Cultivar
Akane
あかね Akane
あかね (akane) is madder, the root that gives a deep red dye, and by extension the red of a sunset sky. A black-tea cultivar named for the colour of its liquor, which contemporary descriptions call bright red.
A 1935 Kagoshima cross of an Assam introduction against a local landrace selection, registered in 1953 as Cha Norin No. 15 — one of the black-tea cultivars from Japan's brief attempt to build a black-tea industry, named for the red of the liquor it makes.
Akane is a black-tea cultivar, which in this collection makes it one of a small minority — the others being Benihomare, Benifuki, Benihikari and Inzatsu 131 — and a survivor of a policy that did not last. Between the wars and for a decade after, Japan tried to build an export black-tea industry, and its breeding stations crossed introduced Assam material against local landrace stock to get plants that would make a red tea and still survive a Japanese winter. Akane is one of those, crossed in 1935 at the Kagoshima station and registered in 1953 in the same first Cha Norin batch as Yabukita.
The industry it was bred for is gone. Japanese black tea is a niche product made by a handful of growers, and the cultivars from that programme are mostly of historical interest — except Benifuki, which found a second life as a source of methylated catechins for allergy research.
Lineage
- Ai21 ♀ — an Assam (Camellia sinensis var. assamica) introduction, アッサム21号.
- NkaO3 ♂ — 鹿緑原3号, a Kagoshima zairai (landrace) selection.
The 茶農林 summary table garbles the female code; see conflicts. What is clear is the
shape of the cross: introduced Assam germplasm on the seed side for the black-tea chemistry,
Japanese landrace on the pollen side for hardiness. That is the same recipe as Benifuki two
generations later, and the deliberate opposite of Benihomare, which is simply an open-pollinated
seedling of introduced Indian seed.
History
Crossed in 1935, selected out in 1939, and trialled from 1942 to 1952 under the strain name 鹿アッサム交配132号 — “Kagoshima Assam cross No. 132” — a designation that records exactly what the programme was doing. Registration followed in 1953 as 茶農林15号.
The yield figures that survive are quoted against its stablemates rather than against Yabukita, which is the giveaway that it was never meant to compete with a green-tea cultivar: about eight per cent below Hatsumomiji and thirty-eight per cent above Benihomare.
Characteristics
Mid-season. The bush is medium-sized and vigorous once established, but it is a late-rooting cultivar and wants careful handling in propagation — a real drawback for a plant that has to be multiplied by cuttings. Cold resistance is reported high, which was the whole point of crossing Assam material against Kagoshima landrace stock rather than planting the Assam material directly.
The tea is a bright red liquor with a strong flavour and a crisp finish, attributed to high tannin and low anthocyanin content, and the tannin roughly doubles in the second and third crops. The name follows from that colour: あかね is madder red.
Lineage
A controlled cross of an Assam introduction against a Kagoshima landrace selection, made in 1935 — the same programme and the same era as Benihomare, Japan's first registered tea cultivar, and aimed at the same target. Where Benihomare is an open-pollinated Assam seedling, Akane pairs the Assam side deliberately with local landrace material, which is what its comparative yield figures are quoted against.
Where the sources disagree
- Parent codes: the 1953 naming paper gives the strain as 鹿アッサム交配132号（アッサム21号×鹿緑原3号）and the pedigree as A21×O3. The 茶農林 summary table renders the same cross as Ａｉ2×ＮｋａＯ3, and gives that same Ａｉ2 to Hatsumomiji (paper: A2×O5) and Benitachiwase (paper: A26×O1) — so it is the summary table that collapses three distinct Assam accessions into one code, not Tea Nursery that invented a digit. This record follows the naming paper.
Sources
Documentation: sparse — the 1953 naming paper in 茶業研究報告 gives pedigree, characteristics, recommended districts and name derivation in a single paragraph; beyond that a Cha Norin registry row and a secondary compilation. Japan's black-tea cultivars of this period are generally thinly documented