Ujitawara

In Yuyadani, Ujitawara, in southern Kyoto Prefecture, a tea farmer named Nagatani Soen is said to have devised a new processing method in 1738. Unlike the tea made before it, steaming the new buds, then hand-rolling them over a hoiro drying frame, and drying them, is said to have produced a tea with a vivid green color and a mellow flavor. This method is said to be called aosei sencha. Nagatani Soen's birthplace still stands in the mountain valley of Yuyadani, its old hoiro drying frame said to be spoken of as a place that keeps the memory of the hand-rolling process alive.

Combining the three steps of steaming, rolling, and drying is said to have been groundbreaking for its time. Nagatani Soen is said to have passed the technique to tea merchants in Edo, from where it spread nationwide. The basic process behind sencha making today is said to trace back to this method born in Ujitawara. Rolling the leaf by hand over the hoiro frame is said to have taken roughly half a day, a delicate task balancing pressure and heat at the same time.

Being situated within Uji, a region known for premium tea, while still needing a way to make green tea more easily and at greater volume, is said to have been the soil that produced this new method. Nagatani Soen's birthplace still stands today, spoken of as the birthplace of Japanese green tea. Ujitawara is a settlement in a mountain-ringed valley with little flat farmland, and the need to devise a simpler method suited to volume production is also said to have driven the innovation.