Q.What is Yamato-cha? Is Nara a tea region too?

What Yamato-cha is — Nara green tea from the highlands

Yamato-cha is the umbrella name for Nara green tea. Its main growing areas are eastern Nara City (Tsukigase, Tawara, Yagyu, Tsuge), Yamazoe Village, Uda City (including Muro), Oyodo Town and Higashiyoshino Village — across the Yamato Highlands at around 200–600 m elevation. This cool, hilly terrain with large day-night temperature swings suits tea well. Local labels exist (Tsukigase-cha, Tawara-cha, Yagyu-cha, Muro-cha and others), but the whole prefecture markets them together as Yamato-cha (sources: Nara Prefecture, Nara City, MAFF).

History — said to have been introduced by Kukai (806)

By tradition, Yamato-cha dates to the year 806. The monk Kukai (Kobo Daishi) is said to have brought tea seeds back from Tang China and sown them in what is now Akabane, Haibara, Uda City, also passing on the production method — making Butsuryu-ji temple in Uda the reputed birthplace, where the tea mill he brought is said to be preserved. That is over 1,200 years of history. Nara black tea even won international recognition in the Meiji era, but production later shifted to green teas (sencha, kabuse-cha, bancha and so on) (sources: MAFF traditional foods archive; Nara Prefecture and Nara City).

Production — 7th in Japan (2020 figures)

In tea statistics, Nara has been excluded from MAFF's annual list of "major producing prefectures" since 2018. That annual list covers just five: Shizuoka, Kagoshima and Mie, plus Saitama and Kyoto (which run crop-insurance programs). So Nara's numbers only appear in the periodic years when every prefecture is surveyed. In the most recent such year, 2020, Nara produced 1,490 tonnes of crude tea — about 2.1% of the national total — ranking 7th (after Shizuoka, Kagoshima, Mie, Miyazaki, Kyoto and Fukuoka). The national total that year was 69,800 tonnes (sources: MAFF Crop Statistics / e-Stat).

How Nara compares with the top producers

In 2020, Shizuoka led with 25,200 tonnes of crude tea (36.1% of the national total) and Kagoshima followed with 23,900 tonnes (34.2%) — those two alone made up roughly 70% of Japan's output. Mie was 3rd with 5,080 tonnes (7.3%). Nara's 1,490 tonnes (about 2.1%) is far below these giants, but it holds a solid 7th place nationally. Yamato-cha from the cool Yamato Highlands can't match the scale of the big regions, yet the numbers confirm that Nara is a genuine tea region (sources: MAFF 2020 Crop Statistics / e-Stat).

Datasets behind this article

• Traditional Foods of Japan: Miwa Sōmen (MAFF)農林水産省
• Nara's Nationally Designated Traditional Crafts奈良県
• RESAS Tourism Map経済産業省・内閣府