The Creation of Coffee Culture & Modern Japan
By Aku Owaka-Haigh
Even on a cold winter morning, as Tokyo wakes bleary-eyed to another day, as the skyscrapers throw off their morning haze—their lights flickering on and beckoning crowds of salarymen—on a quiet street corner, a dimly lit kissaten is already open for business. For generations, the kissaten has been seemingly unfazed by the tides of change that have ebbed and flowed around it. Yet, all the while, inside the kissaten, the same scent of roasted coffee beans hangs in the air, permeating every breath. Steeped into its yellowing, smoke-stained walls and heavily varnished dark wood are 150 years of Japan’s coffee history. It tells the story of how an isolationist Japan entered the world of modern nations, how the first kissaten became the catalyst for a cultural revolution, and how a single man inadvertently thrust the coffee bean to the forefront of Japan’s thirst for modernity.
The Arrival of Coffee in Japan
Throughout history, these unassuming berries, when roasted into brittle beans and stewed in hot water, have sparked radical cultural change. 200 years before the first kissaten opened its doors, coffee was fueling the mind, spirit and body of Western modernity during the Age of Enlightenment. Its greatest advocates, such as Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, and Voltaire—who was said to drink up to 72 cups a day—were regular patrons of coffeehouses, which became vibrant hubs for artistic expression, scientific innovation, and revolutionary debate. These establishments were such intellectually transformative spaces for those who visited them, that they were dubbed “penny universities,” where anyone could get an education for the price of a cup of coffee. Some of these coffeehouses became national institutions in their own right, such as New York’s Tontine coffeehouse which became the headquarters for the New York Stock Exchange, or the association of British coffeehouses gave rise to The Royal Society of London, the preeminent scientific instruction of its day. Coffee wasn’t just an individual stimulant, but a societal one.
However, while coffeehouses were shaping the trajectory of Western modernity, Japan remained in a state of cultural seclusion under its 214-year period of self-isolation known as sakoku (“locked country,” 1639-1853 CE). During this time, coffee inspired no yearning for modernity in the Japanese people, it incited no philosophical debate and occupied no space in the cultural psyche. It was an unpopular, bitter, and medicinal drink, unable to escape the negative connotations that foreign products had in a country willing to close its borders to the rest of the world. Coffee was first brought to Japan by Dutch sailors around 1690, and gifted to geisha, who drank it with honey to stay awake during long shifts. Later, coffee would be drunk as a digestive aid and stimulant, but its limited supply, lack of cultural significance, and competition from green tea—which had almost a millennia of cultural relevance as Japan’s national beverage—kept coffee acquiesced to its medicinal role for almost 200 years.
It wasn’t until the end of Japan’s isolationist policies in 1853 and the subsequent Meiji Restoration (1868-1912 CE), that a more internationally-minded Japan was ushered in, one which was looking beyond its shores for the first time in over two centuries, ready to embrace the outside the world. However, observing the cultural and economic power of the West, and the pervasive popularity of coffee, Japan sought to join the world of modern nations. In doing so, Japan began to associate modernity with the West, and couldn’t help but notice the prevalence of coffee throughout it.
The arrival of Brazilian coffee kickstarted the coffee industry in Japan. Brazil is currently home to the largest population of Japanese people outside of Japan, but in 1895, before the first Japanese migrant ship arrived, Brazil was known, in large part, for its coffee. Brazil was responsible for exporting 80% of Europe’s coffee, yet facing labor shortages after the abolition of slavery in 1888. In 1908, the Kasato Maru, the first Japanese migrant ship to reach Brazil, docked in São Paulo carrying 790 Japanese workers, ready to work the coffee plantations. This new line of migration not only helped fuel Brazil’s coffee industry but also created a new, growing market for coffee back in Japan. Within just a few short decades, coffee began to eclipse tea in Japan’s public spaces, and drinking coffee became seen as an act of downright modernity as cafés sprang up, especially in Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district.
However, before the first cafés opened its doors or the first migrant ship set sail from Japan, before the treaty was signed with Brazil, or coffee began to compete with green tea, there was a single man with a vision for Japan’s first coffeehouse, a vision which would cost him his education, his wealth, and, ultimately, his life. His name was Tei Eikei and he had seen first hand the radical potential carried, not just in coffee itself, but in the social spaces that formed around it. It was Tei Eikei who created the first kissaten and found, in the unassuming coffee bean, a symbol of Japan's push towards modernization.
The Birth of the Kissaten in Modern Meiji Japan
Born in Nagasaki in 1858, Tei could speak four languages (Japanese, Chinese, English and French) by the age of 14. By 16, he traveled to America to enroll at Yale University. By 20, more enamored with the culture of coffeehouses than his own studies, he dropped out of Yale and began his return to Japan. Along the way, he journeyed through Europe, where coffeehouse culture, now centuries old, was still thriving. Exposed to these spaces where class, political and cultural boundaries blurred, Tei envisioned creating a similar space in Japan—one where ordinary citizens, students, and young people could gather and challenge the rigid bureaucracy of Japanese society.
Although Western-inspired, Tei wanted this space to stand in stark contrast to the early forms of Westernization that Japan had already started adopting. For example, he aimed to differentiate his vision from places like the Rokumeikan, a gaudy institution that embraced the opulence of the West, both in its architecture and in the class barriers that determined entry into its balls and parties. Tei’s goal was to craft a uniquely Japanese take on the post-industrial coffeehouses of the west, one that embraced the egalitarian spirit of the “penny university” while putting coffee—still relatively unpopular in Japan—at the forefront.
It was in 1888, at the age of 30, that Tei opened Kahichakan—its name derived from an early Japanese pronunciation of coffee as kahi and chakan, a common suffix for tea houses. Yet, despite its name, tea was not served. Tei focused exclusively on coffee. This differentiated his kissaten from pre-existing establishments—such as Kobe’s Hokodo—which was a tea house that began selling coffee a decade before Kachichakan. In his kissaten, Tei used coffee to encourage conversation and breaking away from the hierarchical barriers of Japanese culture. It was a space in which newly rich merchants would be able to sit alongside poor, former samurai while students and Western-dressed aristocrats could lounge all day for the price of a single cup of coffee.
For 200 years coffee had failed to assimilate into Japanese culture, in part because of its unclear origins and inconsistent uses—sometimes attributed to the Dutch, at other times thought to be Chinese, with a range of contradictory health claims attached to it. However, this very ambiguity became one of its strengths and accounted for its persistence. Similarly, the kissaten was free from the rigid traditions that defined other social spaces in Japan, such as tea houses—the first of which had been established in 1160 in Kyoto and in over 700 years, had become steeped in intricate class and performative customs. In contrast, the kissaten allowed for a free flow of foreign customs and ideals into Japan, just as easily imported as its coffee. As Japan transitioned from a feudal society to a modern nation, the kissaten emerged as a space that was uniquely Japanese, yet liberated from the weight of its traditions—an ideal space for a country on the brink of modernity.
The Drink of Modernity
Kahichakan was an immediate success, but Tei was not a successful businessman. His priority was creating a customer-centered environment, sparing no expense on luxurious amenities. Despite its popularity, Kahichakan closed in 1893, just five years after opening, and Tei passed away in the same year—bankrupt and selling coffee from a dry goods store in Seattle. The vacuum left by the kissaten’s closure inspired many imitations, but it also paved the way for a new type of coffeehouse, one driven more by business acumen than Tei’s altruistic vision. It was in the early 20th-century, rallied by the growing popularity of the kissaten, and Japan’s budding relationships with Brazil, that the first cafés were opened on Japanese shores.
Whereas kissatens fostered intimate discussions, cafés were filled with Brazilian jazz and cabaret music. Kissatens had dimly-lit, smoky-filled rooms serving only coffee, while cafés were adorned with glittering chandeliers, gilded furniture, and served alcohol, along with coffee, to their rowdier clientele. Kissatens had carefully blended Western and Japanese traditions, but cafés embraced the cultural vacuum that coffee created, further challenging Japan’s deep-seated societal norms, and amassing small fortunes for the early innovators of Japan’s coffee industry. While both spaces allowed for culture to be teased, challenged and even subverted, it was cafés’ more liberal approach to women’s liberation, the rise of erotic cafés, and the greater assimilation of Western values that led to cafés being associated with scandal, sordid affairs, and the ongoing tug-of-war between tradition and modernity. Cafés were livelier spaces than kissatens, less influenced by the traditions of Western coffeehouses, and they provided an easily replicable model that spread across Japan, creating a new innovation in coffee culture—the world’s first coffee chain, Cafe Paulista, opened in 1911.
Throughout the 20th century, Japan’s coffee scene continued to evolve independent of Tei Eikei's original vision. Kissatens became increasingly introspective spaces, with some retaining their foundational values, while others diversified into a variety of themed kissas; one of the most popular of which was the jazz kissa—if coffee was the drink of modernity, then jazz was its soundtrack.
The Lasting Legacy of Tei Eikei and the Japanese Kissaten
In a culture increasingly dominated by convenience, where cafés, coffee chains, and vending machines line every street, the meticulously slow-brewed coffee of the kissaten remains an obstinate outlier. To its patrons, both those old enough to remember its golden days, and to those too young, drawn in instead by a sense of anemoia, the kissaten upholds a tradition as old as the coffee itself. The coffeehouse is more than just a public space, and the cup of coffee is more than just a drink—they are catalysts for revolution and the fuel for modernity.
Its story began in the Ottoman coffeehouses of the 15th-century, was carried through Europe, where the Age of Enlightenment was ushered in, within the walls of the Europe’s 17th-century coffeehouses, before being carried across the Atlantic to America, where, in the docks of 18th-century Boston, as tea was thrown harbor, coffee became a symbol of American independence and revolution. Throughout the world, the revolutionary story of coffee has been readily told, yet few speak of Kahichakan, of the 19th-century smoke-filled rooms and darkwood furniture of Japan, and of the cultural revolution it sparked. Even fewer speak of Tei Eikei, but the culture he left behind is visible everywhere: on every street corner, in every vending machine. It’s in the fluorescent-lit convenience stores—never without a coffee machine—, and it’s in the hands of those salarymen on their morning commute, bustling by that quiet kissaten, unaware of the history that hides within its walls.
About the Author: Aku Owaka-Haigh is a writer and cultural critic dedicated to unraveling the intricate tapestry of cultural, political, and societal identities that define our existence. His work ranges from exploring the zeitgeist of modern pop culture, to challenging the playful assertions of history and tradition that shape contemporary life.
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