Japanese Tea Day Date in the current year: October 1, 2025

Each Japanese Tea Day commemorates an important event related to Japanese tea. The one celebrated on October 1 was established by Ito En, a prominent Japanese tea producer and distributor, to honor the Great Kitano Tea Ceremony. This ceremony is widely regarded as a significant cultural event of the Azuchi-Momoyama period in Japanese history.

This period marked the unification of Japan. It began in 1568 when Oda Nobunaga entered Kyoto to install Ashikaga Yoshiaki as the new head of the Ashikaga shogunate. Following Nobunaga’s death in 1586, his retainer, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, succeeded him as daijō-daijin (Chancellor of the Realm).

Nobunaga and Hideyoshi both understood the importance of culture in legitimizing their power. Recognizing the political and cultural value of the traditional tea ceremony, Hideyoshi organized a large-scale public tea ceremony at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto in 1587. The ceremony was intended as a grand display of Hideyoshi’s power and to demonstrate his patronage of the cultural practice.

The Great Kitano Tea Ceremony was special because it was open to people of all social classes, including commoners. The event reinforced Hideyoshi’s image as a unifier of society and a cultivated leader in touch with refined aesthetics. It also helped popularize tea culture beyond elite circles and elevated the tea ceremony into a cultural institution with broad social appeal.

The second Japanese Tea Day, celebrated on October 31, commemorates the introduction of tea seeds to Japan in 1191. Tea consumption originated in China and was introduced to Japan during the Nara period in the 8th century. For the next four centuries, however, tea was grown and consumed in small quantities by the imperial family, nobility, and Buddhist monks.

The rise in popularity of tea in Japan is attributed to the Buddhist priest Myōan Eisai. Dissatisfied with the state of Buddhism in Japan, Eisai traveled to China in 1168, where he was introduced to the Chan (Zen) school of Chinese Buddhism.

His first trip lasted only six months, but he returned in 1187 for a longer stay. After several years of study, Eisai became a Zen teacher and returned to Japan in 1191. He brought Zen scripture and tea seeds with him, which he planted on the island of Kyūshū. He also gave seeds to Myōe, a Buddhist monk and abbot of the Kōzan-ji temple in Kyoto. Myōe started the first major tea plantations in Japan.

Eisai wrote the first Japanese treatise on tea, entitled Kissa yōjōki (Drinking Tea and Prolonging Life), in which he described the medicinal properties of tea according to traditional Chinese medicine. The first edition was published in 1211. Three years later, Eisai introduced the samurai to tea drinking by offering it to Shogun Minamoto no Sanemoto as a hangover treatment. He took this opportunity to present his treatise to the shogun.