Japanese Tea Producers: 5 Voices Reshaping the Matcha World

In May 2025, I spent two weeks in Japan filming a documentary about matcha. I met dozens of Japanese tea producers, importers, and teachers across Kyoto, Tokyo, and the southern prefectures. Five voices stayed with me long after I came home. These five each translate Japan's tea tradition for the rest of the world. They're not all farmers. Some are foreigners who chose Japan. One is a fifth-generation grower. Together they show what the matcha boom looks like from the inside, and what it costs the people quietly holding the line on craft.

Why these five voices matter

Japan's tea world is mostly closed to outsiders. Most farms don't have English websites. Most ceremony schools don't accept foreign students. So when a Frenchman opens a tea house in Kyoto, or a Swede earns a sencha diploma, or a Canadian becomes a tea-school professor, it matters. These are translators in the deepest sense. They've earned standing inside the tradition, and they speak outward in languages the rest of us can hear. The fifth voice, a fifth-generation grower, anchors the whole picture in the soil.

Alexandre Nicolau: Mandaracha, Kyoto (founded 2019)

Alexandre Nicolau is a French national who founded Mandaracha in Kyoto in 2019. The tea house is fully vegan, with a retail program plus cultural experiences like tea ceremony, Shamisen, and Rakugo. Mandaracha sources from 8 prefectures: Kyoto, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, Ehime, Kochi, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, and Mie. When I visited, what struck me was how Alexandre approaches tea from a culinary angle. He treats each cup like a chef treats an ingredient, with a respect for origin that most retail brands skip entirely. See mandaracha.com for the full sourcing map.

Per Oscar Brekell: SENCHAISM, Tokyo

Per Oscar Brekell is a Swedish-born tea instructor based in Tokyo. He trained as a certified Nihoncha (Japanese Tea) Instructor in 2014, one of very few non-Japanese people to hold the credential. In 2018 he founded SENCHAISM, a brand focused on single-origin sencha. He has authored five books on Japanese tea, including A Beginner's Guide to Japanese Tea. His career sits at the rare intersection of practitioner, scholar, and ambassador. Background details are confirmed by the Unearthed Gallery maker profile and the SCCJ profile.

Ian Chun: Yunomi.life, Tokyo

Ian Chun was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, studied at Brown University, and moved to Japan in 1999. He is the founder and CEO of Yunomi.life, based in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Yunomi works directly with more than 300 tea growers and tea merchants, lists over 1,000 varieties of Japanese tea, and ships internationally to 90+ countries. When I spoke with Ian, what came through was his belief in people-to-people commerce, the idea that a teacup connects two human beings, not two logos. Profile and shipping reach via Yunomi.life; grower count and catalog scale via the Global Japanese Tea Association.

Randy Channell Soei: Urasenke tea practitioner, Kyoto

Randy Channell Soei was born in Victoria, British Columbia. He studied at Urasenke Gakuen Professional College of Chado in Kyoto from 1993 to 1996, and received his tea name, Soei, in 1999. He teaches at Doshisha University, gives regular lessons at Nashinoki Shrine in Kyoto, and lectures widely. His book The Book of Chanoyu Tea: The Master Key to Japanese Culture (Tuttle Publishing, 2022) is one of two books he has authored on the Way of Tea. When I asked Randy about the ceremonial grade label, his answer was direct. The label, he said, doesn't carry the same weight inside Japan as it does abroad. Background confirmed by Wikipedia, Ikigai Tribe, and Matador Network.

Maruyasu: a fifth-generation family farm

Maruyasu is a fifth-generation family tea farm in the Kyoto tea-growing region. I visited on day two of the Kyoto leg of the trip. The lineage runs father to son, a true family business in the long sense of the word. What struck me about Maruyasu was the time scale. Five generations of one family on the same land is a kind of patience the matcha boom rarely talks about. A full producer profile is coming soon on the OWT blog.

What comes next

The five voices above are the entry point. Full producer profiles for our Group A farms, including Honda Mohei, Ichikawa, Houkouen, Kurihara, and Horiguchi Seicha, are already published or in progress on the OWT blog. If you want to taste what these growers actually grow, our matcha collection is the closest I can get you to a cup we'd pour in Kyoto. And if you're a wholesale buyer, our wholesale page has the line sheet. Become one with tea, one with yourself.