343 
JAPANESE TEA. 
Japan prides herself upon her tea-plant, and rightly so. Although the establishment 
of a foreign trade has excited no extreme enterprise in increasing the exports for the 
European and American markets, the access we shall shortly obtain to additional ports, 
and the removal of various restrictions to local industry under the new policy that has 
been inaugurated, cannot fail to enlarge the supplies, and possibly we shall find in time 
the artificial regulation of prices done away with. Whilst the French, through consu¬ 
lar interference, have obtained a virtual monopoly of the silk trade, Japanese tea has 
been submitted to the free competition of foreign buyers. 
The plant is called by the Japanese tsia; it is not cultivated in large gardens or 
plantations as in China, but merely on the borders of fields, and along the margin of 
lakes and rivers. Abundance of leaves are commonly produced. In the early gathering, 
which takes place at the end of February, the young leaves are collected one by one ; 
the second gathering commences at the end of Mdrch, or in the first days of April; the 
third and most abundant gathering takes place some weeks later. The leaves of the 
first gathering, which are few and small and hardly developed, are reserved for the im¬ 
perial court and the territorial Daimios. The leaves are called by the Japanese 
“ flower of tea,” and are selected with great care, one by one, by persons who for some 
days previously are placed on vegetable diet, and must perform frequent daily ablutions. 
They are not even suffered to touch the leaves, but wear gloves when engaged in the 
gathering. The leaves when plucked are immediately placed in small bags of paper. 
The product of the second gathering is variously classified ; especial care is taken, 
however, in each description to secure uniformity of size. For the third gathering the 
leaves are left until they attain their full dimensions, and the tea made from the 
coarsest leaves constitutes the ordinary drink of the people. It is the age of the leaf 
which constitutes the chief distinction in the assortments made up. The product of 
the first gathering is termed itziban , the second niban, the third sanban. The itziban 
is always reduced to powder, the niban is subdivided into four classes, which differ in 
goodness and price; the varieties of the sanban approximate to a considerable propor¬ 
tion of the tea exported from China to Europe. The description to which we have re¬ 
ferred as used by the artisans and peasants of the country is named bantsjaa ; it will 
bear continued exposure to the air, and yet preserve the virtues of the piant lor a longer 
time than the finer sorts. The really imperial tea of Japan is cultivated on a mountain 
in the vicinity of Miako, the residence of the bpiritual Emperor, in a locality considered 
the more favourable to the culture thau any other. There are various inodes in Japan 
of preparing the leaves. Those of the first gathering, and which never reach our 
market, are dipped in tepid water, placed between thick leaves of paper, which are then 
heated ; they are not rolled at all. The most common method of treating the leaves is 
to dry them on a plate of iron over a slow lire, the heat being gradually lessened, sub¬ 
sequently rolling them between the hands, the operation of drying and rolling being 
again and again repeated when necessary, in order to render them sufficiently friable. 
The best leaves are judged to be those which possess this qua.ity in the greatest degree 
—that is, which can be most easily reduced to powder, femall proprietors in the coun¬ 
try, where public establishments for the purpose of preparation do not exist, roast the 
leaves in earthen vessels, without employing much art. The tea thus made is by no 
means bad ; the preparation entails little expense, and it can be sold cheaply, borne 
months after being manufactured, the better descriptions of tea are placed in earthen 
vases, and submitted to a low heat, in order to dissipate every vestige of humidity. 
Possibly some of the Chinese teas imported would be sensibly improved by a similar 
process. The tea used by the two emperors, their courts, and the princely daimios, is 
kept in porcelain vases of enormous value. There is no doubt that the Japanese are 
inclined to drink tea to an injurious extent, valuing the beverage for its effect iu enrich¬ 
ing the adipose and muscular tissues ; but this advantage, so far ao it is taken in excess, 
is apt to be counterbalanced by the nervous excitation produced. In preparing the tea, 
the Japanese use water that has been kept at the boiling-point for a considerable time 
previously, and in which the tea is, on this account, more soluble ; it is drunk with 
sugar. The water of snow clarified is preferred to any other for the purpose of the so¬ 
lution. It is asserted by the resident British merchants at Yokohama that a loss was 
entailed on almost every shipment of Japanese tea to Europe during the past year.— 
The Grocer. 
