Where Shizuoka tea began

In 1241, a Zen monk named Enni came home from China.

He had spent six years in the great monasteries of Song-dynasty China, and he came back with scriptures, teachings — and, so the story goes, a handful of tea seeds. He planted them in Ashikubo, a small valley in the mountains just north of Shizuoka. That planting is remembered as the beginning of Shizuoka tea.

The monk

Enni was born in 1202 in Tochizawa, a village in these same mountains, not far from Ashikubo. He sailed for China in 1235 and returned in 1241. He went on to found Tōfuku-ji, one of the great Zen temples of Kyoto, and was later honoured with the title Shōichi Kokushi — “National Teacher.”

Portrait of Enni, attributed to Kichizan Minchō. Public domain.

A story, not a record

We want to be honest about one thing. That Enni carried seeds home and planted them in Ashikubo is a tradition. No document from the time records it.

But it is the story everyone who grows tea here grows up with, and the city keeps it. Shizuoka marks November 1st — Enni’s birthday — as its Tea Day, and a stone marks his birthplace in Tochizawa.

Why it matters to us

Tea from the upper reaches of the Abe and Warashina rivers is called Honyama, and it counts its history from Ashikubo. Mizumiiro, where we farm, lies on the Warashina side, in the valley next door.

So when we say our tea is Honyama tea, this is the story we are standing on: nearly eight hundred years of tea in these mountains, beginning — as far as anyone can tell — with a monk and a handful of seeds.

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Sources: Ocha no Machi Shizuoka — Shōichi Kokushi birthplace monument (Shizuoka City) · About Honyama tea · Ashikubo — History. The planting in Ashikubo is a tradition, not a documented event.