What you learn first

One word on the back, three on the front

Laid side by side face down, the three packets show the same small print in the same places. Only two things can be moved: the roast and the blend.

It is like water from one river taking a new name each time it branches. The industry's labelling rules settle the words a packet may carry. So both the roast and the blend leave a trace on it.

The sources speak only to the words on the packet. The words for the blend come first.

Stems, roasted rice, and a mix

Shake a packet heavy with stems and the thin twigs rattle. The blend is settled clearly, in the words of the name itself.

Under the labelling rules, kukicha and bōcha are teas holding a large share of stems and leaf stalks sorted out in refining. Genmaicha is sencha, bancha or similar tea with roasted rice added. Different kinds of tea combined are called mixed tea.

What the rules give is the name for what went in, and no more. After the blend comes the fire.

A line for finishing, a line for roasting

Standing by a roaster, the dry, toasty air meets the face. What separates hojicha from sencha is not the raw material but the heat added afterwards.

An appendix to the same rules puts the finishing fire and roasting on separate lines, at different temperatures. It names neither the equipment nor where the temperature is taken. What it divides is not kinds of tea but whether a packet may say "manufacturer" or has to say "processor".

Past that heat, the direction depends on where the measuring was done. In a prefectural tea station's figures, the source of astringency fell as the roast deepened, to about a fifth at the darkest. The compounds taken as a marker of roast aroma came out highest at the light end. In another prefecture's trial, roasting stems hotter made the same family of compounds rise with the temperature.

The conditions differ, so these are two separate stories, and the evidence stops there. What this line actually divides is taken up in a later chapter. Last comes a step that never shows on the packet.

Blending, which the label never shows

In a merchant's workroom, several lots of unrefined tea are turned into one heap. Blending, gōgumi (合組), alone never reaches the packet.

Gōgumi is the merchant's step of combining several unrefined teas into the flavour of one bag. Combining moves the figures too. In a government table with the brewing held equal, genmaicha, with its roasted rice, has about half the caffeine of hojicha.

The blending ratio is not in the table, though, and the evidence goes no further. The conditions for roasting and for blending are still to be measured. The figures and conditions are gathered just below.

An evening cup and its conditions

Under the lamp, the hojicha in the cup looks a reddish brown. Caffeine turns out to be a question of how the tea was brewed.

The government's published table brews each kind of tea under its own conditions. Gyokuro's figure is eight times hojicha's, but gyokuro is brewed with a lot of leaf in very little water. Line them up again per amount of leaf, and the gap all but disappears.

The four rows of the table below are not under the same conditions. Only hojicha and genmaicha share them. The table supports one thing: without matching the conditions there is no fair comparison, and matching them is a later chapter. After the cup comes the paper one with the latte.

A paper cup, and the quantities

Lift the lid of the paper cup and sweet, milky steam rises. The latte turns out to be a question of ratio.

In one shop's published recipe, hojicha powder is dissolved with sugar and hot water into a syrup, then combined with warmed milk. The quantities are given by weight, so what went into the cup, and how much, can be read off the page. That the café cup and the home cup differ is not a matter of skill.

The recipe accounts for one set of quantities and nothing beyond. What to change to bring the two closer is a later chapter. After the latte comes the old sencha at the back of the kitchen.

Old sencha at the back of the kitchen

Open an old bag of sencha and a faint, dry, green smell comes out. Roasting at home is more tangled.

In a prefectural tea station's figures, a light roast barely lowered the caffeine. Only the dark roast brought it down, by around a tenth. No peer-reviewed paper on roasting in a household hōroku or frying pan turned up within the range searched, either.

That is as far as the evidence goes. The chapter on roasting at home begins by fixing the conditions and measuring. The figures and conditions are gathered just below.

A mail-order page, at the end of a footnote

Tap the small footnote number and the screen flicks over. The sentence leads to the own-brand page of a company that sells hojicha.

It is the page of a hojicha mail-order brand started overseas. It says only that tea merchants roasted leftover leaves and stems. It lists no references at all.

No primary source supporting the account came out of this search. That is where the trail ends. The bōcha section of the same encyclopedia reads a little differently.

The bōcha section, same article

Scroll down and the name of a stem tea appears. In the same article, the section on Kaga bōcha is supported differently.

Like the rings of a tree, the age of a story is recorded in the documents attached to it. The account of a third-generation merchant devising a roasted stem tea carries footnotes to an advertisement in an old directory and a who's who. Even inside one article, accounts of origin differ in strength.

What can be said is only that the footnotes are of different kinds. This bōcha story turns up on the public side as well.

A stem tea in a public encyclopedia

From a cup of bōcha rises the smell of dry stems. The Kaga story stands on the public side too.

A government encyclopedia of traditional foods records that a merchant found a use for the stems left from drying and put Kaga bōcha on sale. That is some twenty years earlier than the common account, in another place and from another material.

A confectionery company is later recorded launching one, which the column at the end of the chapter covers. A prefectural tea institute issued a research report on the design of roasting machines. Only its title has been checked.

The official history of a long-established tea region mentions neither hojicha nor a roasting step. That is as far as the documents go. Next comes a bundle of old receipts.

Superior, medium, standard

On a tea shop's shelf, price tags mark the superior grade and the standard one. In a pre-war port city, roasted tea was already sold by grade.

Among an institute's expenditure vouchers are purchases of standard and medium roasted tea, and of plain and superior. All three grades, superior, medium and standard, appear in its books.

Grades appear when enough people are choosing between them. The receipts support that much and no more. Last comes how to read a year of beginning.

Opening the footnote

As the steam thins, the sentence on the screen starts to look different. A beginning cannot be pinned to one year and one place.

It is like the source of a river, split among many mountain streams. Not writing the undecided as though it were decided is where this book stands.

What is left instead is a habit any reader can use. When an account of origins turns up, open what the footnote points to. A public body's document, or the page of someone selling the thing: that alone changes the weight of the same sentence.

The footnote tells the kind of source and nothing more. The years and names are gathered just below.

Only two things taken on

Pick up a packet and the print on the front is a different size from the back. Two things are covered: how to read the roast, and how to read the blend.

The roast is a question of how far the fire went. The blend is a question of how stems, rice or other teas were put together.

Everything else is left to other books and other guidance. First, the line against neighbouring drinks.

A tea leaf, and the seed of a fruit

The hojicha in the cup and the coffee in the mug beside it both smell toasty. The line between neighbouring drinks can be drawn with two things: the material, and the roasting.

What hojicha roasts is the leaf or stem of the tea plant, fire added after the green tea is made. Black tea comes from the same plant, but there the leaves are allowed to oxidise. That is a different step from roasting, so roasting black tea hard does not turn it into the hojicha that comes from green tea.

Coffee differs from the material up: the coffee industry's own association describes the bean as the seed inside a fruit. Behind the same words, "dark roast", what is put to the fire is not the same thing. The sources speak to material and process, and that is all. Next, what stays off the shelf.

What stays off the shelf

Next to this shelf stand books of recipes and books about daily life. What is left out is settled from the start.

There will be no catalogue of regional brands, because a place name alone does not settle what is inside. Recipes and confectionery are left to the books that appear regularly. History is left to a scholar's two volumes on the folklore of bancha.

On health there is no assertion here: these pages go as far as the rise and fall of compounds. What those do in the body is left to the guidance of public bodies. Next, the packet after the last page.

The back of the packet, afterwards

Back at the shelf, the front and back of a packet start to look like two different faces. What changes by the last page is how a packet is read.

"Dark roast" on the front is each shop's own word. No reference temperature for roast level is set anywhere. The field marked "name" on the back, and the ingredients, are the side whose words the labelling rules settled.

That line becomes visible on the packet. The rules account for how the words are fixed, and no more. Names and years are gathered just below.

A shelf searched three ways

With each search the list on the screen quietly changes. Not one general book on hojicha as its subject came up.

Three routes were searched: the national library, a union catalogue of university libraries, and a large online bookseller. Some books carry hojicha in the title, but nearly all set it beside matcha or black tea in confectionery. The one that does take it as its subject is a confectionery recipe book. Another borrows the word for the title of a collection of literary essays.

Neither a thick tea encyclopedia nor the official textbook of a tea certification gives it a chapter of its own. That holds as far as the tables of contents go. Next, the reason for the absence.

That it would not sell

Every month the new-release tables in bookshops fill with fresh stacks. Why no hojicha book is among them is not known.

That it would not sell, and so does not get published, is a possible explanation. The figures to check that are not to hand, though. The institute that compiles publishing statistics keeps both sales value and new-title counts in a paid annual.

What is known is the absence. It is not there, so it gets written. That is all. Before counting, there is one thing to watch.

Hojicha, the pen name

Further down the search results, titles that are plainly not about tea creep in. One thing is worth watching while counting.

"Hojicha" is also the pen name of someone who writes and draws. The number of volumes a search returns adds up once the author's name is read too.

Any count holds only once the names are sorted out. The figures and titles are gathered just below.