Shunmei

Shunmei is an early-budding sencha cultivar bred at the national Tea Experiment Station in Kanaya, Shizuoka, and registered in 1988 as Cha Norin No. 37. It comes from a controlled cross of Yutakamidori and an unreleased breeding line called F1NN8, and it buds four to five days ahead of Yabukita — early enough to be grouped with Saemidori as a flatland, warm-region choice, but early enough too that late frost is a real risk to it. Its closest relative in this collection is Okuyutaka: the two are full siblings, selected from the same crossing batch, and yet one turned out early and the other late.

Lineage

• Yutakamidori ♀ (ゆたかみどり) — contributes early budding and vigour. Registered in 1966 and also bred at Kanaya, it is itself an early cultivar (about five days ahead of Yabukita) and, after Yabukita, the second most widely planted cultivar in Japan, grown mainly in Kagoshima and usually deep-steamed under cover for a rich colour and flavour.
• F1NN8 ♂ — not a named, released cultivar but a numbered F1 hybrid breeding line kept at the Kanaya station, itself a cross of Tamamidori (たまみどり, Cha Norin No. 4) and S6 (静岡県在来6号), a Shizuoka zairai seedling the station had selected and numbered in its own right. F1NN8 belongs to the same numbered Kanaya series as F1NN13 and F1NN29, both of which were released as cultivars under those line names — F1NN13 as Kanayamidori (茶農林30号, S6 × Yabukita) and F1NN29 as Okumidori (茶農林32号, Yabukita × 静在16) — and as F1NN27, which stayed a breeding line and became the seed parent of Sakimidori (茶農林47号) and Harumoegi (茶農林51号) and the pollen parent of Minamisayaka (茶農林42号). F1NN8 itself was never released.

This is a controlled cross, not a landrace selection or a sport. My Japanese Green Tea’s account of Okuyutaka’s breeding states that the Yutakamidori × F1NN8 cross was made in a single batch, and that two seedlings from it were kept for further testing: one became Okuyutaka, registered in 1983 as Cha Norin No. 34 (former line name Kanaya No. 3); the other, carried on for longer under trial as Kanaya No. 4, became Shunmei, registered five years later. Shunmei and Okuyutaka are consequently full siblings rather than merely cultivars that happen to share two parents, which makes their divergent budding times — Shunmei four to five days before Yabukita, Okuyutaka about a week after it — a striking result from identical parentage. There is a wider family connection too: S6, F1NN8’s own pollen parent, was also crossed directly with Yabukita to produce Kanayamidori (Cha Norin No. 30, 1970), so Shunmei and Kanayamidori share a grandparent by two separate crosses out of the same Kanaya breeding stock, without being siblings themselves.

History

The cross that produced Shunmei was made in 1958 at the Kanaya station — this date is sourced only to a single vendor account and is not confirmed in any Japanese-language primary source, though nothing found contradicts it. Two individuals from that crossing were carried forward: the one that became Okuyutaka cleared its trials faster and was registered nationally in 1983 as 茶農林34号, twenty-five years after the cross. The other took considerably longer. Carried under the trial designation Kanaya No. 4 (金谷4号), it was named Shunmei and registered in 1988 as 茶農林37号 — a thirty-year span from cross to registration, and five years behind its own sibling. The two years that circulate for Shunmei belong to two different registries rather than to any disagreement: MAFF’s 茶農林 series list ties the Cha Norin No. 37 designation to 1988, while MAFF’s separate 種苗法 variety-registration database records しゅんめい as application 2753, filed 1988/03/31, and registration 2159, granted 1990/04/03, with the breeder’s right running to 2008. Okuyutaka went through both steps in the same year, 1983.

The name — 春茗, “spring tea” — departs from the “-midori” pattern used for most of the other cultivars to come out of Kanaya (Yutakamidori, Okuyutaka, Kanayamidori), and instead names the trait the cultivar was bred for: budding early enough to be picked while the season still reads as spring.

Neither Shunmei nor Okuyutaka appears in NARO’s current tea cultivar handbook (6th edition, 2022), which restricts its individual profile pages to cultivars registered from 1991 (Saemidori) onward — so their absence there reflects the handbook’s own cutoff rather than a specific judgement on either cultivar. More telling is My Japanese Green Tea’s description of Shunmei as simply “not popular,” noting that growers who want an early-budding cultivar have tended to plant Saemidori instead. Tea made from Shunmei is still sold as sencha in Japan, but it is a minor cultivar rather than one with any real commercial footprint.

Characteristics

Shunmei buds early, about four to five days ahead of Yabukita in warm districts, which places it alongside Saemidori as an early choice for the warm, low-frost districts of Tōkai, Shikoku and Kyushu that its variety registration names. That same earliness is also its main weakness: its cold hardiness in the dormant plant is reported as comparable to Yabukita’s, but budding early exposes the new growth to late-spring frost that a later-budding cultivar would miss, so it does best in warm regions rather than frost-prone ones. Its young leaves are elliptical, medium-sized, green and moderately glossy. Disease resistance is reported as strong against grey blight (ring spot) and medium against anthracnose. Yield is described only as slightly better than Yabukita’s, with no published trial figures found.

As a sencha, Shunmei gives a mild cup with some umami and a lightly sweet aroma — pleasant but unremarkable next to its own full sibling. Okuyutaka, from the identical parent cross, is reported with a more intense cup: higher sweetness and umami, relatively low catechins and high amino acids, and a yellow-green liquor that rolls well into shape. That the two full siblings ended up this different — in budding time as much as in the cup — is the more interesting fact about Shunmei than anything it does on its own.