Hojicha: the tea, the name, the stories

A name for the way tea is made

Roasting tea is called baisen. Hojicha takes its name from this process, rather than from the part of the plant used or the place where it grew.

Kukicha, or stem tea, is made from the stems of gyokuro or sencha. Here, the name describes the ingredient. Roasted stem tea can therefore be both kukicha and hojicha, while hojicha is not necessarily made from stems. The ingredients and the description together give a fuller picture of what is in the packet.

When the rice is roasted

Genmaicha combines sencha or bancha with roasted rice, such as brown rice. The distinction lies in what receives the heat: the tea itself for hojicha, and rice added to the tea for genmaicha. A small difference in the names points to a different way of making the drink.

Tea stories from Kyoto and Kaga

Two regional accounts tell of finding a use for tea that might otherwise have been left over. One concerns leaf in Kyoto; the other, stems in Ishikawa Prefecture.

Yamamotoyama recounts a story from the Yamashiro area of Kyoto Prefecture, from the end of the Taisho era into the early Showa era. Tea merchants faced with unsold leaf are said to have devised hojicha as a way to use that stock. The story is passed on as an account of how hojicha came to be there.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries tells the regional history of Kaga bōcha in its encyclopedia of traditional Japanese foods. In Meiji 35, it writes, the Kanazawa tea merchant Hayashiya Shinbei developed a use for stems left over from drying tea leaves for long storage. He roasted the stems and sold them as Kaga bōcha. The account describes a tea that became very popular for its distinctive aroma, flavour and everyday price.

Different places, different beginnings

The Kyoto account centres on unsold leaf; the Kaga account on stems. Their ingredients, places and periods differ. Each belongs to the history of its own region’s tea, bringing a different story to the familiar name on the packet.