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Demonstration against tea from East Asia

There was a movement Japanese tea became a target for boycott. Japanese tea was started to export to America in 1859 by Walsh Hall company In Yokohama. Japanese tea became very popular in America because of its quality. Exporting tea has increased tremendously and green tea became a secondly important export item in Japan. As the amount of tea increased, the quality assuring became more difficult, and numbers of defective or fake teas were found in the shipping. This made American consumer furious, and they started boycotting Japanese tea. During Meiji era, American congress approved the defective and fake teas from Japan. Unfortunately, because of the popularity of green tea, some people used the opportunity for making money. Coloring tea became the big issue during Meiji Era. Foreign traders in Yokohama added the process of re-heating before shipping and used soapstone or black lead for coloring. Since Japanese green tea was not a roasted kind of tea like Chinese green tea, it was not really necessary to add this process to keep the color stay green. However, this finishing process was very common in world tea industry at the time, and they followed others. The harm of soapstone and black lead was found and became a issue in America. In 1897, the treaty to regulating tea was conclude. Chinese tea was the priority object, but also Japanese tea was included into the object of this treaty. Mockeicha was the tea included some stalk. After the world war I, more Japanese tea farmers were starting to use the machines for picking tea leaves. It made farmer's work much faster and easier, but often include some stalks as picking. Separators were used to separate these stalks from tea, but complete separation was impossible. Those tea contained some stalk became a object of complaining from American consumers. In 1918, new regulation was added to the original treaty that if the amount of stalks is more than leaves, those tea can not to be exported. Because of this treaty many Japanese tea did not pass for exporting.

(Takahiro Moritake)