The figure, with its basis
Attested in the historical record, and sourced to it.
Japan's Ministry of Agriculture reports green tea exports of 72,094 million yen for January to December 2025, up 98.2% on the year before, an increase of about ¥35.7 billion. The figure is compiled from Ministry of Finance trade statistics. It measures export value in yen, across all destinations, and it is a preliminary release. Three things it is not. It is not volume, and a value can double on price as well as on tonnage. It is not converted to any other currency. And it is not a fiscal-year figure: Japan's fiscal year runs from April to March, so a figure quoted for fiscal 2025 covers a different twelve months and will not match.
What the ministry says drove it
Attested in the historical record, and sourced to it.
The ministry attributes the rise mainly to powdered tea including matcha, used as a food ingredient in lattes and sweets, with demand from Europe, North America and ASEAN markets, against a background of interest in health and Japanese food. That is the ministry's explanation of the trade, and TeaHQ repeats it as such. It says nothing about any health effect.
What is happening at home
Attested in the historical record, and sourced to it.
The ministry's October 2026 tea paper records tencha, the leaf milled into matcha, rising to about 3.2 times its 2014 level by 2025, while first-flush production for leaf tea has been falling. It puts the crude-leaf price of tencha at about 4.9 times that of sencha. Those two facts belong together. Tencha is shaded, slower and costlier to make, and growers cannot convert a field overnight. A surge in demand therefore arrives as a price signal first and as supply later. The same paper also devotes a section to exporting organic tea, a further sign of where official attention is.
How to read this in a year's time
TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.
Nothing here shows that demand will hold. Markets built around a fashionable ingredient can fall as fast as they rise, and a year in which exports doubled is a poor base for any forecast. Check the latest ministry release before repeating these numbers, and always give the year.