Forty-five hectares. That is the area of tea fields Shimokubo-san manages.
Roughly ten Tokyo Domes, if that helps — a single continuous operation of 600 by 900 meters. Among the tea producers we work with, most manage four to ten hectares. Shimokubo-san's Kagoshima tea farm is in a different category entirely.
Kenichiro, the fifth generation at Shimokubo Isao Tea Factory, thinks about tea the way some people think about breathing — constantly, involuntarily. When he goes out drinking with neighboring producers, the conversation turns to tea and does not stop until morning. He is not performing enthusiasm. He simply cannot turn it off.
We visited him in Ei, a district of Minamikyushu City at the southern tip of Kagoshima Prefecture. The land here is flat and open, the sunlight strong, the growing season long. It is one of the earliest-harvesting tea regions in all of Japan — and Shimokubo-san has built his entire operation around that advantage.
Kagoshima's speedster.
"We're expanding again. Already found a spot. There's this early-ripening cultivar, Haruto 34 — seems promising, so I'm thinking of giving it a shot."
This is what Shimokubo-san told me on the phone the other day. Forty-five hectares under management, and he is still looking for more ground.
Tea harvest in Japan follows a pattern not unlike the cherry blossom front — it begins in the warm south and moves northward as spring advances. The very earliest Japanese tea comes from Tanegashima, the island at Japan's southern tip. Their shincha — the season's first new tea — is called Oohashiri, famous for reaching the market before anyone else in the country.
And the first tea shipped from the Kagoshima mainland, right after Tanegashima? That is Shimokubo-san's. He plants an early-ripening cultivar called Shigeru No. 2 in the sunniest, fastest-growing section of his fields, and harvests it before anyone else on the mainland can.
We arrived on March 23rd. Spring was barely underway in most of Japan, but here the fields were already flushed with golden shoots — small and tight, catching the light, further along than I had expected for late March.
In Kagoshima, where the harvest comes early, getting your tea to market before your neighbors means higher prices. That economic reality has made early-ripening cultivars — Yutakamidori, Saemidori — enormously popular across the prefecture. But even among those, Shimokubo-san's Shigeru No. 2 is in a league of its own. A true speedster.
Japan's second tea country.
Most people outside Japan do not realize it, but Kagoshima Prefecture produces more tea than anywhere except Shizuoka. Second in the nation. And if you narrow the lens to the municipal level, Minamikyushu City — where Shimokubo-san farms — ranks first in all of Japan for tea production volume. The scale of tea-growing here is unlike anything you see in Shizuoka's small mountain plots.
Kagoshima is also where individual producers manage the most land. The average household in Minamikyushu City works 5.1 hectares, nearly double the national average of two to three. Even by those standards, Shimokubo-san's 45 hectares are extraordinary.
Within that expanse, he cultivates over twenty different cultivars. On top of the daily farm work, he is clearing new land, running trials, traveling the country for business, and occasionally heading overseas. When he rests is a mystery to everyone who knows him. Tea occupies every corner of his year.
"Always studying."
"You only get one first flush a year, right? I've been making tea for twenty years — that's twenty chances. You mess up this year, try again next year. Next year's no good either? Then you just keep studying. That's all there is to it."
Talking with Shimokubo-san, what strikes you is not just the knowledge but the restlessness behind it. Soil preparation, cultivation, processing, distribution — he treats every link in the chain as something that can be done better. Producers in the area say his intensity is contagious.
"When I drink with Kazuhiro Nagayama, we'll talk tea until four in the morning."
Nagayama Kazuhiro is another Ei-based producer and one of our favorite Yabukita specialists. We have written about him separately — he is the kind of person whose quiet precision with a single cultivar stays with you long after you leave his farm. Every time we visit Nagayama-san, we end up talking for hours without noticing the time pass.
The two of them at a table together, talking until dawn. I can only imagine what ground they cover.
Twenty cultivars and counting.
"We've definitely got twenty, but I don't know the exact number. It changes every year — something gets added, something gets pulled. I'd have to check the ledger."
Tsuyuhikari, Okumidori, Asanoka, Harumoegi, Shigeru No. 2 — the list goes on. Shimokubo-san is always looking at new cultivars. Some of the plants on his Kagoshima tea farm have not even been registered yet with the Ministry of Agriculture. Standard varieties alongside experimental ones, each with its own flavor profile, its own ideal cultivation method, its own processing requirements. He handles all of it himself.
"Tsuyuhikari is great, isn't it? This year's batch turned out really well — got a good price, good reviews. More producers are starting to grow it now."
Tsuyuhikari was originally a Shizuoka cultivar, not widely grown in Kagoshima at all. Shimokubo-san brought it south, planted it in his own fields, and spent several years experimenting — adjusting the processing, reading the leaf, trying again — before he arrived at something he was satisfied with. When other Kagoshima producers saw the quality of his Tsuyuhikari, they started planting it too. He tells this part with visible satisfaction — a quiet pride in having expanded the cultivar's reach.
His Tsuyuhikari carries the rich, layered umami the cultivar is known for, but with a boldness underneath — something broad and expansive, like the Kagoshima landscape itself.
What goes into the soil.
Ask Shimokubo-san what matters most in tea-making and the answer comes without hesitation. Soil. Everything else follows from the ground. His fertilizer blends are mixed on-site, adjusted season by season based on the condition of the earth and the performance of the tea it produces. After walking the fields, he took us to the storage area where the mixing happens.
Nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash, base saturation, three-phase distribution, lime, magnesium — the vocabulary shifted into territory I could barely follow. He calculates the ratios himself, balancing each component by hand. Very few producers, he says, bother to learn the math.
"The co-op people talk about numbers all the time, and everyone falls asleep. But I started writing it down — kept a notebook, learned how to do the calculations myself."
Here, rice bran and powdered bamboo are mixed with compost to produce bokashi — a slow-acting fermented fertilizer that feeds the soil steadily over time rather than in a single chemical burst.
The compost, fully fermented, generates its own heat. Dig into the pile and steam rises from the surface. You expect compost to smell, but this does not — microbial fermentation has broken everything down to something clean and almost odorless.
I ran my hand through it. A dry, powdery texture — more like fine soil than anything organic. No scent at all. Shimokubo-san produces this in volume, then hauls it to the fields by heavy machinery.
The logic behind all of it is straightforward, even if the execution is not. Chemical fertilizers, used repeatedly, make the soil progressively harder — less able to absorb nutrients, requiring ever-larger applications until the ground is effectively saturated. Shimokubo-san runs regular soil analyses and builds his program around organic inputs, aiming for earth that the tea trees can draw from without strain.
A flavor you do not forget.
I could keep going — there are stories about Shimokubo-san for every season. But what draws us back, in the end, is the tea itself.
Each cultivar is processed to suit its character. The results are distinct from one another and yet share something — a certain directness, a weight in the cup that feels like Shimokubo-san's own temperament coming through in the liquor.
Chiran tea, grown under the intense southern Kagoshima sun, is typically deep-steamed. Shimokubo-san's fukamushi produces a brew with a remarkably dense color — a deep, vivid green you rarely see from other regions. The astringency stays restrained, letting the leaf's full-bodied umami come forward. It is not a subtle tea. It is powerful, immediate, and once you have tasted it, difficult to set aside.
Behind that punch — the concentration, the clarity — is the soil he builds by hand, the cultivars he selects one by one, the twenty years of first flushes he is still learning from. It all arrives in the cup.