A bookshop shelf holds books on black tea, and books on matcha. Bancha has two scholarly volumes of its own. Type hojicha into a library search box and back come magazine articles and papers.

What follows traces the routes searched, what the books with hojicha in the title turn out to be, and the one thing to watch while counting.

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.

The numbers in detail

Routes searched
National Diet Library Search, CiNii Books and Rakuten Books, run on 22 September 2026.
Six titles
Six books carry "hojicha" in the title, and five are confectionery books setting it beside matcha or black tea.
The one on the subject
Honma Setsuko, Hojicha no Okashi (ほうじ茶のお菓子), Shufunotomo, November 2019.
Essays
Tokiwa Shinpei, Atsui Hojicha (熱い焙じ茶), Chikuma Shobō, September 1993.
Tea encyclopedia
Asakura Publishing's Encyclopedia of Tea (茶の事典, September 2017) runs to 608 pages with no chapter of its own on hojicha.
Certification textbook
The official textbook of the Japanese Tea Certification (Rural Culture Association Japan, May 2023) runs to 242 pages, also without one.
Tables of contents
For both, this holds as far as the tables of contents go.
Publishing statistics
The Research Institute for Publications' "Publishing Statistics of Japan". Sales value and new-title counts appear in its paid annual, Shuppan Shihyō Nenpō.