Nakamura Tokichi Honten

Nakamura Tokichi founded his tea firm on January 1, 1854, on Byobugaura, the river-facing ridge that gave Uji its centuries-old reputation as Japan's foremost matcha-growing district. Tokichi himself had started as an apprentice under the tea master Hoshino Soi around 1840, learning the cultivation and processing methods that Uji's tea houses had refined for generations before he ever opened his own shop.

The business kept innovating well past its founding: in 1913 it patented Japan's first electric matcha grinding method, Patent No. 25028, mechanizing a process that had been done by hand stone mill for centuries. The company has supplied tea for imperial ceremonies for more than 170 years, and its 1890 shop building — representative of a Meiji-era tea merchant's house — is designated in 2009 as part of Uji's Important Cultural Landscape under Japanese national heritage law -- a national, not UNESCO, designation.

Run today by the seventh generation of Tokichi's family, Nakamura Tokichi Honten sells matcha, sencha, and gyokuro alongside a tea-focused menu built around the same leaves. Few Uji houses can point to both an imperial supply record spanning 170 years and a nationally-designated Important Cultural Landscape storefront still doing business on its original site.