Look into hojicha’s beginnings and you encounter an account of making use of unsold leaves in Kyoto and another of making use of tea stems in Kaga. Both can be read as efforts to use existing tea without waste, but they concern different places, materials and periods.
Before treating the two as competing candidates for the same origin, it helps to ask which tea each account concerns and who is telling the story.
The Kyoto account begins with unsold tea leaves
Yamamotoyama recounts a story that tea merchants in the Yamashiro area of Kyoto devised hojicha between the end of the Taisho era and the beginning of the Showa era. Troubled by poor tea sales, they are said to have sought a way to make use of their huge stocks of unsold leaves.
The starting point in this account is tea already in the merchants’ hands. Finding another use for unsold tea, rather than growing a new crop, is presented as the reason for the invention.
In Kaga, attention turns to stems from tea processing
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ encyclopedia of traditional Japanese foods says that in Meiji 35 (1902), the Kanazawa tea merchant Hayashiya Shinbei developed a way to make use of stems obtained during tea processing. The same source describes the manufacturing sequence: steaming, rolling and drying produce aracha, or unrefined tea; the stems are then separated and roasted. It is a process of gathering and using stems mixed into the tea material.
This roasted stem tea, Kaga bōcha, is said to have become very popular for its distinctive aroma and flavour and its everyday price. Here the story concerns how stems from tea production were put to use, rather than what happened to unsold leaves.
A similar idea, applied to different materials
The Kyoto account concerns stocks of tea leaves; the Kaga account concerns stems obtained as a by-product. Both describe finding new value in material already available. A similar idea, however, does not establish that they were the same event or used the same manufacturing method.
One is an account of hojicha’s development in Kyoto; the other follows the regional history of Kaga bōcha. Comparing what was put to use reveals a similarity. Comparing which tea the accounts describe reveals their differences.
An earlier date does not establish a nationwide origin
The Kaga account gives the year Meiji 35 (1902), while the Kyoto account gives a period between the end of the Taisho era and the beginning of the Showa era. The dates can be compared, but they do not by themselves establish a single origin for all hojicha in Japan.
It matters to retain the regional and tea-specific scope of each source. Yamamotoyama’s wording, “is said to”, matters too. Keeping that qualification lets us enjoy a regional story without presenting it with the same certainty as an established manufacturing record.
History changes how we look at the ingredients
When you find stems in the hojicha in front of you, you might ask how people have used them, rather than dismissing them as a substitute for leaves. When you drink leaf-based hojicha, you may also become curious about who roasted that tea and how.
This does not prove that your own cup is directly connected to either event described here. Even so, within the same name, hojicha, there are different stories of people reconsidering their materials. Looking beyond the name to the place and maker is part of the pleasure of reading tea history.