Matcha is no longer tea. It’s an aesthetic, a symbol, a cult. It’s the green pigment that dominates global feeds, the ancient ritual turned mainstream. But behind the emerald powder’s shimmer, Japan faces a tension that goes far beyond wellness: what happens when a ritualized product, the fruit of centuries of patience and technique, becomes an object of instant consumption dictated by TikTok?
Born in the stillness of Buddhist temples, matcha was conceived as a spiritual tool: concentration, balance, contemplation. Today, it’s something else entirely. It’s the iced latte in a translucent cup after a Pilates class; it’s the perfect foam on a minimalist flat lay; it’s the flavor that redefines desserts in Western haute patisserie. Its ancestral identity has been absorbed into the global aspirational circuit.
The phenomenon is no coincidence. Since the explosion of Dalgona coffee in the midst of the pandemic, social platforms have mutated into laboratories for liquid trends. The matcha latte, with its fluorescent green, was inevitable: a 520% increase in searches since 2020. The “clean girl” turned it into a totem of aesthetic purity; brands adopted it as a code of healthy sophistication. The Japan Times now warns: the cult has reached a critical point. Kyoto’s historic tea houses—Hippodo, Marukyu Koyamaen—have imposed purchase limits. Stocks are evaporating.
The origin of the crisis is revealing: the world doesn’t want just any matcha, it wants first-flush—the first harvest of the year, reserved for centuries for ceremonies and elites. The object of desire is, precisely, the scarcest. And although Kametani Tea confirms a 10% annual increase in production since 2019, the equation is unsustainable. Japan exports more than 50% of its matcha, its domestic consumption is falling, and plantations are emptying hands: 77% fewer farmers in two decades. Digital overexposure ignores biological time: five years to cultivate, one hour to grind 40 grams, one month to carve a stone mortar. Virality demands immediacy; matcha, reverence.
The impact transcends the beverage. “Green gold” sustains part of Japanese tourism and redefines local economies. But if demand continues to grow at the pace of the algorithm, the dilemma is inevitable: either Japan transforms its treasure into a commodity, sacrificing its essence, or preserves it as an inaccessible luxury, leaving the rest of the world nostalgic for something it never had.
Matcha embodies the contemporary dilemma: can a tradition survive intact in an ecosystem that turns everything into content? Perhaps the real challenge isn’t increasing production, but rethinking consumption. Because, like everything that ascends too quickly on the altar of the internet, the danger isn’t scarcity, but obsolescence.
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