Kiyosawa Tea Gardens

Meet the Producer

Kiyosawa Tea Garden is a group of farms located in the Kiyosawa Village in Shizuoka. The group comprises three farms led by women farmers Yachiyo Sugiyama, Yukako Kajiyama, and Chizuko Konagai.

Yachiyo is an eighth generation farmer. Her family started farming tea over 100 years ago. has been farming tea for 39 years. Her farm is in the mountains where morning mist raises from the rivers and forests, enveloping the tea buds. She describes mountain tea’s flavour as having refreshing astringency at first, that then turns into a sweet and fragrant flavour. After picking they process their tea leaves at an old wooden factory that has been in use since the Taisho period. They carefully evaluate the teas by hand, often checking that the scent and flavour are just right.

Chizuko never imagined she would become a tea farmer, but she married into a tea farming family and has now been farming for 33 years. Together with her husband they specialize in producing the Yabukita cultivar at their farm, where the fields get clean groundwater from the Abe River. When the tea buds are ready in the spring, they carefully pick and processes their single cultivar Yabukita teas, making sure that the inherent characteristics of the tea are at their best in the final product.

Yukako has also been farming tea for 39 years. She focuses on making roasted tea that has both a great flavour and a delicious aroma. To achieve this she uses her high quality first-flush tea leaves to make the hojicha. The leaves are picked during Golden Week, a holiday in May, and taken directly to the nearby factory to be processed. While much of Japan gets to take some time off, Yukako and her family are working in the tea fields to create delicious teas for their customers. When her children were little she would carry them on her back while harvesting the tea leaves. As they did not have time to spend as a family during Golden Week otherwise, when Yukako’s children grew a bit older they would spend their time in the tea field and factory. Now as they are already old enough to help, Yukako says her children have grown into valuable workers that help her grow and process her tea.

Get to Know Kiyosawa Village

Kiyosawa Village, is the old name for this remote, mountainous region of the Aoi Ward, Shizuoka City, and means "pure river". The Kuromata River 黒俣川 runs through the area, and the purity of the water and air is reflected in the teas crafted by the small family farms here.

The Kiyosawa area is filled with lush nature. One of its landmarks is an over 500 year old ginkgo tree, designated as a natural monument by Shizuoka Prefecture. There are also foods utilising local plants, like a kintsuba (anko bean filled traditional pastry) covered with batter made using local mugwort. Kiyosawa also has its own style of Kagura dance, a ceremonial dance performed at Shinto shrines.