Abandoned rice terraces, cut into the mountainside decades ago, now given over to tea. Stone walls furred with moss, rows of green climbing the slope in steps, the whole scene threaded with the sound of moving water. Ukiha has water so clean that the city has never needed a waterworks system. Every household draws from a well.
We drove out to Niikawa Tea Factory in the hills above Ukiha City, Fukuoka, to meet the man growing organic tea in a place most people had forgotten. No pesticides, no chemical fertilizers — just terraced earth, clean water, and decades of patience.
Ukiha, where the water runs clear
An hour south-east of Hakata by car. Ukiha is a small city — fewer than 30,000 people — known for persimmons and grapes, and for a quietness that deepens as you drive further from the main road. Persimmon and grape trees line the roadsides, some still tended, others left to their own devices.
The town once thrived on rice and forestry. What remains now is the landscape those industries shaped — terraced hillsides, irrigation channels, cedar forests pressing close to the road — and an abundance of water that borders on the absurd.
Ukiha's Tsuzura terraces are counted among Japan's 100 finest rice paddies. Kiyomizu Spring is one of the nation's 100 best water sources. In summer, fireflies gather along the streams. In autumn, red spider lilies bloom across the terrace walls. Tourists come from across the country for those views.
I had read about the water before arriving. But standing beside a narrow stream near Higuchi-san's farm, watching it run so clear that every pebble on the bed was distinct, I understood why the town never bothered with pipes.
In the Niikawa district — the neighborhood where Higuchi-san farms — roughly ten households remain. The kind of place where you can hear individual birds, where the nearest sounds are water and wind, and where the air itself carries a faint sweetness from the surrounding fruit trees.
Terraces, returned to tea
The terraces here were last used for rice decades ago. Without people to maintain them, the land had begun its slow return to forest — stone walls disappearing under vines, the flat steps softening back into hillside. Fields that humans carved from the mountain were halfway to becoming mountain again.
Higuchi-san cleared a portion of these abandoned terraces and planted tea.
There are terraced tea farms elsewhere in Japan, but this was the first we had visited in person. What struck us was how naturally the cultivated rows sat within the surrounding wildness — stone walls thick with grass, tea bushes bright green against the darker mountain forest behind them. Insect damage on some leaves, weeds pushing up between the rows. The marks of organic cultivation, plainly visible.
What surprised me was that a farm shaped by human hands could look so much like it belonged.
It was late March. Gentle sunlight reached the terraces, warming the air enough that a coat felt unnecessary. Wind rustled through the tea leaves. Birdsong, the hum of insects, the sound of water running somewhere nearby — the farm was alive with it. Not a managed silence, but a full, breathing quiet.
I fell for the place immediately. Not just the tea, not just the views — the whole atmosphere.
A decision made out of survival
Niikawa Tea Factory has been farming organically since the parents' generation — since roughly 1965, when Yuhachiro-san's father and mother were still primarily growing rice and beginning to plant tea on the side.
Back then, there were no masks, no protective suits. They sprayed pesticides as they were, and both of them fell ill.
"It was not for the environment. It was not for the consumer. They started it for themselves."
The moment they felt their lives were at risk, the decision was made. Conventional cultivation — however efficient, however reliable — was finished. They would grow without chemicals, or they would not grow at all.
They had no training and no model to follow. Higuchi-san recalls the early years plainly.
"The color was off — reddish. The shape was bad. The taste was harsh and astringent. We could not find anyone to buy it. We kept making tea, but none of it sold. Forestry was still going then, so we cut timber to stay afloat and spent every spare hour trying to figure out how to grow tea without chemicals."
It took more than ten years before the tea began to taste the way they wanted. A decade of weeding, experimenting with homemade bokashi — slow-acting fermented fertilizer — and natural herbicides brewed from local materials. A decade of learning to read the soil without the shortcut of chemistry. Most people would have quit long before.
No rest for the organic farmer
When we visited in late March, Higuchi-san was in the middle of pre-harvest preparation — clearing the dense weeds that had grown through winter, ahead of the first flush in May.
The tool is a brush cutter, carried on the back. The farm covers seven hectares — roughly one and a half Tokyo Domes — spread across mountain slopes that require constant climbing and descending, heavy machine and all.
The calendar is relentless. The first flush begins around Golden Week in early May and runs through the start of June. Within a week, the second flush starts, and processing continues through mid-July. After that, it is weeding — from summer through autumn, again and again, until the cycle begins once more.
Organic farmers make their own fertilizers, brew their own natural herbicides, build fences to keep out deer and wild boar. Every task that conventional farming handles with a purchased input, organic farming handles with labor and time. Higuchi-san says weeding is the hardest part. Spring to autumn, the grass never stops. Neither does he.
A farm that circulates
"When an animal has a baby, it picks a safe place, right? My farm is safe. Plenty of food, too."
Ladybugs, bees, spiders, mantises, frogs. Deer and wild boar at the edges. Without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, Higuchi-san's fields have become a habitat — not just a farm. Everything here is connected.
Small insects are drawn to the tea plants. Larger predators follow — spiders, mantises, hunting among the leaves. Then birds and frogs. Then the boar, rooting at the field edges in the evening. The food chain has to reach equilibrium for organic cultivation to hold. If any single link breaks, the pests win and the harvest suffers.
Even the weeds play a role. Cut down and left on the ground, they decompose — broken apart by microorganisms into nutrients that feed the soil, which feeds the tea plants, which send up new growth for the insects and the cycle to begin again.
It took a very long time for Higuchi-san's farm to reach this balance — for the tea field to become part of the mountain's own rhythm rather than something imposed on it. When I think about the years of failed harvests and backbreaking labor that preceded this equilibrium, my respect for him only deepens.
Clean, balanced, unmistakably organic
For years, organic tea carried an unfortunate reputation in Japan. Not delicious. Chemical fertilizers push nitrogen into the soil, and nitrogen drives umami — that savory, mouth-filling richness that defines premium sencha. Without chemical input, the umami tends to recede. When it does, bitterness and astringency step forward, and the tea tastes thin.
Higuchi-san's tea overturns that assumption.
The umami is not heavy — it does not flood the mouth the way a deeply fertilized sencha would. Instead it extends, clean and linear, threading through the cup rather than filling it. A refreshing bitterness follows, balanced by a light astringency that lifts rather than grips. The finish is crisp. No residue, no weight. A clarity that stays.
Organic cultivation tends to let each cultivar's character come through more distinctly — its native aroma, its particular color in the cup, its individual balance of sweet and bitter. Without heavy fertilization smoothing everything toward the same umami-rich profile, you taste the plant itself.
And beyond the flavor, there is something else. After spending a day on those terraces, hearing Higuchi-san talk about his parents' decision, watching him haul the brush cutter up another slope — the tea carries all of that. His kindness, his quiet persistence. You taste both in the cup, if you are paying attention.
Every time I drink Higuchi-san's tea, I am back on those terraces. The moss on the stone walls, the sound of water somewhere below, the warm March light falling through the leaves. I find myself wanting to walk those rows again, talking about tea with the man who tends them.