Yamamasa Koyamaen: A Giant in Uji's Long History of Matcha

Yamamasa Koyamaen (山政小山園) is one of the oldest and most significant matcha houses in Uji, Kyoto, with roots as a tea farm in the early Edo period and a formal founding in 1861.¹ They cultivate their own tea fields in Ogura, source across southern Kyoto, and produce exclusively for wholesale, supplying over a thousand tea retailers across Japan.¹

Their historical footprint is unusual even by Uji standards. In the Taisho (1912 to 1926) to mid-Showa (from 1926) era, they built the first matcha factory in the Japanese tea industry to be equipped with dedicated refrigeration and air conditioning, and launched Japan's first commercially sold canned matcha.¹ In the 1930s and 1940s, their third-generation head collaborated with a Uji farmer to select the cultivars Asahi, Samidori, and Komakage from local zairaishu (在来種, za-i-ra-i-shu) tea plants, all three of which were subsequently designated as Kyoto Prefecture-recommended varieties.¹ ²

Most telling is their standing with Japan's tea ceremony schools. Yamamasa Koyamaen holds 18 named teas, known as chamei (茶銘, cha-mei), conferred by iemoto (家元, ie-mo-to), the grand masters of five distinct tea ceremony traditions: Omotesenke, Urasenke, Mushanokōjisenke, Sohenryu, and Edosenke.³

If you want to understand why the tea ceremony world's quiet endorsement means so much, and how a single family's cultivar decisions shaped what Uji matcha tastes like today, read on.

Yamamasa Koyamaen (山政小山園) is a compound formed from two parts. The 山政 (Yamamasa) element is the house trading name, derived from the Koyama family's commercial identity across generations: 山 (yama, mountain) and 政 (masa, from Masajiro, the recurring given name of successive heads). The 小山園 (Koyamaen) element means "Koyama garden" or "Koyama plantation," grounding the name directly in the family's land and their identity as cultivators first.

The name distinguishes them from the other major Koyamaen house in Ogura: Marukyu Koyamaen, founded in 1704. The two houses share the Ogura neighborhood, the Koyamaen name, and a long presence on the same stretch of Uji ground, but are entirely separate companies with distinct histories, sourcing philosophies, and tea character.

The Koyama family began cultivating tea in the Uji and Ogura districts in the early Edo period (approximately 17th century), before formally entering commercial sales.¹ They have farmed this ground for the better part of four centuries. Today, Yamamasa Koyamaen's address remains Ogura-cho, Uji-shi, Kyoto, the same neighborhood they started in.¹

Ogura sits on alluvial land formed by the confluence of the Uji and Kizu Rivers. The combination of fertile soil, river mist, and a microclimate that softens direct sunlight has made this pocket of Uji one of the most historically significant patches of ground in Japanese tea. Tencha, the shade-grown leaf that is ground into matcha, has been cultivated in Ogura for centuries. For a house rooted here from the early Edo period, the relationship between the land and the tea is practical history, not a marketing narrative.

Formally, the house dates to 1861, when the first-generation Koyama Masajiro began selling tea commercially.¹ The second generation expanded into wholesale, establishing the national distribution network that still defines how the house operates. Yamamasa Koyamaen does not sell directly to consumers. Their teas reach buyers through a network of over a thousand tea retailers and tea ceremony suppliers across Japan.¹

During the Taisho (大正, 1912 to 1926) to mid-Showa (昭和, from 1926) era, Yamamasa Koyamaen made two contributions to the tea industry that had nothing to do with cultivars or ceremony. They built what their own company records identify as the first matcha factory in the Japanese tea industry equipped with dedicated refrigeration and air conditioning exclusively for tea.¹ Before this, matcha was produced and stored in conditions that allowed temperature and humidity to degrade the leaf from the moment of grinding. A climate-controlled factory environment changed what was possible in quality preservation and consistency across the supply chain.

In the same period, they launched the first commercially sold canned matcha in Japan, the 10 monme can, holding approximately 37.5 grams.¹ The can gave matcha a sealed, portable format that could travel and keep without loss of freshness. Their own records describe this as forming the foundation of canned tea's popularisation in Japan, a product format now standard across the entire tea industry.

In the 1930s and 1940s, third-generation head Koyama Masajiro and a Uji farmer named Hirano Jinnojo worked together to evaluate and select superior plants from the zairaishu tea growing around Ogura.¹ Zairaishu refers to tea grown from seed rather than clonal cuttings, producing genetically diverse plants whose characteristics vary from bush to bush. Selecting for the best among them required patience, botanical judgment, and an understanding of what shaded teas demanded from a leaf.

The result of this collaboration was the selection of three cultivars: Asahi (あさひ), Samidori (さみどり), and Komakage (こまかげ). All three were subsequently designated as Kyoto Prefecture-recommended varieties for gyokuro and tencha production.¹

Asahi carries the old system designation 平野11号 (Hirano line 11), reflecting its attribution to Hirano Jinnojo, and was officially designated by Kyoto Prefecture in 1954.² It is valued for producing some of the highest-grade shaded teas in Japan and is a favoured cultivar for competition-grade matcha and gyokuro in the Uji ceremony world. Samidori carries the designation 小山69号 (Koyama line 69), credited directly to Koyama Masajiro, also officially designated in 1954.² It is prized for gyokuro and tencha as a shading-suited variety well suited to premium matcha production.

Neither Asahi nor Samidori is registered under the national MAFF cultivar registration system. They are Kyoto-designated, meaning their formal recognition and concentrated reputation remain within the prefecture where they were developed.² Unlike nationally registered cultivars with intellectual property protections, both can be grown by anyone, and both are cultivated today by producers beyond Uji. That they remain closely associated with Ogura reflects the ground Koyama Masajiro and Hirano Jinnojo were standing on when they selected them.

The private cultivar work that would become Asahi and Samidori began years before the Kyoto Prefectural Tea Research Institute launched its own systematic breeding programme.¹ ² Two private actors, a tea wholesaler and a farmer, were doing formal cultivar development in Ogura ahead of the official regional research infrastructure. The plants they selected still pour into the bowls of tea ceremony practitioners across Japan today.

A chamei (茶銘) is the name given to a specific matcha blend by an iemoto, the grand master of a tea ceremony school. The word chamei breaks down as cha (茶, tea) and mei (銘, name or inscription), the same character used for the names given to prized tools, poems, and works of art in Japanese cultural tradition.⁸

When an iemoto gives a blend a chamei, that tea enters the school's practice. Students of the school prepare it. Teachers serve it at formal gatherings. The name carries the iemoto's aesthetic identity, and the producing house commits to maintaining that blend, in character and consistency, as an ongoing obligation to the school. This is not a one-time award or a seasonal designation. It is a sustained institutional relationship between a tea house and a school tradition, expressed through a specific tea. 

In practice, Yamamasa Koyamaen holds 18 chamei across five school traditions.³ Across the three Sen family schools (三千家, San-senke), they hold chamei from Omotesenke (表千家) conferred by three successive iemoto, from Urasenke (裏千家) conferred by two, and from Mushanokōjisenke (武者小路千家). They also hold chamei from Sohenryu (宗徧流) and Edosenke (江戸千家). The breadth across school traditions is significant. Omotesenke and Urasenke have distinct aesthetic philosophies despite sharing a common lineage from Sen no Rikyu. Sohenryu and Edosenke developed along entirely separate historical paths. That five traditions with different ideas of what matcha should be in the bowl have independently arrived at the same producing house is one of the most concrete measures of standing available in this industry.

Based on information publicly available on the respective house websites, Marukyu Koyamaen holds the most chamei among Uji matcha producers, with 33 across eight schools and institutions.⁹ Yamamasa's 18 across five schools represents the second-deepest ceremonial relationship among producers for which records are publicly available.

Yamamasa Koyamaen produces a matcha range running from ceremonial koicha grades at the top to everyday usucha at the accessible end. Their house-named lineup, as listed in their official product catalogue, runs in descending order: Chajyu-no-Mukashi, Kasuga-no-Mukashi, Kaguraden, Seiun, Tennouzan, Senjin-no-Mukashi, Shikibu-no-Mukashi, Ogurayama, Yomo-no-Kaori, Samidori, Matsukaze, and Maki-no-Shiro.⁵ In addition to these, they produce 18 chamei matcha under the names conferred by their tea ceremony school partners.³

Chajyu-no-Mukashi (茶寿の昔) sits at the top of the house-named range. The name 茶寿 (chajyu) refers to the age of 108 in Japanese tradition: the character 茶 (cha) can be analysed as combining elements that sum numerically to 108, making 茶寿 an expression of the highest longevity. As a name for the pinnacle of a matcha range, the choice is deliberate.

Tennouzan (天王山) takes its name from the mountain in southern Kyoto that was the site of the 1582 Battle of Yamazaki, the decisive engagement following Oda Nobunaga's death at Honnoji that determined who would inherit control of Japan.⁶ The battle's outcome turned on control of Tennouzan, and the mountain's name has since passed into Japanese idiom as a term for a decisive moment or point of no return. A high-grade koicha-suitable matcha carrying this name is placing considerable cultural weight on what is in the can.

Samidori (さみどり) is a single-cultivar matcha made from the Samidori cultivar, one of the three varieties that the third-generation Koyama Masajiro helped select in the 1930s and 1940s. A house selling a product named directly after their own cultivar contribution is a quiet statement. The name 早緑 means "early green," referring to the fresh green of early summer.

Ogurayama (小倉山) is named after the mountain in the Saga district of Kyoto that faces Arashiyama across the Oi River, where the poet and court official Fujiwara no Teika (藤原定家) compiled the Hyakunin Isshu (百人一首).⁷ The Hyakunin Isshu, a collection of one hundred waka poems by one hundred poets, has defined classical Japanese literary culture for eight centuries, and the anthology is sometimes called the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu precisely because of this connection. This is Yamamasa Koyamaen's most widely distributed ceremonial matcha, positioned as an everyday usucha-grade tea that brings a name of considerable literary and cultural weight into daily practice.

Yamamasa Koyamaen does not sell directly to individual consumers. Their teas are available through authorised retailers, tea ceremony suppliers, and specialist shops across Japan.¹ Outside Japan, they work through regional trading partners and do not generally engage in direct international trade with overseas businesses.⁴

This operating model reflects an older structure of the Japanese tea trade, one where the wholesaler's relationship with the retail network was the primary channel through which quality was maintained and trust was built. It also reflects their position in the market: a house whose primary customer is the serious retailer, tea ceremony organisation, or specialist supplier who understands what they are buying and why.

There is a particular kind of significance that only accumulates over time and cannot be manufactured or marketed into existence. Yamamasa Koyamaen has been farming Ogura ground since the early Edo period (approximately 17th century). They made technical decisions in the Taisho (1912 to 1926) and early Showa (from 1926) eras that changed what the entire matcha industry could preserve and deliver. They identified plants that still define what premium Uji matcha can taste like. And they have maintained, across five distinct tea ceremony traditions, the kind of sustained trust that is expressed not in press releases but in the names given to specific bowls of tea.

At Tealife, we carry Yamamasa Koyamaen's matcha as one of a small number of Japanese tea producers we believe represents the standard Japanese tea is ultimately about.

¹ 株式会社山政小山園. 「会社概要 / 沿革」. 山政小山園公式サイト. https://www.yamamasa-koyamaen.co.jp/about/company.html

² 京都府農林水産技術センター農林センター茶業研究所. 「宇治品種について」. 京都府ホームページ. https://www.pref.kyoto.jp/chaken/mame_ujihinnshu.html

³ 株式会社山政小山園. 「抹茶（茶道用・飲用）— 家元御好抹茶一覧」. 山政小山園公式サイト. https://www.yamamasa-koyamaen.co.jp/product/chano-yu.html

⁴ 株式会社山政小山園. 「山政小山園の抹茶」. 山政小山園公式サイト英語版. https://www.yamamasa-koyamaen.co.jp/en/matcha/our-matcha.html

⁵ 株式会社山政小山園. 「抹茶商品カタログ（英語版）」. 山政小山園公式サイト. https://www.yamamasa-koyamaen.co.jp/assets/pdf/product/catalog_en.pdf

⁶ 京都市歴史資料館. 「小倉百人一首編纂の地 (UK019)」. 京都市フィールド・ミュージアム. https://www2.city.kyoto.lg.jp/somu/rekishi/fm/ishibumi/html/uk019.html

⁷ 京都市観光協会. 「中院山荘跡（小倉百人一首ゆかりの地）」. 京都観光Navi. https://ja.kyoto.travel/tourism/single02.php?category_id=9&tourism_id=353

⁸ 茶道裏千家淡交会青年部北海道ブロック. 「茶銘（○○の昔・○○の白）について」. https://hokkaidoblock.grupo.jp/free1797400

⁹ 丸久小山園. 「茶道宗家・社寺等の御好抹茶」. 丸久小山園公式サイト. https://www.marukyu-koyamaen.co.jp/motoan-shop/products/catalog/matcha/souke/