Kanbayashi Shunsho Honten

Kanbayashi Shunsho Honten traces its founding to the Eiroku era (1558-1569), when its first generation, Kamon no Jo Hisashige, moved to Uji from Kanbayashi Township in Tanba and entered the tea trade. During the Edo period the family held the rank of Gomotsu Ochashi, the highest grade of tea master, delivering tea directly to the shogunate and to feudal lords across Japan — a role that put Kanbayashi at the center of Uji's tea industry for generations before it ever needed to sell to the public.

That changed with the Meiji Restoration. The 11th-generation Shunsho steered the house from tea master to tea merchant, taking up gyokuro and sencha as those styles were newly developed, and building a commercial trade to replace the shogunal patronage that had ended. The family has kept that merchant identity ever since, now under the 14th generation to carry the Shunsho name.

Four hundred and fifty years is a long span for any single trade to stay in one family's hands, and Kanbayashi's history runs through the exact transition — from supplying shoguns to supplying customers — that reshaped Uji's entire tea economy. Few houses anywhere can trace that shift through their own unbroken ownership.