Fukujuen

Fukujuen was founded in 1790 by Iyemon Fukui in Kamikoma, in what was then Yamashiro Province and is now Kizugawa City on Kyoto's southern edge — a location that sat directly on the trade routes linking Osaka and Kobe to the Yamato and Iga highways. That position let the young house grow into a wholesaler and trading post, exporting Uji tea out through Kobe port at a time when overseas shipping was becoming central to Japan's tea economy.

As the industry shifted toward domestic sales, Fukujuen shifted with it, supplying tea shops nationwide and pioneering mail-order sales of Ujicha through Japan's postal parcel system — an early instance of a regional tea house reaching customers it could never have served over the counter. In 2007 the company opened the Fukujuen Uji Tea Workshop specifically to teach visitors the traditions behind Uji tea culture, from cultivation through processing.

More than two centuries after Iyemon Fukui opened his trading post, Fukujuen still runs on the same underlying idea that built it: getting Uji tea to people who aren't standing in Uji, first by rail freight and post, now through a global online shop carrying the Fukujuen name.