Yakushima Island is the producing area with the earliest Shincha harvest throughout Japan, aside from Okinawa, which lies even further south. At Mankichi Watanabe’s tea garden in Yakushima, the young tea leave sprouts have grown several centimeters already. In contrast, in northern Japanese tea producing areas, like Shizuoka or Saitama, not a single sprout of the new harvest can be seen. Below, we tried to gather in a table the time dimensions of the various areas where Shincha is produced. Certainly, the list is not complete: we do have close contact to tea gardens in many Shincha-producing Japanese prefectures, but not to tea gardens in all of the Japanese tea producing prefectures.
Table of the Shincha harvest 2017, status 13th April 2017
| location | tea garden | tea bush varietal | estimated date of the Shincha harvest 2017 |
| South-Kyushu, Kagoshima Prefecture, Yakushima Island |
Mankichi Watanabe’s organic tea garden | Kuritawase cultivar |
13th April, HARVESTED TODAY |
| South-Kyushu, Kagoshima Prefecture, Yakushima Island |
Mankichi Watanabe’s organic tea garden | Yutaka Midori cultivar |
14th April |
| South-Kyushu, Kagoshima Prefecture, Yakushima Island |
Mankichi Watanabe’s organic tea garden | Sae Midori cultivar |
16th April |
| South-Kyushu, Kagoshima Prefecture, Yakushima Island |
Mankichi Watanabe’s organic tea garden | Asatsuyu cultivar |
17th April |
| South-Kyushu, Miyazaki Prefecture | Haruyo and Shigeru Morimoto’s organic tea garden |
Yutaka Midori cultivar |
28th April |
| South-Kyushu, Miyazaki Prefecture | Haruyo and Shigeru Morimoto’s organic tea garden |
Saki Midori cultivar |
29th April |
| South-Kyushu, Kumamoto Prefecture, region Minamata |
Kazuya Matsumoto’s tea garden |
Yabukita cultivar |
28th April |
| Honshu, Mie Prefecture, region Ise |
Iwao Hayashi’s organic tea garden |
Yabukita cultivar |
20th May |
| Honshu, Shizuoka Prefecture | comparative tea garden | Yabukita cultivar |
22th May |
Concerning the question at which point the leaves for a Shincha should be harvested, a lot of different factors play a significant part.
First, there is the factor of the producing area: there is large difference in harvest timing between southern and northern producing areas. In this regard, Kyushu lies furthest in the south of Japan. Here, many well-known tea producing areas can be found, like Kirishima, Satsuma and Yakushima in Kagoshima Prefecture plus other tea prefectures which are nearly as well-known by now, like Miyazaki, Kumamoto, Saga and others. Further north lies the island Honshu, which however stretches several hundred kilometers from southwest to northeast. The tea producing areas Nara, Kyoto and Mie are relatively far in the south of Honshu, but they are still several hundred kilometers north from Kyushu. Shizuoka and Saitama are part of the northernmost tea producing areas, not only within Honshu, but also in all of Japan. The differences concerning the harvest timing between southernmost Kyushu and the northernmost producing areas of Honshu can definitely account for six weeks.
On one hand, the macro-location plays a significant role regarding the harvest time. On the other hand, the meso-location is important, too: especially the altitude. While we could harvest the first young tea leaves at Haruyo and Shigeru Morimoto’s tea garden in Miyazaki Prefecture as early as in the middle of April, in some areas of Miyazaki Prefecture located higher up, which are well-known for their production of Kamairicha, the harvest usually took place three to four weeks later. While in Yakushima the first sprouts were visible already at the end of March 2017, there was still snow on the tea bushes in the higher areas, although these two producing areas are both located in the south of Kyushu, the southernmost main island of Japan.
A second vital factor is the tea bush variety, as you can see from the first line of the table above. The tea bush variety Yabukita developed into the most common tea bush variety in Japan since the end of the 20th century. With a share of 70-80 percent, which can be criticized, it is often used as a kind of norm. For example, if you talk about which tea bush variety sprouts earlier and which one later, the bush variety Yabukita is used as zero-point. While some tea bush varieties like Yutaka Midori and Kuritawase sprout a week earlier than the norm tea bush variety Yabukita, other tea bush varietals, like Asatsuyu, sprout just a couple of days earlier. Certainly, there are also tea bush varieties that sprout later than Yabukita. But this shall not be exemplified further at this point, since the Shincha Blog 2017 is mostly about tea bushes with a early cicle of vegetation. In order to avoid any misunderstandings: the tea bush varieties aforementioned do not grow faster, no, they just sprout earlier. The comparison between fast growing tea bush varieties and more slow growing ones exists, too. This factor has a vital impact on the amount of harvest, but it is a totally different dimension than the time dimension of when the young sprouts are starting to grow. Here, on Shincha Blog 2017, the factor speed of growth of tea bushes will not be picked out as a central topic. However, the temporal differences of vegetation cicles will repeatedly be exemplified on this blog.
A third factor which plays a significant role concerning the point of harvest, is the question which style of harvesting and producing is used by a tea garden or tea producer, who harvests and processes leaves for a Shincha. If we do not speak about powdered teas (Matcha) or long shaded teas (Gyokuro), but about ’normal’ sorts of leave tea, and if we only speak about modern styles of tea production and not about the style of production that was dominant until the middle or end of the 20th century, then you can summarize that today, younger, smaller and more delicate leaves are considered as leave material of higher quality. It should be emphasized that there are a couple of significant exceptions, but aside from that, it decorates a tea producer or a tea garden aiming to produce a high-quality tea if they harvest rather fine material or if they assort only the fine leaves. Mr. Matsumoto, who attracts attention with his rare Shincha MOE, harvests fine leave material far in excess of the usual amount. The leave material harvested is delicate to such an extent that it is not necessary to assort it. This is a really uncommon characteristic. However, to harvest very fine leave material means that it must be harvested at a very early point of time. If it is harvested later, the material would not be as delicate. This explains why the harvest at Mr. Matsumoto’s tea garden takes place rather early, although his tea garden located in the prefecture Kumamoto has a comparatively high altitude.