Musashikaori: Named for Its Aroma, Specified for Its Umami

by Christian Mauerer, founder of One with Tea, who spent five weeks filming with tea growers across Shizuoka and Kyushu in May 2025

Musashikaori is a Japanese sencha cultivar named for its fragrance, and its official prefectural spec sheet does not mention fragrance at all. Saitama's recommended cultivar table lists its quality characteristic as 「濃厚な旨味」, rich umami, with no aroma descriptor in that row.

The national cultivar handbook goes further. Deep steam this leaf, it warns, and the distinctive aroma that defines the plant is lost. One with Tea does not sell a Musashikaori and I have never tasted one. What follows is the record of a cultivar caught between its own name and its own paperwork.

Key Takeaways

• It is new, not old. Crossed 1967, but named only on 19 August 1997 as 茶農林46号, registered as plant variety No. 9306 in October 2001, and adopted as a Saitama recommended cultivar in 2001. Third-newest of the prefecture's nine.
• The pedigree in circulation is wrong. Musashikaori is Yabukita crossed with Sai-27F1-73, and 27F1-73 is Sayamamidori crossed with a seedling of 硬枝紅心, which Japan's national research organisation records as a Taiwanese cultivar. The much-copied summary table says Sayamakaori, and skips a generation.
• Named for aroma, specified for umami. The naming note cites 「香りの優れた品種」, a cultivar of superior aroma. The spec table's quality row says rich umami and nothing else.
• Deep steaming erases the point. The handbook reads 「深蒸しにすると品種の特性である特徴ある香気が失われる」: if deep-steamed, the distinctive aroma that is the cultivar's defining characteristic is lost.
• Highest first-flush yield index of Saitama's nine. Index 160 against Yabukita at 100, which is the breeding-site figure. Across five regional trial sites the breeders' own paper gives 94 to 119, which is why the national handbook calls the yield about the same as Yabukita's.

What is the Musashikaori tea cultivar?

Musashikaori (むさしかおり) is a mid-late sencha cultivar bred at the Saitama Tea Experiment Station, named 茶農林46号, Chanorin No. 46, on 19 August 1997, and entered in Japan's plant variety register as No. 9306 in October 2001. Saitama adopted it as a 奨励品種, a recommended cultivar, the same year.

The handbook's name-origin box explains both halves of the name at once: 「埼玉県（武蔵の国）で育成され、香りの優れた品種であることから「むさしかおり」と命名された。」 Bred in Saitama, the old province of Musashi, and named Musashikaori because it is a cultivar of superior aroma.

Musashikaori at a glance

Attribute	Detail
Names	むさしかおり. Registry name 茶農林46号. Line names 埼玉33号, earlier 67F1-298
Registration	Named 19 August 1997. Plant variety No. 9306, October 2001. Export of seed and seedlings prohibited, own-use propagation needs no licence
Parentage	Yabukita (seed parent) × 埼27F1-73 (pollen parent), crossed 1967 in Saitama. Use: 煎茶, sencha
Season	中晩生, mid-late. 2 to 3 days after Yabukita on the spec table, 2 to 4 in the handbook
Signature	Spec table: 濃厚な旨味, rich umami. Public page: 柑橘系のさわやかな香りと温和なうまみ, fresh citrus-family aroma and gentle umami
Cold	青枯れ 強, strong. 赤枯れ 中, medium. Listed strengths: quality, blue-wilt resistance, bark-split frost resistance
Standing	One of Saitama's nine recommended cultivars since 2001. No published planted area

One wrinkle, because it shows how carefully this record has to be read. The prefecture's consumer cultivar page calls Musashikaori 中生, mid-season. The prefecture's own spec table and the breeders' 2000 paper both say 中晩生, mid-late. Two pages from the same prefecture disagree, and I have followed the table and the paper.

A 1967 cross that waited thirty years for a name

The cross was made in 1967 and the plant was not named until 19 August 1997, thirty years later. Through the trial years it travelled as 埼玉33号, 「埼玉33号の系統名で」, and before that as 67F1-298.

1. 1967. Yabukita crossed as seed parent with 埼27F1-73 as pollen parent, in Saitama.
2. 1990 to 1996. Adaptability trials, 栄養系適応性検定試験, screening for 裂傷型凍害, bark-split frost injury, and もち病, blister blight. The paper's Japanese summary says 16場所, sixteen locations. Its own English abstract says seventeen stations. I cannot reconcile the two.
3. 21 January 1997. Candidate-naming meeting, 「1997年1月21日に行われた茶品種候補命名」.
4. 19 August 1997. Named 茶農林46号, 「1997年8月19日に茶農林46号'むさしかおり'」.
5. October 2001. Registered: 「品種登録番号：9306 種苗の海外持出：禁止 自家増殖の許諾：不要」.
6. 2001. Adopted by Saitama, 「採用年度 平成13年」.

Eleven names sit on that paper, led by Hiroshi Uchino, spread across the tea experiment station, the Chichibu agricultural extension centre, and four listed as former station staff. Thirty years of somebody's working life sits between that cross and that name.

I am labouring the dates because the description I began this research with called Musashikaori an old cultivar central to Saitama's character. It is neither. Plotted against the adoption year of every cultivar on Saitama's recommended list, it sits third from the end.

The Taiwanese line behind a Saitama sencha

Musashikaori is Yabukita crossed with 埼27F1-73 in 1967, and 27F1-73 is itself a cross: Sayamamidori, an Uji native-stock seedling, with a seedling of 硬枝紅心, which Japan's national agriculture and food research organisation records flatly as 「台湾の品種」, a Taiwanese cultivar. Counted properly, the 硬枝紅心 seedling is Musashikaori's grandparent and 硬枝紅心 itself is a great-grandparent, all of it on the pollen side. I am being fussy about the generation count on purpose, because skipping one is precisely the error this section is about to describe.

That is not the pedigree you will usually find. The compiled Chanorin registry list prints this for No. 46: 茶農林４６号 むさしかおり 埼玉３３号 さやまかおり×硬枝紅心実生 1997 埼玉 煎茶. It names Sayamakaori instead of Sayamamidori, and it compresses two generations into one, as though the 硬枝紅心 seedling went straight into Musashikaori rather than into its parent line. Both halves of that cell are wrong.

Three independent records agree against it. The handbook's pedigree chart lays the two generations out separately. The breeders' 2000 paper gives, in its English abstract, a cross between Yabukita as female and 27F1-73 as male in 1967. And the Japanese Tea Sommelier cultivar page spells it out as Yabukita crossed with Sai-27F1-73, itself Sayama-midori crossed with a seed of Yingzhi-hongxin, which is 硬枝紅心 in Mandarin romanisation.

I have no business being smug about this, because we repeated the error twice. Our article on Sayamakaori lists Musashikaori among its descendants, and our article on Sayamamidori says Musashikaori descends from Sayamakaori rather than from this plant. That is exactly backwards, it came from trusting the compiled table, and both pages are queued for correction.

On 硬枝紅心 itself the primary record is one phrase long. The chart gives 硬枝紅心 as Taiwanese and records the seedling's own pollen parent as unknown, 「？♂ 自然交雑」, arisen by natural crossing. Everything beyond that, the Fujian origin and the oolong use, comes from encyclopaedic pages rather than a breeding record, so read it as background, not fact. I looked for another Chanorin entry naming 硬枝紅心 and found none, which is not the same as there being none.

Named for its aroma, specified for its umami

Here is the contradiction at the centre of this plant. The naming note says 「香りの優れた品種」, a cultivar of superior aroma. The 品質の特徴 row of Saitama's spec table, the document a grower actually consults, says 「濃厚な旨味」, rich umami, and gives no aroma descriptor at all.

The prefecture's public page hands the aroma back: 「むさしかおり（茶農林46号）＜埼玉県茶業試験場／平成9年育成＞ 中生。寒さに強く、あまり大きくなりすぎない品種。柑橘系のさわやかな香りと温和なうまみが特徴。高級茶向きの上品なお茶です。」 Cold-hardy, does not grow too large, characterised by a fresh citrus-family aroma and a gentle umami, an elegant tea suited to premium grades. Aroma first, umami second.

The breeders had it both ways in one sentence, and theirs is the fullest description on the record: 「製品の色沢は濃緑であり細くよれ、すっきり爽やかな香気、濃厚な水色・旨味に特徴があり優秀である」. Deep green in colour and lustre, finely rolled, a clean refreshing aroma, a dense liquor and rich umami, and excellent. The handbook adds that processing quality equals Yabukita's, with appearance and taste particularly good. Both traits are genuinely in the file. What differs is which one each document makes the headline, and the spec table, the one with a planting decision attached, drops aroma entirely.

The national handbook has an aroma descriptor of its own, on a sensory page away from the cultivar card, and it agrees with neither of them. It gives Musashikaori 「乳製品をイメージさせる濃厚な香り」, a rich aroma evocative of dairy. On the same page Sakimidori gets the citrus note 「夏をイメージさせる柑橘系の香り」, the summery citrus aroma that Saitama's public page hands to this plant instead. So the record holds at least three readings of one cultivar's aroma: citrus from the prefecture, clean and refreshing from the breeders, rich and dairylike from the national handbook. That is worth sitting with rather than resolving. Aroma descriptors are panel impressions, and panels differ.

For notes from an actual cup I found one published palate, and I am attributing it rather than asserting it. Florent of Japanese Tea Sommelier writes that Musashikaori's aromas remind him of spices, cloves among others, and that it is a rather mild, sweet variety with umami too. Those are his impressions of tea he drank. Nothing in the prefectural or national record mentions clove or spice.

The withering question, kept honest

Florent also writes that this is a cultivar that looks interesting with withering, 萎凋, the controlled wilting step. That is his opinion, and nobody has published that anyone actually withers Musashikaori. The sourced fact I can set beside it is this: Saitama's spec table gives 「萎凋香」, withering aroma, as the quality characteristic for both Yumewakaba and Sayamamidori. So the prefecture demonstrably works with withering, and chose not to attach it to this plant. My own reading, offered as reasoning only, is that a cultivar carrying a Taiwanese great-grandparent is at least an interesting candidate. A hypothesis, not a tasting note.

One correction to that page while we are citing it. It dates the registration to 1992. The verified dates are the 19 August 1997 naming and the No. 9306 registration in October 2001. It is right on pedigree where the compiled tables are wrong, and wrong on the date, which is a fair warning that no single source here is clean.

Why deep steaming erases the point of Musashikaori

The handbook puts it in one sentence, in the processing notes on the cultivar's card: 「深蒸しにすると品種の特性である特徴ある香気が失われる」. If it is deep-steamed, the distinctive aroma that is the cultivar's defining characteristic is lost. Not muted. Lost.

A word on what that means, drawn from my own working knowledge rather than from any of the documents here. Steaming happens early in making sencha, and how long it runs is one of the choices that most changes the finished tea. Regular steaming, futsumushi, runs shorter. Deep steaming, fukamushi, runs longer. I have no sourced figure for what share of Japan's sencha is deep-steamed, so I will not give you one, but it is common enough that I would not assume a given bag is regular-steamed unless the maker says so.

Line the documents up and the problem is plain. The name says aroma. The breeders say 「すっきり爽やかな香気」, a clean refreshing aroma. The public page says citrus. And the handbook says a widely used processing style takes that aroma away. Which may be part of why the spec table's quality row says umami and stops there, though I should be clear that this is my inference and not a sourced claim. What the documents establish is that the aroma does not survive the deep steam. They say nothing about what happens to the umami. If you ever find a Musashikaori for sale, ask the seller how long the leaf was steamed before you ask anything else.

The highest yield index in Saitama, and what it asks of the grower

On Saitama's spec table, where 「収量指数は「やぶきた」を100としています」, yield is indexed with Yabukita at 100, Musashikaori posts 160 for the first flush and 154 for the second. That first-flush figure is the highest of the prefecture's nine recommended cultivars, and nothing else on the list is close on the first crop.

Now the conflict. The handbook's card says 「収量は一番茶は「やぶきた」並で、二番茶は「やぶきた」並かやや多い」, first flush about the same as Yabukita, second the same or slightly more. The breeders sit between the two with 「一・二番茶の収量は'やぶきた'と同等か多い」, equal to or more. Set against an index of 160 that looks like a flat contradiction, and I first wrote it up as one. It is not. The breeders' paper resolves it, in the very section the index comes from. At the breeding site, averaged over the ninth, tenth and fourteenth years after planting, Musashikaori gave 350kg of first flush per 10 ares against Yabukita's 218kg, and 284kg of second flush against 184kg. Those two ratios come to 160.6 and 154.3, which is where the table's 160 and 154 come from. No source says so outright, but the numbers match exactly, so I read Saitama's index as the breeding-site figure. Across the regional trial sites the same paper reports a first-flush index of 「94〜119」 against Yabukita, from five locations over four years, and that is what the handbook's about the same is describing. Both numbers are honest. They measure different ground and different ages: the 350kg figure comes from bushes in their ninth, tenth and fourteenth years, the 94 to 119 index from plants aged four to seven. A tea bush is still filling out at four. So 160 is the mature best case, not the usual one.

Vigour splits the same way. Saitama says 樹勢 強, strong, and the paper agrees, 「樹姿は開張型で樹勢は強い」. The handbook says 樹勢は「やぶきた」並, equal to Yabukita. Ring-spot splits too: the handbook records 「輪斑病にやや強い抵抗性」, somewhat strong resistance, while Saitama's table rates 輪斑病 as 中, medium.

What both agree on is the shape of the plant and the work it makes. This is a 芽数型 cultivar, a many-shoots type, 芽数 多 with 芽重 やや小: plenty of buds, each one light. The table's cultivation note is blunt, 「芽数型品種であるので適宜深刈り等を行い芽重の低下を防ぐ。」, because it is a many-shoots cultivar, carry out deep pruning as appropriate to stop shoot weight dropping. The handbook asks for the same renewal pruning. So the yield, however you index it, arrives as a lot of small shoots that need managing.

On pests, the handbook calls the plant somewhat weak to もち病, blister blight, while Saitama rates 炭そ病 as やや強, somewhat strong. One flag for anyone reading compiled cultivar pages: a line about moderate blister-blight resistance is easy to misattribute to Musashikaori when it actually belongs to the cultivar on the following handbook page, and says the opposite. I nearly made that mistake myself before checking where the page breaks fall.

How cold-hardy is Musashikaori?

Cold is the trait every source agrees on. Saitama rates 青枯れ, cold-drought wilt, as 強, strong, and lists 耐青枯れ性 and 耐裂傷型凍害, resistance to blue wilt and bark-split frost injury, among the cultivar's outstanding characteristics alongside quality itself.

The breeders wrote 「耐寒性は青枯れ抵抗性、裂傷型凍害抵抗性とも'やぶきた'より優れる」, superior to Yabukita in both. The English abstract of the same paper adds the nuance that keeps this honest: resistance to freezing injury generally is almost the same as Yabukita's. So this is not a blanket hardiness claim. It is better on two specific named injuries, comparable on freezing damage overall, and Saitama's table backs the split by rating 赤枯れ, red wilt, only 中.

The handbook turns the trait into a placement: 「全国的に栽培が可能であり、特に冷涼地での評価が高い」, cultivable nationwide, with particularly high evaluation in cool districts. The paper is more specific: 「耐寒性が強いので、関東茶産地及びこれと気象条件の類似する東海・近畿・四国・九州の山間冷涼地で、寒害発生の常習地帯に適する」. Suited to the Kanto tea districts and the cool mountain areas of Tokai, Kinki, Shikoku and Kyushu with similar conditions, particularly where cold damage is habitual. Read that as the breeding brief. A plant bred in Kanto against bark-split frost was bred for the winters its breeders actually had.

Where Musashikaori actually grows

I cannot tell you how much Musashikaori is planted, and that absence is itself a finding. I searched Saitama's statistics pages, the recommended-cultivar table and the prefecture's cultivar page, and found no hectare figure and no percentage for this plant anywhere. What the prefecture does publish is the denominator: 「全国の栽培面積は全栽培面積の8割弱を占めています（埼玉県では65％）」, Yabukita is just under 80 percent of national planted area and 65 percent in Saitama.

Be precise about that absence. A ministry table breaking cultivars down by prefecture exists and I could not decode it, so I am not claiming Musashikaori is missing from it. Treat the area as unmeasured, not as zero.

Its standing, by contrast, is documented twice. Musashikaori is one of the nine cultivars on Saitama's recommended list and one of the nine on the prefecture's separate list of main cultivars grown. Those two lists of nine are not the same nine, a trap for anyone quoting either, and this plant is on both. The same page notes 「茶業研究所では200種以上のお茶を栽培しています。」, more than 200 varieties at the research institute. Read that as a breeding collection rather than 200 commercial cultivars standing in growers' fields; the page does not spell the distinction out, but the recommended nine are the commercially meaningful set.

So: officially recommended, with no published planting figure in either direction, and offered as a single-cultivar tea by at least one specialist seller, which is where Florent's tasting notes came from in 2022. It is the pattern our article on the Yabukita problem describes. A prefecture can put a cultivar on a list. A list has no way to compete with the 65 percent already in the ground.

How to brew Musashikaori

Ask about the steaming first. That is an odd brewing instruction, but the handbook's warning makes processing the variable that decides your cup, and it is decided long before the leaf reaches you. A regular-steamed Musashikaori and a deep-steamed one are not the same tea.

After that, the record gives you two targets pulling in different directions. The official quality characteristic is 濃厚な旨味, rich umami. The name, the breeders' 「すっきり爽やかな香気」 and the prefecture's citrus note all point the other way, to aroma. No source I found prescribes a water temperature or a steep time for this cultivar, so how you balance those two is not a documented answer. It is a judgement call. The prefecture also calls it 「高級茶向きの上品なお茶」, an elegant tea suited to premium grades.

From my own practice with regular-steamed sencha built around umami, and only that: around 70°C, generous leaf, close to a minute on the first infusion, then hotter and much shorter on the second, where aroma tends to show most clearly. I have never brewed this cultivar, so if a bag ever reaches me I will follow the maker's instructions before my own habits.

Frequently asked questions

Is Musashikaori an old cultivar?

No. It was crossed in 1967 but named only on 19 August 1997 as 茶農林46号, registered as plant variety No. 9306 in October 2001, and adopted as a Saitama recommended cultivar in 2001. Of the prefecture's nine recommended cultivars it is the third most recent, behind Yumewakaba and Sainomidori.

What are Musashikaori's parents?

Yabukita is the seed parent and 埼27F1-73, Sai-27F1-73, is the pollen parent, crossed in 1967. Sai-27F1-73 is itself Sayamamidori crossed with a seedling of 硬枝紅心, recorded by Japan's national research organisation as a Taiwanese cultivar. Summaries naming Sayamakaori as the parent are wrong on both the name and the generation.

What does Musashikaori taste like?

Saitama's spec table gives its quality characteristic as 濃厚な旨味, rich umami, with no aroma descriptor. The prefecture's public page adds a fresh citrus-family aroma and gentle umami, and the breeders recorded a clean refreshing aroma with a dense liquor and rich umami. Florent of Japanese Tea Sommelier found spice and clove notes in a mild, sweet cup.

Why should Musashikaori not be deep-steamed?

Because the national cultivar handbook says deep steaming destroys the aroma that defines it: 「深蒸しにすると品種の特性である特徴ある香気が失われる」. The plant is named for its fragrance, so processing it in the style that removes that fragrance wastes the reason to grow it. Ask any seller how long the leaf was steamed.

How much Musashikaori is grown in Saitama?

No published figure exists that I could find. I searched Saitama's statistics pages, the recommended-cultivar table and the prefecture's cultivar page without finding a hectare or a percentage for it. For scale, the prefecture states that Yabukita is 65 percent of Saitama's planted area and just under 80 percent nationally.

When is Musashikaori harvested?

It is 中晩生, mid-late. Saitama's spec table puts the first flush 2 to 3 days after Yabukita, the national handbook says 2 to 4 days, and the breeders' paper says 2 to 3 days in cold districts and 3 to 6 in warm ones. The prefecture's consumer page calls it 中生, mid-season, which its own spec table contradicts.

A note from me

I do not sell Musashikaori and I have never tasted it. I would rather state that than let it be inferred from the absence of a tasting note. In May 2025 I spent five weeks filming with growers in Shizuoka and Kyushu, and across all of it this cultivar never once came up, which is about what you would expect of a Saitama plant with no published planted area.

So this is a record, not a review, and most of it came from reading the documents against each other. A plant named for fragrance. A spec table that files it under umami. A handbook warning that a common processing style takes the fragrance away. A yield index leading its whole cohort, attached to an area nobody publishes. And a pedigree that circulated wrong for years, including in two of our own articles, because one compiled table typed one syllable incorrectly.

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Christian
Founder, One with Tea

Sources

• National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, 茶品種ハンドブック 第6版, p.26, p.34 and the pedigree chart: cultivar handbook, PDF in Japanese. The registration card for plant variety No. 9306, the name-origin note, the deep-steaming warning, the sensory page at printed p.34 giving 「乳製品をイメージさせる濃厚な香り」 for this cultivar and 「夏をイメージさせる柑橘系の香り」 for Sakimidori, the plucking date of 2 to 4 days after Yabukita, vigour equal to Yabukita, yield about the same as Yabukita, somewhat strong ring-spot resistance, the blister blight, anthracnose and white peach scale control notes, the renewal-pruning note, the nationwide cultivability with high evaluation in cool districts, and the pedigree chart giving both generations and recording 硬枝紅心 as a Taiwanese cultivar arisen by natural crossing.
• Uchino and colleagues, new tea cultivar むさしかおり, 茶業研究報告 89, 2000, pp. 45 to 58: journal record, in Japanese with English summary. The breeders' own paper: the 1967 cross, the 19 August 1997 naming and the 21 January 1997 candidate-naming meeting, the 埼玉33号 line name, the 1990 to 1996 trials with sixteen locations in the Japanese summary against seventeen stations in the English abstract, the clonal adaptability testing with bark-split frost and blister blight screening, spreading habit with strong vigour, the breeding-site yields of 350kg against 218kg on the first flush and 284kg against 184kg on the second, the 94 to 119 regional-site index, the mid-late plucking window, the cold-tolerance sentence and the freezing-injury nuance, the full product description, the anthracnose finding, and the suitable-area statement covering Kanto and comparable cool mountain districts.
• Saitama Prefecture, 埼玉県茶奨励品種の特性表: recommended cultivar spec table, in Japanese. The source of both charts: the 採用年度 adoption years for all nine recommended cultivars and the 収量指数 first and second flush yield indices with Yabukita at 100. Also the mid-late season rating, spreading habit, strong vigour, the blue-wilt and red-wilt cold ratings, the anthracnose and ring-spot ratings, the many-shoots bud data, the 濃厚な旨味 quality row, the outstanding-characteristics row, the deep-pruning cultivation note, and the withering-aroma quality rows for Yumewakaba and Sayamamidori.
• Saitama Prefecture, 埼玉県で栽培されている茶の品種: prefectural cultivar page, in Japanese. The full public description of Musashikaori including the citrus-family aroma, the gentle umami, the premium-grade framing and the 中生 rating that the spec table contradicts; the statement that Yabukita is just under 80 percent of national planted area and 65 percent in Saitama; the separate list of nine main cultivars grown; and the note that the tea research institute grows more than 200 varieties.
• Chanorin registered cultivar list, compiled: list, PDF in Japanese. Cited as the source of the pedigree error rather than as evidence for it. Its line for 茶農林46号 prints さやまかおり×硬枝紅心実生, naming Sayamakaori instead of Sayamamidori and compressing two generations into one. It also supplies the 1997 naming year, the 埼玉33号 line name and the sencha use, which the primary sources confirm.
• Florent, Japanese Tea Sommelier, "The cultivars from Sayama," 22 February 2022: blog post. The correct two-generation pedigree in English, the tasting impressions of spices and cloves in a mild sweet cup, the suggestion that the cultivar looks interesting with withering, and the Musashino explanation of the name. Its registration year of 1992 is wrong: the verified dates are the 1997 naming and the 2001 registration.