Fujikaori

Fujikaori is a Shizuoka cultivar bred, like Sofu, to carry the floral aroma of an Indian Assam hybrid into a garden tea plant — but bred the other way round. Sofu crosses Yabukita as seed parent with Shizu-Inzatsu 131 as pollen parent; Fujikaori reverses the two roles, making Shizu-Inzatsu 131 the seed parent and Yabukita the pollen parent. It is not a separate discovery of the same trait but the mirror image of the same cross, made by different breeders working in a different part of Shizuoka. It was selected privately by two growers in Fujieda city and registered under the Plant Variety Protection Act in 1996; unlike Sofu it never received a national Cha Norin (茶農林) sequence number. It buds two to three days before Yabukita, carries the same jasmine-scented compound that defines Sofu, and — because its breeders chose to keep it close to home rather than release it widely — remains one of the least-planted of Japan’s floral cultivars.

Lineage

• Shizu-Inzatsu 131 ♀ (静印雑131) — the unregistered Assam-hybrid breeding line, selected in 1944 from a seedling grown from Assam-type seed brought back from India by Maruo Fumio, and developed at the Shizuoka tea experiment station under Arima Toshiharu. It is Fujikaori’s seed parent, and the source of its floral aroma.
• Yabukita ♂ — the standard Shizuoka cultivar, contributing the pollen here rather than the seed, in the reverse of its role in Sofu.

Fujikaori is a controlled cross, not a landrace selection, and its defining fact is its relationship to Sofu: the same two parents, sexes swapped. NARO’s own 2002 research report states this directly, describing Fujikaori as the cultivar “‘やぶきた’を花粉親、‘静-印雑131’を種子親として 育成された” — bred using Yabukita as the pollen parent and Shizu-Inzatsu 131 as the seed parent — the mirror of Sofu’s own cross. A related 2004 report names two further Shizu-Inzatsu 131 descendants carrying the same aroma compound — the breeding lines Kanaya 22 (金谷22号) and Miyazaki 24 (宮崎24号) — rather than any further named cultivar. A cultivar survey by the Japanese Tea Sommelier separately puts Kondowase in the same family, as another Yabukita × Shizu-Inzatsu 131 cross sharing Sofu’s parent arrangement rather than Fujikaori’s — a secondary claim, and Kondowase’s own record is not independently verified here. No cultivar bred from Fujikaori itself is documented in the sources consulted.

History

Two growers in Fujieda

The cross that produced Fujikaori was made in 1980, crossing Shizu-Inzatsu 131 with Yabukita’s pollen. The selection was carried out privately, not at a prefectural research station, by Morizono Ichiji and Koyanagi Mitsuyoshi, both of Fujieda city, Shizuoka. It was registered under the Plant Variety Protection Act (種苗法) in 1996 — Heisei 8. Cultivation was later carried on by Koyanagi’s son. The name itself is a piece of local branding: 藤 from Fujieda, かおり (“aroma”) for the tea’s defining trait, and the cultivar has also circulated under the name “Fujieda kaori.”

Fujieda’s city hall, tea merchants, the agricultural cooperative and individual producers formed the Fujieda Tea Promotion Council (藤枝茶振興協議会) to support it, propagating around 20,000 seedlings a year and carrying the cultivar through production and product development. Even so, its creators were reportedly reluctant to distribute cuttings outside their own circle, and the cultivar stayed largely confined to Fujieda. One reported exception: a batch of cuttings reached a kamairicha producer’s family in Ureshino, Saga — one of the few places outside Shizuoka where Fujikaori is known to be grown.

The methyl anthranilate connection

Fujikaori’s aroma has the same chemical explanation as Sofu’s. When NARO researchers Sawai, Yamaguchi and Yoshitomi identified methyl anthranilate — a grape- and jasmine-adjacent aroma compound never previously found in a Japanese tea cultivar — as the cause of Sofu’s floral character, their 2002 project report noted in passing that the same compound is also present in Fujikaori, “bred using Yabukita as the pollen parent and Shizu-Inzatsu 131 as the seed parent” (data not given in detail). The 2004 follow-up work by Tanaka and Sawai, which mapped the trait to a single locus provisionally named Mat, went further: it estimated Fujikaori’s genotype at that locus as heterozygous (Mat/mat), the same as Sofu’s, based on its known lineage — consistent with both cultivars having inherited one copy of a dominant allele from their shared Shizu-Inzatsu 131 parent, regardless of which side of the cross that parent sat on. The English-language paper covering this work, published in the Japan Agricultural Research Quarterly, states plainly that “‘Fujikaori’, the hybrid of ‘Shizu-Inzatsu 131’ crossed with ‘Yabukita’ as the pollen parent, contained methyl anthranilate.”

Characteristics

Fujikaori is early-budding, two to three days ahead of Yabukita. Its growth habit is open and spreading (開帳型) with extremely vigorous growth once established, though growers note that immediately after planting it throws few branches from the main stem and needs careful training while young. Mature leaves take after the Shizu-Inzatsu 131 parent: a short leaf tip, a long oval shape, and dark green colour; the harvested buds are large, with a high hundred-bud weight. Yield is comparable to Yabukita.

Disease resistance is strong against anthracnose and ring spot disease, but extremely weak against bacterial shoot blight (赤焼病), and its resistance to split-bark-type frost injury (裂傷型凍害) is specifically weak — which, combined with its early budding, is why growers are advised to site it only in warm districts with little frost risk and to give it windbreak protection alongside cold protection.

The cup is where Fujikaori earns its name. Aroma is described as extremely strong, with a jasmine-like fragrance; amino acid, caffeine and catechin content are all reported high, giving an intense, high-impact taste. The Shizuoka Tea Industry Council’s own technical write-up is candid that this comes with a cost — the tea carries noticeable bitterness and astringency alongside its richness, and the leaf itself, being thick-fleshed, tends toward a blackish tinge that thorough steaming can only partly soften. Individual growers who process it with more care describe a gentler result: light, silky liquor with mineral and grape-like notes, little astringency, and sweetness that shows up mainly in the retronasal aroma rather than on the tongue — brewed, by their account, best at a cautious 60–70°C. As with Sofu, sencha made from Fujikaori is comparatively restrained; its floral character is more pronounced when the leaf is lightly withered before processing, and strongest of all in kamairicha (pan-fired tea), which growers describe as approaching the aroma of true jasmine tea. It is also roasted into hojicha, where the aroma is reported to vary widely with roast level. One taster who has worked with both cultivars describes Fujikaori as the less stable of the two — closer to the “unstable” character attributed to the Shizu-Inzatsu 131 parent itself — where Sofu reads as the more reliable, consistent tea.