongjun · 13:29

So tea was largely processed the same. It's still being compressed. And then they would, you know, grind the compressed tea into a much finer powder in a stone grinder. So what we call ishi-usu in Japanese, it's called shimo in Chinese.

Zongjun · 13:47

But the Chinese character, the kanji is the same. And they would grind them into much finer powder, and then they will whisk it in the tea bowl with a much paler, whiter color compared to today's matcha. So a lot of the theories were suggesting that, you know, the Song Dynasty tea, matcha powder tea is much closer to today's white tea baicha versus, you know, a Japanese or matcha or green tea.

Zongjun · 14:17

So people at the time, usually the monarchs and the literatis, they would do this very interesting competition, they call it Doja tea competition or tea battles, where they would gather together and then they would try to whisk, whisk the tea so that it will form the thickest foam.

Zongjun · 14:34

And then they compete on whose foam last the longest. And sometimes they will use calligraphy brushes or their fingers to try to do calligraphy on the film. And there is this very famous artist at the time who can write a entire poetry on a very small bowl with very thick foam.

Zongjun · 14:53

And it was considered to be a celebrity at the time, so. Original latte art throwdown. Original latte art, Very true, very true. Although they don't add milk, but they do compete with buy buy the film. And that's how people enjoy matcha or Sung Dynasty matcha back in the days. And then tea got introduced into Japan around the same period of time.

Zongjun · 15:16

But in China, something big really happened. So it was the downfall of Song dynasty because of the Mongolian invasion. But the Mongolian dynasty only lasts for 88 years. So they it did some damage to the Chinese culture. But a lot of the habits are large, largely still preserved. But at the downfall of the Mongol dynasty, the Yuan dynasty, this very interesting guy prevailed amongst all of the warlords.

Zongjun · 15:43

Zhu Yuanzhang or the first emperor of Ming dynasty. He was a peasant, not really a peasant. He was a beggar. He was like from the lowest possible, like, you know, social hierarchy at the time. And he had seen the worst out of how people got treated by the society elites at the time in China, by the Han people themselves and also by the Mongols.

Zongjun · 16:09

So relating back to tea culture. So he he really had some pretty iron fisted policy against, you know, overconsumption and elitism in China when he took the throne to become the first emperor of Ming Dynasty. And one of the target was tea.

Zongjun · 16:27

So manufacture of matcha very similar to early days and even nowadays of how people manufacture matcha in Japan was very laborious, very tedious, very time consuming. And it was all these people, these farmers, peasants, workers making something that they themselves are not able to afford. It's reserved for the top of the society, for the elites, for the monarchs.

Zongjun · 16:54

And Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of Ming Dynasty, hated that. Like, he hates the idea of, you know, overworking and, you know, exploiting the lower class. And he hated so much that he essentially banned the manufacture of matcha in China. And from since Ming Dynasty from Ming dynasty, matcha completely disappeared for hundreds of years in in China. So it was banned and you know, loose leaf tea became the mainstream.

Zongjun · 17:26

But luckily or unluckily, the culture got introduced into Japan. Luckily it was preserved in in Japan. Unluckily, you know, the same kind of tedious and laborers work and culture got preserved and got thrown to the Japanese people and it was basically the same story. It was a product reserved for the warlords, the monarchs and the literatis.

Zongjun · 17:50

But on the other hand, luckily the very reason that we can still enjoy this beverage to this day, we got to thank the Japanese that they helped to preserve this culture. You know, unlike, you know, the Tang Dynasty tea, Ginger 5 spice soup that we will never know what the taste of those beverages are. We we can still have some sense of what matcha taste like to this day.

Ryan · 18:16

Yeah. So just to do a quick compare and contrast moment between matcha and modern matcha, actually, before I'll do that, I will say that the only reason that the majority of the people listening to this podcast can drink and try matcha is because of the industrial revolution.

Ryan · 18:33

Matcha is so insanely laborious. And now that we're learning quite a bit more about the ins and outs of matcha production, it is so incredibly energy intensive. And from like a physics point of view and the amount of heat that you need, the amount of energy that you need to keep everything cold and to mill it, it is like probably from a carbon footprint perspective, one of the worst types of decultivation, at least in its processing. Yeah, Phil and John had a point.

Zongjun · 19:03

Not even to mention the the labor requirements to do the type of Labor before any type of mechanization. So matcha and matcha until the industrial revolution were not in every man's tea. It was really an elite culture and a lot of these stories that are told within Chinese cultural tea contexts are probably more vanity than substance about the types of people that were enjoying tea at the time and who could actually have afforded it. It's very nice that they have a very inclusive spirit, but the historical realities were probably that you had to have a fair bit of money to enjoy it.

Zongjun · 19:38

Didn't put it quite frankly, even today, you have to have a fair about a fair amount of money to enjoy it. It's still expensive, but at least it's accessible. But to compare and contrast Song Dynasty, matcha and matcha, some people will say, and actually Marc from Ooika recorded a reel, his hot take and he said his hot take was that matcha is Japanese and not Chinese. And I actually totally agree with his argument. Is that what we know of and think of as matcha today, there is very little resemblance to what matcha was and how it was processed.

Zongjun · 20:12

So back in Song Dynasty, no one was shade growing their tea, at least not intentionally. And they were not processing it the same way, although they were steaming it, but it was not, you know, this very green would not have been this very green color.

Zongjun · 20:26

It's been pretty well documented that it was a very white foam. So there's clearly some very different types of processing. So the major innovations which make matcha, it's give it its physical characteristics and flavor characteristics and we're really refined and invented by the Japanese. So where you draw that line is, you know, up to the audience. So we don't have a stake in that battle. But they were probably very different products, but they did share steaming in common and they were both powdered. So there were suspension of particles and you were adding water to tea.

Zongjun · 21:01

They shared that step as well. But Ryan, you know, shading tea in Japan is also fairly new compared to the long history of tea. If you go back to the time of Sen no Rikyu, you know, like they were not shading tea at the time. It was really until there is this very interesting. I think it's Portuguese or Jesuit in the 19th century who went to Japan that first documented that the tea was being shade grown in Japan.

Zongjun · 21:29

And then there are archaeological discovery of some, you know, carbon layers related to rice straw being used in tea gardens that dates back even 100 years earlier than that. But still, that's, you know, fairly recent when we're talking about the long history of tea being consumed in Japan, in the region.

Ryan · 21:50

And just a cool shout out to the research that you were talking about and some of those discoveries that were made that were dating, potentially dating or provided some evidence for honzu rice straw shading 100 years before it was documented by the Portuguese was discovered in the Okunoyama tea garden from Horii Shichimeien where the that famous cultivar was from, which is a super cool. So every time anyone you're drinking Okunoyama cultivar and from Horii Shichimeien and you're actually drinking tea that is genetically descended from that 400 year old Bush in that garden dating all the way back to that

Zongjun · 22:29

point, which is quite an interesting piece of living legacy. And the fact that you can drink that when buy that retail in Japan for about 25 bucks is so incredibly special. And so take an extra moment to enjoy that. Yeah, it's a piece of living history. Absolutely.

Zongjun · 22:44

That's, that was a quick compare and contrast. So when tea then entered Japan, it was really cemented into a tea ceremony. And by the way, we're going to the Japanese tea history part you could write PhD dissertations on. So we're going to give a little more of a faster overview of it, especially since everyone listening probably has heard a lot about it.

Zongjun · 23:06

But in Japan, basically we cemented into a ceremony by a guy named Sen no Rikyu at the the the three core schools that are descended from Sen no Rikyu. Sen no Rikyu is a Omotesenke, Urasenke and Mushakoji Senke, which are collectively known as the San-Senke that all derived from Sen no Rikyu who has many, many things that you can research, who is famous for promoting the wabi aesthetic. And to sort of move away from these very affluent motifs and decorations and T utensils that were being imported from China at the time and really created aesthetic movement, the wabi sabi wabi aesthetic.

Zongjun · 23:47

So these three schools are the primary institutions in which tea ceremony has lived and evolved. It's under a leadership system called the iemoto system. So iemoto basically means grandmaster and it's father to son lineage. And after each generational change, they're allowed to make one change, one fundamental change to the ceremony. So it is thus always living and adapting and not completely rigid throughout time.

Zongjun · 24:14

And then you also have all of the samurai schools. And then you also historically have had a lot of people just practicing tea sort of in their, in their own way that we're not necessarily ever tied to one of these tea ceremony institutions.

Zongjun · 24:25

Their their influences waxed and waned over the years. Well, we both had been Omotesenke students at some time. I consider some self belonging to one of the school. Ryan, I don't know about you, but. Yeah, well, I mean, we're both, I don't know, we're not active.

Ryan · 24:40

We're maybe former Omotesenke students. I I still have gone to a couple of their gatherings in recent years and and still really quite enjoy it, especially as a guest. It's being a host is learning to be a host is very challenging.

Ryan · 24:56

Honestly, from an educational perspective, it is just a fantastic thing to be a competent guest in a tea ceremony, which by the way, would probably take years of being a properly competent guest to all the manners and formality that's required. But it's a really wonderful cultural thing to experience when when you have arrived at that point in your educational journey.

Ryan · 25:20

It's honestly not for me. I'm care much more about the product of matcha than the ceremony itself. And so I learned enough to know that it was not definitely not my path, but I certainly appreciate it but for the art that it. Yeah.

Zongjun · 25:33

And you know, thank God that, you know, this culture still exists today that really helped to preserve Mata for the longest time that, you know, because right now we have all these demands coming from all corners of the society and all corners of the world consuming this product.

Zongjun · 25:50

But you know, for the longest time, tea ceremony practitioners, tea ceremony schools, were the sole buyers of matcha. Thank them that you know matcha can still exist until this day. And so this is where we arrive at a very interesting point because we've talked about tea ceremony in the preparation of tea, but we've also talked about the processing of tea. And the processing of tea I think is very underappreciated within the broader Hicks history and context of Japan. And Marc from Ooika said something very interesting that really stuck in my mind was he was describing these rice straw shading techniques, the honzu

Zongjun · 26:25

shading techniques as endangered was the adjective that he used. I thought what what a really nice, interesting way of putting it is that with all this industrialization that allows all of us to drink matcha is that a lot of the traditional methods that are less efficient are becoming in danger and losing this tradition. And one thing that's very interesting is I think with it, when most people think of Japanese tea, especially in Japan and in the United States, is that there's very little thought historically given to the farmer. I read a book called Making Tea Making Japan and the subtext is cultural nationalism and

Zongjun · 26:57

practice. It's the history of chanoyu and Japanese tea ceremony and how it was used to to form the idea of Japanese in this in the modern Japanese nation and culture and not once. And this is not a criticism, it's more of an observation. In this entire book did they ever talk about the people who are actually making the tea?

Zongjun · 27:19

The title Making Tea, Making Japan, not once or maybe very briefly, and I had forgotten, but it really was not a topic of this book where the farmers or the producers of this product. This is a really interesting observation.

Zongjun · 27:33

It's well, for the longest time, they are largely, you know, I'm just going to be very frank and blunt, the, the lowest of the social hierarchy of, you know, the tea making chains, you know, the, although they are the beginning part that like they, they, they are really the cornerstone and the foundation of why other people can have something to drink.

Zongjun · 27:57

But in terms of social hierarchy, they are, they're really the at the bottom for for the longest time. And it's really until very recently that social media kind of gave them a mic to, to have other people hear their voices.

Ryan · 28:12

Yeah. It's, it's a very weird change. Sam, zooming back around Sen no Rikyu's time, can you talk a little bit about what was the utility of tea ceremony at the time, about the samurai class and and a lot of the stories told around some tea ceremonies and why the Japanese took this Chinese tradition and and made it their own?

Zongjun · 28:34

Well, that's actually a very interesting angle to, to understand tea and it's historical meaning in different era in Japan. Because in, in the very beginning, it's just a beverage that people like to consume. And after Sen no Rikyu kind of formalized and ceremonialized the consumption of this this beverage into a culture, it kind of became a a a safe space, A foundation for people, especially the warlords, to have conversations with each other.

Zongjun · 29:10

Because, you know, at a time when you enter into a tea room, actually still to this days, you are not allowed to bring any weapon. You need to surrender your sword, your katana outside of the tea room. And then instead you bring a little very cutesy fan as a symbolism of your weapon. Yeah, to and then you enter into the tea room. And it was really trying to, you know, prevent these samurais, the these warlords from warring swords against each other during a dispute.

Zongjun · 29:42

You know, you still got to come to a agreement or, or a disagreement at the end of the day. But, you know, you need to work out of the tea room alive. So that was kind of the purpose of a lot of these tea gatherings at the warring state period of Japan.

Zongjun · 29:57

But the purpose definitely changed after the development of Japanese society. It was really a interesting point that you know, the book you've been reading, Ryan, Making Tea, Making Japan, that later on tea ceremony kind of served as a foundation for nation building for almost a umbrella structure to kind of contained and preserve all of the cultural element that can be described and defined as Japanese and can be used as a reference for Japaneseness.

Ryan · 30:29

And tea ceremony kind of served a wonderful umbrella structure for that purpose. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. Most of us in studying history, nationalism is a relatively new concept, believe especially just to use Europe as an example, Italy was basically a bunch of little fragmented, you know, tiny little regional centers of power in the, in the early, I think it was in the 1800s, at some point, the unifiers that kind of brought Italy together enter to 1 country, said great, we've created Italy, now we have to create Italians.

Ryan · 31:03

And very similar stories are true in France and in Germany too. This idea of being German or this idea of being French or Italian is actually a relatively historically new concept. And Japan was definitely not immune from this. So both in the Meiji period and the more modern period, you know, Japanese tea ceremony, chanoyu, was kind of chosen as this element that totally embodied Japaneseness. And it it really stuck.

Ryan · 31:34

And it was a really wonderful encapsulation of so many different crafts and arts that that it touched. And I'll read a line here from the book. You may find it. No worries. So, she writes, what renders the tea ceremony a quintessentially Japanese experience is not it's fixed or apartness from the ordinary routines of living, but rather the alternation between the everyday and the exceptional differentiation and distinction that is inscribed in the practice.

Ryan · 32:05

And then she goes on to say it's in it's combination with practice. 1 reaching out in a self reinforcing matrix of other items defined as quote UN quote Japanese culture sustain these resonances before it takes far more than T Typically ceramics, scrolls, lacquerware, kimonos, tatami and even kaiseki cuisine to make a tea ceremony. In the moment to moment unfolding of the ritual, the stage, the props and the scripted roles conspire to create a seamless flow that not only naturalizes a very unnatural conduct, but also momentarily veils the oddness, apartness and distinctive Japaneseness of what's going on. So it's really is the perfect

Zongjun · 32:51

encapsulation of Japan. Yeah, that was a very long wait of saying, you know, tea Ceremony being a almost a, a gallery of all of these Japanese cultural elements, a very well curated gallery experience for people to experience and learn about Japanese culture and for Japanese to learn about their own identity. Yeah.

Zongjun · 33:18

And to make Japanese people to culturally Japanese people and they were saying, you know, especially after World War 2, in finding and creating a strong sense of national identity, especially in light of the new global world order and all of the internationalization that was happening.

Zongjun · 33:35

Creating a new generation of Japanese people to be molded into the cultural standards that they wanted to imbue to that generation, especially in such a conformist society, was very rigidly structured. And chanoyu was perfect. It taught you how to sit, how to act, your manners. So for example, and within a Japanese tea ceremony, you have to apologize to the person who's going to have their bowl after you because you're drinking it before them and you thank the host and you're taught to respect the wares and you're taught aesthetic appreciation.

Zongjun · 34:08

So after you drink the matcha, you put the bowl back down to tatami. You look left, you look right, and you pick it up, but not too far off the floor to examine the bowl. And you can ask questions about it and look at its different aesthetic subtleties and learn to appreciate them. And on top of that, when you learn Japanese tea ceremony, it is incredibly hierarchical and top down. You were told what to do, what to act, how to act, how to respond.

Zongjun · 34:33

It's perfect training ground to create a more conformist society that Japan is famous for, and that's actually one of the biggest critiques of Japanese tea ceremony in contemporary culture today for people who are have no interest in learning or studying it. Yeah, really.

Ryan · 34:52

You know, a Japanese society in a nutshell. Almost. Yeah, there's a very funny line. Oh yeah. Here is so part of this book. She did research kind of talking with everyday normal Japanese people to get their set, especially people who are not tea people at all about what they think of chanoyu in Japan.

Ryan · 35:09

So this is more like current day matcha, but looking at it from a very like ordinary Japanese person's lens and to give you a sense of why it might be a dying art. One reason she writes this, one reason why the practice is so insistently promoted as relaxed in the experienced tourism industry is because as a as a representative of the Kyoto Tourism Board put it quote, tea is a hierarchical world with a strict relationship between teachers and students.

Ryan · 35:40

Most people nowadays don't want that. They just want to try it out easily sitting in a tatami room and enjoying a bowl of tea. So a lot of the, you know, that they recognize this at least within the tourism boards and really stress and have done a lot of modifications for for foreigners to have a less rigid experience.

Zongjun · 36:00

And so there's definitely some self-awareness even within these. Cultures, yeah, I, I mean, like even within Japan too, as we talked to some of the younger generation in Japan who are Japanese, they they don't want to go through this whole process either.

Ryan · 36:15

In a way it really becomes a this is highly contacted again a cultural baggage that the preventing people to really enjoy matcha as it is just matcha. Another contemporary criticism of Japanese tea ceremony is the insane value and price of what they would call a lot of the chadogu or T utensils, ranging from the chawan, which are tea bowls or the scoops or the natsume, can go for really crazy, insane prices. And someone that she interviewed in the book said you should be able to do it, referring to chanoyu with any sort of utensil. But no one, no one does that now. And there's this idea around

Ryan · 36:55

stuffiness around like what? What what can and cannot be used and this kind of this accumulation culture of wanting to buy the nicer and more expensive thing within Japanese tea practitioners and someone that she also interviewed that I really like and got a good laugh of this is someone she interviewed. They said quote people, people who don't know T just say without any interest when you tell them a bamboo scoop cost $10,000, they just say, oh, $10,000. To this, her mother burst out into laughter and said, yeah, for an oversized earpick for one of the great Buddha. A statue in Nara, I suppose.

Zongjun · 37:34

Ridiculous. How dare you A? Earpick. Earpick for oversized Earpick for the Great Buddha. And this is a Japanese person saying it, so it's. He has a pass or she has a pass. They have a pass, but backing up a little bit in the history.

Ryan · 37:56

So you have the San Senke, you have these three schools and they have been active. I believe they're on the like the 15th and 17th generations now in the past in this podcast, I said 14 and 16, but I think there were generational changes since my memory of learning this.

Zongjun · 38:12

And those have always existed, but they weren't always the only way that tea was done in Japan. So as long June, let's back up a bit and talk a little bit about the histories of tea and matcha in the Meiji era as Japan was industrializing from a practitioner's perspective, from from the book making tea, making Japan, what was sort of the lay of the land that was going on in the, you know, around the 1800s. Yeah, there's a very interesting paragraph that I can just read it from the book that talks about this very topic. So here it goes.

Zongjun · 38:42

Industrialists and politicians were drowned to chanoyu for many of the same reasons I stand Daniel and warriors. daimyo being the warlords at the time at once being. It offered a symbolic link to prior rulers for purposes of legitimating power. A social space for networking with other elites, as I was talking about, you know, like offering a space for the samurais and the daimyo to have conversations with each other without weapons and and continue in the book and and a means for displaying a superior refinement alongside the pleasures of an afternoon of elegant entertainment. Meanwhile, beneath this

Zongjun · 39:26

oligarchy, the school system, always a central forge of national identity transmitted to the population below a knowledge of T bovent into a distinctively National History. Girls were encouraged to take up T as a hobby in training for their role as being, you know, good wives and wise mothers.

Zongjun · 39:48

The tea ceremony was not simply a flat symbol but a lift practice with bodies conveying it's national dissemination. Whether by business leaders or classroom leaders, tea continued to be done. The variously gendered balances of the nationalized result stood in a productive tension.

Zongjun · 40:09

Women's practice transmitted popular understanding of the tea. Ceremony to households across the nation, while men's tea, often reacting to women's practice, stamped such understandings with the higher legitimacy of status and power. Very interesting.

Zongjun · 40:26

It is very interesting. Like the Japanese society in the nutshell, almost the reason why you know, like we are perceiving Japanese, you know, in a lot of stereotypical way nowadays from a outsider point of view. And something very interesting in this book that we don't need to quote is apparently to this day for college entrance exams, one of the topics that you need to know and basically do some brute memorization has to do about the history of chanoyu. So like this is ingrained within every Japanese person and a lot of people, especially young girls were encouraged to study it.

Zongjun · 41:06

And part of it really make up the vast majority of the practitioner base today and to become like good Japanese subjects basically and the good the good wives and wives, wives, mothers policy that the government took. And so it's really a very long legacy.

Zongjun · 41:21

Why you but mostly mostly see upper to middle class housewives in Japan are the primary practitioner base of these schools, which is interesting. Another thing that this book goes on to tell that leads us to the modern day status quo of macho and Japanese tea ceremony was used as a means of cultural was kind of chosen as a cultural element to share with the rest of the world. So when Japan came to the Paris World Expo over 100 years ago, a tea house, that was one of the things that they brought. When royalty and dignitaries come to Japan there, serve tea in a tea ceremony, it's really has been chosen as this cultural exchange element that's

Zongjun · 42:01

distinctively Japanese that they can share with the rest of the world. Interesting. So almost like the Confucius Institute of China, but much more successful. Much more successful than the Confucius Institute, whose branch was recently shut down at Penn State for reasons we. Won't and a number of other universities. Different history, not quite as pure as the chanoyu cultural spreading, but it it's actually interesting you go back to the history books.

Zongjun · 42:29

There's a really cool photo of Ronald Reagan sitting on a tatami mat with the Prime Minister of Japan at the time where he took him to his home and made matcha for him. So there's all sorts of these really cool pictures of of it being used as this type of element of cultural exchange.

Ryan · 42:44

So Sam, this leads us to a wonderful segue of, of the status quo of matcha today. And the modern history is, I think all of this toxicity around people, especially in the US, accusing others of cultural appropriation and how a lot of traditionalists are not very open to the ideas of innovation or changing or, you know, people's conservative mindsets.

Ryan · 43:13

It's always been this way. It should stay this way. Matcha in so many ways is just so fundamentally untouchable because it is distinctively wrapped in this Japanese Ness and it has intentionally been that way for hundreds of years where it's literally used as a subject to create Japanese cultured people. A Japanese person that grows up in the States and grows up and away from their original culture is not the same level. They don't have the Japanese Ness that you would have if you grew up in Japan.

Ryan · 43:49

The manners, the sensibilities, the aesthetic preferences, etcetera. Yeah. I mean, like this whole movement of essentially enshrined matcha or tea ceremony into this very elevated status, I think it's what's making anything that related to matcha or tea ceremony so untouchable. I mean, like matcha being just a element of this whole idea, it's really the most controversial side because you know, like it, it really is not no longer part of Japanese exclusively anymore. It's so internationalized nowadays for people that are still kind of beholding it as part of something that's essentially very Japanese,

Ryan · 44:34

essentially part of this Japanese narrative, are obviously would feel offended by people repurposing it for other usage. And when they are doing so, they are often getting accused of appropriating this thing. And just to give this some gravity and for some further context for everyone listening, I don't know if they if you know this story. So just to further, just to further contextualize this and how important matcha and tea ceremonies to the Japanese that during World War 2, the the heir, the inheritor of the Urasenke lineage to to the iemoto was part of the Air Force and actually ended up being part of

Ryan · 45:12

the kamikaze unit during World War 2. And it was chosen that that he was not going to, to, to commit suicide in that way because he was too culturally important to the Japanese nation. So what they had him do is perform tea ceremonies for the kamikaze pilots.

Ryan · 45:30

So that that was sort of their last ceremonial gesture and salute to those pilots was they experienced a tea ceremony, had a bowl of matcha, and then went off to die during World War 2. And so there's an incredible cultural weight and importance behind tea ceremony which which lives on to this day.

Zongjun · 45:47

It's a very interesting story and actually he later he survived and went on to become the iemoto and is actually one of the greatest spreaders of Japanese culture and messages of peace. After the war, he traveled to many, many, many different countries doing all sorts of public demonstrations as iemoto and has been very praised in in talking about his messages for peace and is it became a very important man within Japanese tea history.

Zongjun · 46:14

So it is very importantly and distinctively Japanese and it, it has a huge cultural weight behind it to this day, which leads us into this very interesting dilemma into the future to, to, to segue into sort of the contemporary history of matcha. The industrial revolution was brought, which brought a lot more mechanization.

Zongjun · 46:34

Obviously, you know, before World War Two, you had the invention and discovery of the Haber Bosch process. It's a chemical process that allows us to take to fix nitrogen and basically with a lot of energy, take hydrogen and nitrogen and create ammonia, which then can be then further reacted to create both bombs and industrial fertilizer.

Zongjun · 46:56

And so with this industrial fertilizer, you had this Agri mass agriculture boom along with all these new mechanical devices that allow mass agriculture. And that very much hit the tea industry, which is now how the majority of the world can even consume matcha is because of all of the wonderful inventions and the scale of agriculture that happened after the industrial revolution. So at one point the West starts to take a pretty big interest in matcha.

Zongjun · 47:24

And that's actually a pretty more recent history. I've, I've done quite a bit of searching to the New York Times archives looking for early mentions of matcha. There's not very many and they're rather obscure, but it really didn't start to really become a thing and as far as I can tell, until around the early 2000s.

Zongjun · 47:46

And any sense of scale where you started to see it in cakes and and bubble tea stores and ice cream and Starbucks. I believe the first Starbucks in North America to serve a matcha latte was like in 2004, 2005. And a lot of new consumers got exposed to it in countries all over the world, developed a huge love for it. And then basically the market got flooded with a bunch of crap, very industrial stuff.

Zongjun · 48:11

So the term ceremonial grade was invented to kind of distinguish, you know, matcha that was more meant and designed to be put into a cake with a bunch of sugar to help mask the bitterness. And matcha that was meant to be consumed on its own. People started abusing that term. And that's kind of the status quo that we are in now because there's a lack of regulation around who can use that term. But matcha has become incredibly popular. And at the same time, Japan is literally a dying country from a demographic perspective.

Zongjun · 48:41

The average age of a tea farmer, in Shizuoka, a local prefecture in Japan, is, I believe, 67 years old. Very few of those players are, very few of those farmers have a succession plan. So not only do you see both declining and abandoned tea plantations all over Japan, but you also see this mass consolidation that's happening where larger companies are buying up or leasing property or existing land from farmers. And the statistic is, I think in the 1980s you had about 200,000 tea farms in Japan.

Zongjun · 49:13

Now it's under 12,000. That's an insane shrinkage. Although you should put an asterisk next to that and recognize 1980s were an incredibly weird time in Japan. Japanese were among the richest country, one of the most rich countries in the world, and you know, in the late 90s if you were talking to someone in business or was it apparently early career? I've heard all of the management books about how to be a good manager and how to rise to the ranks. Were all Japanese books Japanese management the Toyota way? But definitely not the case today. No ones copying the playbooks of what's happening in Japan anymore.

Zongjun · 49:50

So this decline is natural and expected. When you move from a growth economy that's extremely wealthy that values things that they'll spend $10,000 on a tea scoop for sure they can support so many different farmers across Japan, but it's just not the case today anymore.

Zongjun · 50:07

So you start to see a lot of the rise of the specialty movement, specialty food movement, single origin products, single cultivar products, better movement in the late 90s in the West of wanting to know where your food came from.

Zongjun · 50:19

And you think see the rise of specialty coffee, bean-to-bar chocolate and then tea and then eventually spread to matcha where it was really spearheaded by a bunch of Western people are going to Japan making relationship with Japanese tea farmers, asking more in depth questions about their product and doing a lot more storytelling.

Zongjun · 50:37

And historically created around matcha product positioning that were mostly controlled by large institutionalized blend houses and that just gave all of their products and poetic name. And they had very close relationship with large institutional buyers or people in powerful positions that had a lot of influence over consumer buyers such as iemoto's or, or people, people who ran temples, for example.

Zongjun · 51:00

So to this day, you go to some of the older traditional blend houses, you see all sorts of products that are endorsed by this school of chanoyu or this temple or this, this thing or that thing. And the idea of having matcha being a very consumer focused thing where you know, you know what you're drinking and to develop a set of complex preferences is a relatively new topic.

Zongjun · 51:24

And the idea of much as a specialty product is relatively new, which brings us to approximately the status quo, which where I'd say we're in the early stages of a specialty market where people really want to understand and and differentiate much of products based on the fact that it comes from this leaf that is descended from Bodhidharma's eyelids and all of the nature and nurture processes that can lead to interesting and unique flavors or stories.

Ryan · 51:50

Yeah, wow. We really came through 2000 years of the journey of this tea leaf and we are landing to this day of this very interesting mose, a dilemma of matcha being both a very, you know, specialty product and a also very legacy product that served the two very, very different audiences.

Ryan · 52:18

On all of the growth is going to lie outside of Japan because it's a demographically dying country. There are fewer quote unquote, as this book put it, bodies out there symbolically and literally representing Japaneseness.

Ryan · 52:32

And it's a very different consumer base. You know, it's your average office worker who's working in tech and and metro Bangkok. It's someone, you know, it's an artist walking around Brooklyn, NY, You know, it's, it's someone down in Santiago, Chile, that's running a interesting, cool Japanese fusion restaurant. It's a really different mix of people now. And, you know, back in the days in which this was practiced in Japan, any of these practitioners probably could have never imagined that such a diverse group of people would fall in love with this this product and that came out of their culture.

Ryan · 53:10

So how do we thread this needle matcha is both untouchable and very difficult to criticize or improve upon or iterate on, especially from the outside. And certainly within the inside. It's very difficult in Japan. It's seen as an industry you can't easily break into, particularly because of all of these cultural associations. So how do we go from here?

Zongjun · 53:33

Well, I would say that's actually not entirely true. It's untouchable outside of Japan and inside of Japan by a group of people holding a very strong narrative, a strong discourse, or holding a authority to define this product, but not necessarily those people who grows and farms matcha and not necessarily the people who consumes matcha outside of Japan nowadays. And the whole specialty movement kind of bridged the gap between all of these people, consumers that you were just talking about, Ryan, in all corners of the world enjoying matcha and the tea farmers in Japan who have been largely omit and kind of, you know, disregard by a lot

Zongjun · 54:20

of parties within and outside of Japan. And actually by talking, you know, in person with all these tea farmers in Uji, in Yame, in, you know, a lot of different parts in Japan, I would say that they are very open minded and they're very practical and they really care about the products that they're making, the tea that they're farming.

Zongjun · 54:39

And they are just happy that people are enjoying their creation. They don't necessarily have this, you know, matcha being untouchable, matcha being unchanged kind of mentality. In fact, when we were in Horii Shichimeien's retail store, they were like, yeah, these teas are great for latte. You should try it.

Zongjun · 55:00

We like matcha latte too. So, you know, like, I think that, you know, there is going to be a very segmented consumer cohort and narrative going into the future. And I don't think the gap between these two cohorts can be diminished one way or another. But the good news is 1 cohort is definitely growing than the other one by a very large percentage. And I think, I think that, you know, like the future of matcha really lifts the demand, really lifts outside of Japan. But, you know, for the moment, you know, the production and the manufacture of matcha inside of Japan is still going to be, you know, the status quo in the near

Zongjun · 55:45

future. But we don't know. But there are many other places outside of Japan that also grows tea. You know, why not matcha too? Yeah, just like the idea of you have like new world wine, old world wine, very similar concept could be put onto something like matcha doesn't necessarily especially with the global shortage, the the producers can't keep up as a lot of structural problems in that industry.

Ryan · 56:07

So from people in the West, what are some things that we can do to promote the future for matcha that we think is like very constructive? Like where are we stepping on our own feet as foreigners and as outsiders in the spreading of matcha and this culture to the rest of the world?

Zongjun · 56:25

I think one thing that would be very valuable or beneficial for us as people outside of Japan is to build matcha as a cultural element and as a product. So as a cultural element, I think that's where all of these accusations of cultural appropriation becomes relevant, right?

Zongjun · 56:47

You know, forming your own school of chanoyu outside of Japan as a foreigner claiming your way is, you know, the the way of making tea probably be, you know, cultural appropriation. But viewing matcha as a product, finding a usage of it as a beverage or as a ingredient in various way, I think that's that's something that's outside of the discussion of matcha being a culture.

Zongjun · 57:15

We spent a lot of time talking about matcha as a culture in this episode, but the really the status quo of matcha today is that it's no longer being tight by one culture. It's imbued into the daily life of many cultures around the world. It has been internationalized and it's no longer, you know, being abound by, you know, tea ceremony in Japan, being confined as part of the Japanese cultural element. But, you know, it has been spread across the world thanks to Urasenke, thanks to, you know, all of these, you know, specialty movements or these beverage companies like Starbucks, you know, making

Ryan · 57:59

delicious beverages using matcha as ingredient. You know, matcha has been preached outside of Japan and one party can no longer hold or hold a narrative or hold the authority to define what matcha is anymore. I couldn't agree more. There should be a huge separation between matcha ceremony and matcha as a product and matcha as a specialty product. Is certainly not fighting against ceremony in any way. And this self policing that's going on around accusing people of cultural appropriation, I think will really inhibit the growth moving forward.

Ryan · 58:36

It's kind of like is what we discussed in the authenticity trap, you're using accusations of, of cultural appropriation as a weapon against other people, which can be very non productive, especially it's very commonly used with the reference of race. Like this guy looks South Asian to me. He has no right to do this stuff. You know, it's like, why is that the first place you go? And the next thing that comes out of some people's mouths is, well, my grandmother's Japanese and, you know, it's just inviting a fight.

Ryan · 59:10

You know, I can say, wow, OK, my, my dad's father, my grand, my, my paternal grandfather is from Korea, but he was born in Pyongyang, which is now North Korea. But at the time it was actually part of the Japanese Empire.

Ryan · 59:23

Does that make me Japanese? Like, I don't know. It doesn't give me any more rights than than anyone else to promote matcha as a specialty product or or even matcha ceremony. A lot of my Omotesenke teachers were white Americans. The racial component to this is so weird to me and very hostile territory, and I think we're really stepping on our own feet. And the cultural component too, I mean, like if there is anyone or any entity or group of people can claim, you know, other people culturally appropriating this beverage will actually be the Chinese.

Ryan · 59:59

You know, like they invented powder green tea or powder tea in the 1st place. They just don't drink it or make it anymore. But you know, it's really bothersome that you know. People are so weaponizing this term and using it to attack other people in a way that honestly sometimes it's the party being attacked.

Ryan · 1:00:23

Probably legitimately made a bad product or it was bad marketing or it was bad usage of words, but accusing them being cultural appropriation. I think it's just far, far, far too severe of the term of a condition. It's a bad product, but you know, it's not, you know, attacking Japan, it's maybe attacking your stomach the least or the worst, but but, you know, elevating it to such a strong or severe status, I think it's really unnecessary.

Ryan · 1:00:55

Well, creates a US versus them mentality. There's us, we're the ones who are respectful of culture and trying to preserve this, but they're they're just trying to profit off of it. And there's 1000 different ways you can slice that. But this implicit division of US versus them is not good in in the conversations that move us forward. And you know, this conversation's super long and it's not even close to a detailed history. You know, the future really much depends on everyone not only understanding the past to contextualize everything, but also not endlessly looking backwards either to cast judgement on other people's

Ryan · 1:01:30

practices today. It's, you know, matcha is very much now belongs to the world, even though it is distinctly Japanese. But you know, it's not under anyone's control anymore, now that in the same way that chocolate isn't under anyone's control, or just tea in general, or coffee. Do you have producers?

Ryan · 1:01:49

You have blenders, you have people selling it, you'll have consumers, and it's all super organic now. It's not this sort of insular beverage that existed in a famously insular culture historically that has all these rules and rigidity about ritualized ceremonial practices.

Zongjun · 1:02:10

Well, people like to. Those stereotypes really came from people who had the voice at the time because when we were talking to the farmers, they were happy that the matcha was so internationalized. They were like friends from apart Come and enjoy the tea that we growed and come and enjoy this beverage with us. And we are happy that you are so curious and want to learn more about the tea that we are farming. Yeah, and those farmers are the ones who never get talked about. Yeah.

Zongjun · 1:02:40

So they do not have a, they do not have a voice back in the days. It's a very, very much a very recent change that we are seeing right now thanks to Internet and social medias. Thank goodness that's what the West cares about. We care about the farmers and productions and the product itself.

Zongjun · 1:02:57

So, you know, the specialty matcha movement is really a movement about people, about the farmers, about the product, about the consumers and creating the best product possible that meets the right consumer preference. And those products have interesting stories to tell from the cultivar, from the production methods of the terroir, all all these types of things.

Zongjun · 1:03:19

It's actually peeling back the layers of the onion. Matcha has all of the superficial vanity and cultural associations with it. And those ceremonies go super deep. Don't get me wrong, they have their own like inner parts of the onion.

Zongjun · 1:03:33

But if you look at matcha itself and you peel back the layers of the onion that what you get out is a really interesting human story just like any other specialty product. And that's what the specialty matcha movement, which I believe is the future or one of the futures that will live alongside tea ceremony as matcha continues to to be in the future. But I hope in 20-30 years from now we're talking about new experimental cultivars or new crazy shading styles. Maybe someone takes a new wavelength of light in a greenhouse and and does some weird shading, but they expose it to, I don't know, 500

Zongjun · 1:04:14

nanometer lights and it produces. Some interesting flavor. There's all sorts of matcha being grown in new and different terroir in places by, you know, very different group of people. And it's this like rich, thriving, diverse thing that that people can love and enjoy and benefit from. How should we hope the future is? Yeah.

Ryan · 1:04:35

And we are almost talking about, you know, this specialty movement and chanoyu as two parallel universes. But I bet they will converge at some point. You know, naturally some group of people from, you know, loving drinking matcha from the group of, you know, the special specialty movement cohort will inevitably find curious about chanoyu and about the traditional side of Japanese and tea culture. And I think that's a good thing.

Ryan · 1:05:02

And then drawn to chanoyu, learning more, want to learn more about traditional Japanese culture. I think that's, you know, beneficial for, you know, Japan and Japanese culture as a whole, too. The ultimate moment will be when we can get the iemoto's interested in matcha as a specialty product.

Zongjun · 1:05:24

That could be a very interesting cultural moment for recognizing Japanese tea farmers and the hard work that they do versus some poetically named product that no one knows what they're drinking because they don't have transparent label and no one tells you. That would be the the ultimate goal, I think, of these two worlds converging.

Zongjun · 1:05:42

And transparent, labeled and poetic names doesn't necessarily contradict each other. That either but. There's really no reason why these two words won't converge and handshake with each other at the end. Yeah. I mean really, if you want to see the traditional players really dominate, just imagine all the blend houses to start giving radically transparent labels. Boom.

Zongjun · 1:06:07

It's actually going to be a very difficult marketing position. Then for everyone else focusing on specialty, that would be the ultimate. When that pendulum swings back to them will be a very interesting same day. Yeah, that, that, that'll be. Cool, we are happy to see that.

Ryan · 1:06:23

Oh yeah, love for that. That'd be very cool. I mean any Matcha brand anywhere, I mean your primary value is you're bringing the customers, right. They although they are getting much more international distribution and awareness than ever before.

Ryan · 1:06:36

But really, like everyone who's listening that owns a Matcha brand in their country, they know their consumers better than anyone else and are able to curate and produce and pick things and select product for them in a way that like a Japanese person literally probably couldn't comprehend someones preferences in Santiago, Chile, or in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, or in Manila and the Philippines.

Ryan · 1:06:58

Like the very different cultures, different preferences, different everything. Yes, indeed. Yeah. All right, apologies for the Super long and semi unstructured slash structured conversation. Hopefully with some editing this wasn't too long.

Zongjun · 1:07:10

But I think this is really a self embodiment of what the future of matcha will look like. Too super fluid, no one can define it. So if you enjoyed this thing, please consider showing friends giving us five stars on the platform you're listening to, and we'll see you on the next one. See.

Ryan · 1:07:25

You in the next episode.