Why “Region” Matters Less Than the Maker
A Q&A-style interview edited for clarity. Interviewer: Zach
There are few more influential in the worlds of both hand rolled Temomi tea and tea cultivation in Saitama than Yoshiaki Hiruma. A profoundly curious and dedicated tea maker, Hiruma san crafts teas - shroud hyperbole - that stand alone as singular expressions that leave you stunned, impressed and craving more. We have been fortunate to work directly with him since 2016. He teas now make up an indelible portion of our catalog: Yumewakaba Black, Micro-oxidized Kamiricha, and Hokumei Sencha. I had the good fortune to speak at length with Hiruma san about this beginnings, his techniques and the source of his unwielding passion. Below is an edited conversation that took place at his home in September 2024.
Q: How did you get started in tea? Was your family in the business for generations?
Hiruma: Not exactly. We were farmers and we grew tea, but we didn’t run a tea factory.
I think my father wanted to bring me into the family business. He probably thought if we built a tea factory, I might become interested and eventually take over. He suggested I go to Shizuoka to study.
At the time I was doing track and field through high school, and I had some university offers. But I didn’t feel strongly enough about continuing. I also thought about becoming a PE teacher because I admired my coach. Still, nothing felt decisive—so I accepted my father’s plan.
Q: What distance did you run?
Hiruma: Long distance. In high school, 5K was the main event. There were 10Ks too, but back then it was mostly road races. Now even high school students run 10K on the track.
So yes—I fell into my father’s strategy.
Q: When you went to Shizuoka to “study,” what was that like?
Hiruma: Honestly, I went with almost zero knowledge because my family didn’t have a tea factory. So I don’t think I “absorbed” a huge amount in the academic sense.
But because I knew nothing, everything became experience points. Every day added up.
Q: Do you think not coming from a long family tradition gave you more freedom to do unique work?
Hiruma: Absolutely. Sayama tea was at a turning point then. Deep-steamed tea was beginning to come in from Shizuoka, and only a few producers in Sayama were working on it.
Around that time, the Tea Industry Youth Association started a new initiative—the Fresh Green Tea Competition—and they decided to hold a competition focused on deep-steamed tea. Young people were beginning to show interest in new techniques.
For producers who’ve been making tea for generations, a “house standard” is already established. Parents’ opinions can be strong. It’s harder to change direction. In my case, I didn’t have that weight—so when a buyer asked for something new, I could pivot quickly.
And with new technology like deep-steaming at that time, no one had a long advantage in experience. Even with zero experience, I was allowed to start on the same line. That was a blessing.
Q: People often talk about “Sayama tea,” “Shizuoka tea,” or “Uji tea.” Are those categories meaningful?
Hiruma: They’re convenient, but the differences you can attribute to a region are not as obvious as the differences between makers. In that sense, it’s actually very hard—maybe impossible—to categorize tea by production area in a strict way.
People want categories, so we create them. It’s similar to how tea is sometimes grouped by “green,” “black,” or “oolong.” But even those boundaries aren’t as clear as people think. In reality, there’s a lot of overlap and a lot of possibility. That’s the point: each producer can create something unique.
Q: Today, there’s a big focus on withering/oxidation aromas (萎凋香 / ichōka). Were you already doing that back then?
Hiruma: No—this came later.
The aroma itself was known, but very few people were intentionally producing it. Then a wholesaler we worked with really loved that withered aroma. At the same time, a cultivar developed in Saitama called Sayamakaori was disliked by distributors—dark color, stronger astringency, less umami.
But cultivation-wise, Sayamakaori was excellent: relatively cold-tolerant, less pest damage, less late-frost damage for an early cultivar, and high yields. So it spread nationally for a while, even if the quality reputation wasn’t great.
What changed was this: when Sayamakaori is withered, its aroma can be incredible. We occasionally brought in teas that developed that aroma unintentionally, and they were highly praised—sometimes even commanding higher prices. I started to feel: if Sayama tea is going to survive, we need to make use of this kind of strength.
Q: How did producers do withering back then?
Hiruma: Very simply—spreading sheets in the yard, laying out the freshly picked leaves, stirring them while drying in the sun.
But it depended on weather, and timing the move into processing was difficult. It wasn’t stable. Quality wasn’t stable either.
Q: Did you ever try unusual experiments to make it work?
Hiruma: Yes. I wasn’t very hesitant about trying things that might sound foolish.
For example, I heard that fruit ripens faster when stored with apples because of ethylene gas. So I bought a lot of apples and put them in leaf containers with tea leaves to see if anything changed. Later I even tried using ethylene gas directly.
I tried blowing warm air. And more recently, I tried ozone. When I came to understand withering as oxidation driven by enzymes, I wondered if O₃ might be more effective than O₂. But ozone didn’t work either.
Q: You seem very creative—does art influence your tea work?
Hiruma: The artwork you saw isn’t mine. It belongs to a French artist I met on an airplane more than 30 years ago.
We communicated as best we could about what we each did, and the first card they sent had that drawing. I asked if I could use it as a trademark and they said yes.
But at the time, putting something like that on packaging was considered very outlandish. Customers rejected it completely.
Q: How is your tea received in the marketplace? Do you sell into the broader tea market?
Hiruma: If there’s an offer.
Q: Is your style appreciated? Or do buyers prefer standard teas for blending?
Hiruma: Not many people want my tea for blending. In those cases, we’ve usually turned them down—if we can tell. Sometimes we can’t.
Q: So is your tea mostly sold directly as a finished product?
Hiruma: That’s how I think about it. Some people think of tea as a raw ingredient, but I think of it as a product.
Recently I received an offer asking if we could make powder—because demand overseas for powdered tea like matcha is strong. In those uses—cafes, fast-food—it’s treated as a raw material, and I wouldn’t necessarily refuse that.
But blending my tea with other tea in a way that dissolves its identity—that isn’t what I want.
Q: Which cultivar is this tea (inquiring about what we are drinking)?
Hiruma: This is Yume Wakaba. It has a good reputation in Kyoto recently. Apparently it’s suitable for gyokuro and has placed highly in gyokuro competitions.
I’ve made use of Yume Wakaba through shading from the beginning and talked about it publicly. I don’t know how Kyoto adopted it, but from my experience it makes sense.
Q: It feels like gyokuro is dominated by Saemidori lately. Is that true?
Hiruma: For more than a dozen years, national gyokuro competitions have been overwhelmingly Saemidori. One reason is that Yame (Fukuoka) began dominating top rankings in gyokuro, and after that it became Saemidori-focused. Kyoto became less competitive.
Sencha is similar—ranking highly without Yabukita is very hard. Gyokuro and tencha have had more movement historically, but Saemidori has been very dominant.
Q: Are your cultivars mostly Saitama-born?
Hiruma: Everything except Yabukita.
Q: Why is hand-rolling (temomi) basically only done with Yabukita?
Hiruma: Because Yabukita is overwhelmingly dominant. When one cultivar becomes the standard, other cultivars become “different” in ways that are hard to evaluate in competition.
Also, competitions are relative evaluations—not absolute. Individuality tends to be excluded. I set prices based on what I believe the tea is worth as a product—my own absolute evaluation. Competition results and my pricing often don’t match.
Q: How do you personally balance tradition and innovation?
Hiruma: I don’t think tradition is something you “preserve” to keep it tradition.
The people who created tradition were trying to make something better. They weren’t afraid to change. What remains after continual improvement becomes “tradition.”
So I work as if I’m creating tradition. Even in hand-rolled tea, I think it changes every year. Skill improves. I can’t believe the same thing stayed identical for 300 years without evolution.
Q: Where does your pursuit of excellence come from? Are you like this in everything?
Hiruma: I’m not necessarily a perfectly orderly person. I can be loose in some ways. Maybe I’m capricious.
But in tea—hand-rolled tea, oolong, black tea—I go to extremes. I don’t aim for the “middle of the road.” I want to explore the edges, even the places where you might slip.
If you walk near both sides, you start to understand where the center is. I don’t fully trust something just because someone else did it. I want to confirm it myself—even if that means failing.
Q: How has Taiwan influenced your tea?
Hiruma: Through withering work, I met people—especially around a TV program appearance and industry connections—and was encouraged to visit Taiwan through an exchange program.
In Taiwan I experienced the production of Wenshan Baozhong with guidance from experts, including a former researcher from the Wenshan institute. That trip was very inspiring.
After returning, I felt strongly that if I want to make withered-aroma green tea, learning to make oolong would help me. I ordered equipment soon after and began making oolong.
Q: When making oxidized teas, are you trying to copy Taiwan—or create something Japanese?
Hiruma: Taiwan is a base, yes—but I always add my own original touch. I almost never do it exactly the Taiwanese way.
It’s the same with black tea. When I visit and learn, I come home imagining: “If I change this, something different could be born.” Each time I try a new approach. I don’t repeat the same thing over and over.
Q: What challenges do you see for Sayama tea—and Japanese tea overall—right now?
Hiruma: Demand for Japanese tea is declining overall. It feels like oversupply. The market has shifted toward low-priced bottled tea, while costs keep rising.
Large capital is good at reducing costs and producing efficiently. I can’t compete there. So I try to do what large players—and even other producers—don’t want to do.
I intentionally do the “troublesome” things. That’s where openings appear.
Q: What do you hope for in the next 10 years?
Hiruma: I want people all over the world—not only in Japan—to drink tea.
But that means we must propose things that the world will accept. The tea industry historically operated like a seller’s market, almost “lordly” business, with weak outward communication and little structure for receiving outside opinions.
I don’t think that works anymore. Kyoto may be a special case because it has sustained a strong, consistent way of doing things for a long time. But for most of the industry, if we can’t communicate, propose, and adapt, the industry will shrink.
Q: What advice would you give to someone serious about learning tea?
Hiruma: Don’t cut off your interest halfway.
Use the internet well. Information connects endlessly—one piece can lead to another, and eventually you find something truly valuable. Decades ago that was much harder.
But the most important thing is this: at some point, you have to test and confirm things yourself. Many people repeat brewing methods or “best practices” without comparing them in real life. If you’ve tested it yourself, you can teach it with confidence—and change it when you discover something better.
Also: if you only work from a manual, it’s hard to build real skill. You have to become the kind of person who creates the manual.
Looking to experience the teas of Yoshiaki Hiruma, try his Kiwami Collection Box Set
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