Do you know why Japanese coffee culture is unique? why Japanese coffee is so good?

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When it comes to the coffee territory of the world today, Japan is a country that has to be mentioned. Although it does not produce a single coffee bean, nor does it take the lead of Italy or the United States for 30 years, Japan has spent centuries embracing and developing its own unique coffee culture. This, at least in Asian countries, is unparalleled. Coffee industry is not only a technology and industry, but more like a culture, art and way of life. It was not until the 1990s that Japan stood at the forefront of world coffee consumption and attracted the attention of Europe and the United States, while the Meiji Restoration only took 50 years to completely transform Japanese society.

Japanese coffee culture

Japan first came into contact with coffee during the Tokugawa period, and the Dutch in Nagasaki brought coffee beans around 1700. Writer Namaku Oda described coffee in his prose collection Qiongpu: "they were invited to drink something called 'coffee' on a Dutch red-haired boat. The beans were fried black and powdered, mixed with white sugar, and the taste was bitter and could not adapt at all."

Tadao Shangshima founded Tadao Shop in Kobe in 1933, which is also the world-famous UCC Coffee. More than 80 years later, UCC is still the world's leading coffee manufacturer. UCC produces the world's top "Blue Mountain Coffee" in Jamaica, the unique sour "Kona" in Hawaii and the world's rare Mantenin Coffee in Indonesia. Each coffee garden run by UCC is blessed and is extremely suitable for coffee growth. UCC uses coffee beans carefully cultivated and planted at a fixed point as raw materials to make all kinds of coffee products. You can also often see UCC products in the Chinese market.

During World War II, the import of coffee, as a hostile drink, was restricted in Japan and completely banned after a period of time. Coffee bean imports interrupted by World War II in 1950 resumed eight years later, tea shops reopened, and the coffee market gradually expanded in Japan. However, during this period, Japan was in a post-war recovery period because of its weak economy, so the imported coffee beans were the worst and worst raw beans, and even the moldy raw beans were accepted by Japan because they had no choice. This point is very similar to Italy introduced in previous issues, limited external conditions, on the contrary, will promote internal qualitative change, pay more attention to baking, extraction and utensils, poor thinking about change, resulting in the development of a very unique coffee culture, on the contrary, some European powers that have been in a position to obtain excellent raw beans are mediocre and have no characteristics to speak of.

The Japanese are not good at creating a whole new thing, but they are good at learning, copying and transforming an industry. In Japan, as long as it is good, everyone will seriously persist in learning and improving it for decades, such as European baking. Today's Japanese bakers can bake authentic European bread. Even bakers from Germany, France and Italy will go to Japan to relearn the traditional process of making European bread. The same is true of coffee. Japan has also made a series of contributions to the development of the coffee industry.

Kato, a Japanese who lived in Chicago in 1903, invented instant coffee and patented it in the United States, but it was Nestle who eventually carried the technology forward. In 1965, Yoshitake Cafe in Shimane Prefecture launched Mira coffee with sugar and no milk for the first time, which is the ancestor of canned coffee. In 1969, UCC began to sell canned coffee with milk, unlike most of the previous coffee sold in glass bottles, this time it is a real "canned" coffee. In 1970, the import of coffee in Japan exceeded 100,000 tons for the first time, and coffee began to become popular among the public.

What's so good about Japanese coffee?

The first coffee shop in Japan, in 1888, opened in Ueno, Tokyo. The real popularity began in the middle of Meiji. In the second half of the 17th century, cafes appeared in Paris, France. Since then, coffee shops and teahouses have also been used as resting places in the daily life of the Japanese. Today, Japan imports 380000 tons of coffee beans every year from more than 40 coffee importers in the world, making it the third largest coffee importer in the world.

The contribution of the Japanese to coffee cannot be ignored. In Japan, traditional coffee beans are roasted with charcoal fire, and the coffee made from dried coffee beans is more bitter than ordinary coffee, but if you taste it carefully, you will have a strong and mellow flavor. So it is called charcoal roast coffee, and in Japanese it is called "charcoal coffee". Secondly, the Japanese invented instant coffee. Both Britain and the United States have tried to make instant coffee that can be preserved and brewed, but limited to the material conditions at that time, the coffee has a short shelf life.

It was not until 1899 that a Japanese scientist invented instant coffee in the process of developing instant green tea. However, coffee was not popular in Japan at that time, so it was not taken seriously by people. It was not until World War II that instant coffee became famous in the world. Japanese people who are keen on the convenience of life think that sometimes it is not convenient enough to make coffee, so they simply put it in a can and drink it when they open it, so they have canned coffee.

There is also a unique maid coffee in Japan, which belongs to a very unique coffee culture all over the world. The Japanese are good at integrating their own culture into the coffee culture to form their own coffee culture, which is also loved by many coffee fans.

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