About Us
Why do we trade in tea?
Here we set down what we have kept asking ourselves for more than two centuries.
Tea and Its Culture — Brewing Happiness for the World
The quiet calm of a single cup of tea. The smiles that gather around it. Since 1818, we have seen these moments unfold, day after day. Happiness lives in tea itself, and in the culture that grows around it — and we carry that happiness into everyday life, the world over.
Tradition is innovation
Tradition is not the preservation of what is old; it is a succession of innovations. In 1962, Japan's first green tea bag was derided — “not something an old house should do.” We made it anyway, and opened the finished machine to our competitors. To keep changing in order to protect what matters: that is our tradition.
Would our history approve? Does it serve our customers?
At the very top of our quality standards sits this question. Instrumental analysis and the tea master's five senses are both means of answering it. Whenever judgment wavers, we ask our two hundred years of history — and the customer before us. That is our standard.
Are we of service to Uji?
We are a company sustained by Kyoto and Uji. We opened our tea bag machine to competitors, and revived a procession that had been lost, because we prosper only when Uji tea prospers. We will keep asking what it means to stand with our region.
Toward our 300th year — may our name stand, worldwide, as proof of authentic Japanese tea.
Our History
Tea has been rooted in Kyoto for some twelve hundred years. Within that long history, we have traded tea — above all Uji tea — for more than two centuries since our founding in 1818.
Japan's first green tea bag. The revival of the Ochatsubo Dochu procession after a hundred years of silence. And on to the tables of the G7 Hiroshima Summit. The full story of our innovations is on the History page.
Explore our historyCompany Profile
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69 Kamitoba Minami-Iwanomoto-cho, Minami-ku, Kyoto 601-8139, Japan