The scale
Minamikyushu City publishes its own figures, and they are worth reading in order.
| Crude tea production | Tonnes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | about 74,000 | — |
| Kagoshima Prefecture | about 27,000 | 1st nationally |
| Minamikyushu City | about 13,000 | about 17% of Japan |
Minamikyushu City, tea statistics page, updated March 2025.
One city grows roughly a sixth of all the tea in Japan. It grows about half of what its own prefecture grows. For comparison, the whole of Kyoto Prefecture — the name I have seen more often than any other on matcha sold abroad — produces 2,780 tonnes.
Behind that number is an industrial base rather than a scattering of smallholdings: 3,425 hectares under tea, 641 growers, 102 factories, and production worth around 13 billion yen a year.
The city is younger than the name it replaced
On 1 December 2007, three towns — Chiran, Kawanabe and Ei — merged to form Minamikyushu City. Each had its own tea and its own name for it: Chirancha, Kawanabecha, Eicha.
The names held on for another decade. Then, as the city’s own website puts it in a note on a heritage page, from the 2017 first flush the three brands were unified into one: Chirancha.
Yame did this in 1925. Minamikyushu did it in 2017. The same decision, ninety-two years apart, for the same reason: several names competing in one market is weaker than one.
I keep finding this. Every name I have looked at so far turns out to have a date attached, and a meeting behind it. Yame, 1925. Uji’s current definition, 2004. The Kakegawa boundary that swallows Mori’s leaf, 2019. Chiran, 2017.
2024: the record that had stood since 1959
Prefectural tea statistics in Japan begin in 1959. From then until 2023, Shizuoka was first every single year.
In the 2024 crop year, Kagoshima passed it. It led again in 2025.
I want to put that carefully, because the obvious framing is misleading. Shizuoka has not collapsed. It produced 25,800 tonnes in 2024 — a vast quantity, second in the country, and the source of most of the everyday tea Japanese people drink. What changed is that Kagoshima kept building while national production fell.
The reasons its own producers’ association gives are unglamorous and convincing:
Flat fields. A high proportion of Kagoshima’s tea is on level ground, so machinery works. Compare Mori, where the land is mountainous and there are no large estates.
A long season. The warm climate allows not just first and second flush but third, fourth and autumn-winter tea. The first new tea of the Japanese year comes from here — from Tanegashima, off the coast, at the end of March.
Many cultivars. This is the one that surprised me.
Yabukita accounts for about 70 percent of the tea grown in Japan. In Kagoshima it is around 30 percent.
The prefecture with the largest volume is also the least uniform in what it plants. Different cultivars ripen at different times, which spreads the picking season and keeps the machinery and factories working — and it gives the region a range of flavours that a single-cultivar area cannot offer. Efficiency and variety turn out to be the same decision here, not opposite ones.
And now tencha
The matcha shift is the fastest-moving part of this, and the numbers change from year to year.
| Kagoshima tencha | Tonnes |
|---|---|
| 2023 crop year | 1,585 (38% of national) |
| 2025 season | 2,670 — first in Japan |
MAFF for 2023; Kagoshima Tea Producers’ Association for 2025. Different surveys, so the two figures are indicative of the direction rather than strictly comparable.
That is roughly a seventy percent increase in two years, in a country where overall tea production is falling. Growers are converting sencha fields to tencha because the demand is there and the price holds. Nationally, tencha reached 4,176 tonnes in 2023, the highest on record and nearly three times the 2008 figure — and given the rate above, that national number is probably already out of date.
So when a shop tells you its matcha is from Kagoshima, that is no longer an unusual answer. It is increasingly the ordinary one.
What Chiran tea is like
Sencha, mostly, and a good deal of it deep-steamed — steamed for roughly twice as long as standard sencha, which breaks the leaf down further and gives a thicker, sweeter, cloudier cup.
The city sits on the Nansatsu plateau at the southern end of the Satsuma peninsula, warm and wet, with Mount Kaimon standing over the fields. At the national tea competition, Chirancha took the regional prize five years running from 2020.
None of that is what the region is known for abroad, because abroad it is not known at all. Almost no tea leaves Japan labelled Chiran. It leaves as Kagoshima, or as matcha with no origin given, or blended into something else entirely.
What this means when you buy
“Kagoshima matcha” is now a mainstream answer, not a second-tier one. If a shop names it, that is a shop telling you where its tea comes from.
Chirancha means Minamikyushu. One city, unified name since 2017. It is a narrower statement than “Kagoshima”.
Ask about the cultivar here more than anywhere else. In a region that is only thirty percent Yabukita, the cultivar actually tells you something about what is in the cup.
→ The rest of this series: Uji, Nishio, Mori, Yame and Ise.
What I take from it
Five regions in, I have stopped thinking of the map of Japanese tea as old.
| Name | When the rule was written |
|---|---|
| Yame-cha | 1925 |
| Uji-cha, current definition | 2004 |
| Yame Dento Hon Gyokuro, GI | 2015 |
| Chirancha, unified | 2017 |
| Kakegawa boundary including Mori | 2019 |
| Nihoncha, GI for Japanese tea itself | 2026 |
The plants are old. The processing methods are old. The names, the boundaries and the rules are almost entirely modern, and they are still being written. Kagoshima is the clearest case: a city that did not exist twenty years ago now grows a sixth of the country’s tea and leads it in the leaf that becomes matcha.
Which means the map a reader learns today will not be the map in ten years. That is not a reason to distrust it. It is a reason to ask the shop what year they are talking about.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which prefecture produces the most tea in Japan?
Kagoshima, since the 2024 crop year — the first change at the top since prefectural statistics began in 1959. About 27,000 tonnes out of a national 74,000.
What is Chiran tea?
The tea of Minamikyushu City. Since the 2017 first flush it is the single name for what was previously sold as Chirancha, Eicha and Kawanabecha.
How much tea does Minamikyushu produce?
About 13,000 tonnes, roughly 17 percent of Japan’s. 3,425 hectares, 641 growers, 102 factories.
Is Kagoshima the biggest producer of matcha too?
For tencha, yes — 2,670 tonnes reported for the 2025 season, up from 1,585 in 2023.
Does Kagoshima grow only Yabukita?
No. Around 30 percent, against roughly 70 percent nationally.
Sources: Minamikyushu City tea statistics and heritage pages; Kagoshima Tea Producers’ Association; Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
