I believe there are two kinds of tea.

One is “special tea,” represented by gyokuro and matcha — tea grown under shade in special conditions, brewed in special ways, and served on special occasions. It is the celebrated lineage of Japanese tea, refined together with the culture of the tea ceremony.

The other is “everyday tea” — the tea we Japanese have drunk without a second thought, between chores in the fields, alongside our meals. Tea that asks for no conditions and no etiquette, and has simply stayed close to daily life. As kyobancha and hojicha, it supported the everyday lives of Japanese people for generations.

The tea the world is watching now

What draws global attention today is the former — special tea. Demand centered on matcha has grown rapidly overseas, to the point where supply can hardly keep up.

Yet looking back, even this special tea could not be called popular within Japan for a long time. The people who carefully brewed gyokuro, the people who whisked matcha at home — their numbers kept quietly shrinking. It is a lineage that only caught its breath again when light shone on it from outside.

Everyday tea, meanwhile, faded as bottled tea spread: the very habit of brewing with a kyusu teapot disappeared from Japanese households. Tea is still drunk today. But it has become a “beverage you buy,” and as a culture of brewing, it is quietly dying out.

What was lost was not a market but a set of gestures. That is why this lineage will not come back easily, even if demand returns.

At Yusando, the seasons decide

So which do we choose — special tea, or everyday tea?

Our answer is: the seasons choose.

In spring, the season of the first flush, we shade the fields and make matcha and other special teas. And now, from late June through July, we are making everyday tea.

Here, let me explain something particular to natural cultivation.

In a conventional tea garden, after the first flush is picked, fertilizer pushes out new buds, and the harvest continues with a second and third flush. In a naturally cultivated tea field, we do not rush the trees with fertilizer. So at Yusando, we choose not to harvest a second or third flush at all.

Instead, we let the first flush that budded in spring keep growing. Receiving the rains of the rainy season, the leaves fill out slowly, at the tea tree’s own pace. The leaves grown this way are what we pick in this season. That is Yusando’s everyday tea.

Follow the rhythm of the trees, and this is what naturally happens: special tea in spring, everyday tea in summer. Decided neither by market trends nor by our own convenience — the tea tree’s year gives us both teas.

Precisely the tea that draws no attention

To be honest, this everyday tea is not a tea that attracts attention. It will never become a global topic like matcha, never be called “amazing.”

But I believe that is what staying close truly means.

Just as air and water go unnoticed, things that have truly dissolved into daily life stop being noticed at all. It is there every day, drunk without a thought, quietly setting the body right. The person drinking it is not thinking about the tea at all — and that is exactly what success looks like for everyday tea.

A tea that draws no attention is not an inferior tea. It is a tea fulfilling its role.

Tea is meant to make us healthy

Tea was, at its origin, something you drank to become healthy. When tea first arrived in Japan, it was medicine.

At some point, though, the standards for judging tea shifted to measures of taste and appearance — umami, sweetness, the deep green of the liquor. Nowhere in those measures is “the drinker’s health.”

We believe that emphasizing umami or a deep green color has, in essence, nothing to do with the health of the person drinking. What matters far more is restoring the connection between nature and human beings — restoring it daily.

A naturally cultivated tea tree is not swollen with fertilizer. It is made only of that land’s soil, its rain, and its light. To drink it every day is to pass that nature through your body, every day. Connection is not something you tie once, on a special occasion; it is only truly restored through daily repetition.

This is our most important mission as tea farmers.

What we aim for is not high acclaim

So the essence of Yusando’s naturally grown tea lies neither in selling at high prices nor in winning public acclaim.

Not that we never take on such challenges. But there is an order to things. First comes the thought, the philosophy. As we deepen it, quality rises — and as a result, recognition may follow. Or it may not. Recognition is a result, not a purpose.

The essence is being able to keep supplying, steadily, the kind of everyday tea we are making in this very season.

Because for everyday tea, quality means — before deliciousness or rarity — “always being there.” Never breaking off. Being properly made and properly delivered, every year, every season. Unspectacular steadiness is the condition for a tea that stays close.

Two missions, one wish

Yusando has two missions.

One is to take on fields close to abandonment — fields that others have given up cultivating — convert them to natural cultivation, and deliver their tea to the world. To keep building a new industry, in a new form.

The other is to keep making natural tea as the everyday tea that the Japanese have long cultivated. To make special teas in May and June, and then, from the leaves that grow slowly through the rainy season, to make tea that is gentle to the heart and body.

These two missions do not live in separate fields. They live in the same tea trees, within the same single year.

And running through both missions is one and the same thing.

That people connect with nature. That they enjoy the taste of nature. And that through this, the body finds its balance and grows healthy.

The matcha that travels the world and the everyday tea drunk without a thought — what they deliver is the same.

That, we believe, is what we should truly hope for.