Takane-wase

Takane-wase is a sencha cultivar selected from open-pollinated Yabukita seedlings and registered under Japan’s Plant Variety Protection Act (種苗法) in 1985. Unlike the controlled crosses produced by national and prefectural research stations, it was bred by a private grower, Muramatsu Hoichi, working at Sakabe in Haibara-cho, Haibara-gun, Shizuoka Prefecture — a town later absorbed into Makinohara City, on the Makinohara Plateau, one of Japan’s largest single tea-growing districts and the area credited with pioneering deep-steamed (fukamushi) sencha. Its defining trait, recorded in its own official variety description, is speed: both its budding period and its picking period are rated early, and both are named among the points that distinguish it from Yabukita. The same document also compares it against three other early Shizuoka selections — Surugawase, Ōiwase and Yamakai — but on shoot number, red-blight resistance and leaf characters rather than on earliness. It belongs to the same loose cohort of privately registered wase (早生, early-budding) cultivars as Satō-wase, Sagara-wase and Terakawa-wase: growers’ individual selections registered under the Plant Variety Protection Act rather than products of an institutional breeding programme.

Lineage

• Yabukita — the seed (mother) parent. Takane-wase was grown from open-pollinated Yabukita seed, not a hand-pollinated cross.

Because the seed was collected from open pollination rather than a controlled crossing, Takane-wase’s pollen parent was never recorded and cannot now be identified — whatever pollinated the mother Yabukita bush could have been any neighbouring plant. This is a narrower kind of unknown than a landrace selection such as Yabukita’s own zairai origin: there the entire parentage is anonymous, whereas here the mother is a specific, well-documented cultivar and only the father is missing. No source found documents any cultivar bred forward from Takane-wase in turn, and it does not appear in any of the master cultivar registries or pedigree charts consulted for this record.

History

The record here is thin and consists almost entirely of the registration itself. Muramatsu Hoichi, a grower in Haibara-cho, Shizuoka, selected an individual seedling grown from Yabukita seed for its early budding and picking. An application was filed on 20 February 1984 (application no. 1071), and the variety was registered on 18 July 1985 under the Plant Variety Protection Act as Registration No. 898 — not a MAFF Cha Norin (茶農林) number. The registrant’s address on file, Sakabe 4401, Haibara-cho, Haibara-gun, Shizuoka (postal code 421-0412), is also given as the breeder’s own address: this was a grower’s private selection, filed and registered by the same person who found the plant, in the same pattern as Satō-wase, Sagara-wase and Terakawa-wase. No source gives an earlier date for when the parent plant was actually noticed or first propagated, so a selection year distinct from the 1984 application cannot be stated with confidence.

The registry’s own record of the breeder’s rights is internally inconsistent in one respect worth noting plainly: it lists an 18-year statutory term for breeder’s rights, but also records the rights as having lapsed (育成者権の消滅日) on 19 July 1994 — nine years after registration, not eighteen. No source found explains the discrepancy; it may reflect an early termination (for example, non-payment of the annual maintenance fee) rather than the full statutory term running its course, but that is not stated in the record and should not be assumed.

Haibara-cho merged with the neighbouring town of Sagara-cho in 2005 to form Makinohara City — the same area that later produced Sagara-wase — and the whole district sits on the Makinohara Plateau, developed into tea land in the Meiji era and now first in Japan for crude-tea (aracha) output and second only to Shizuoka City nationally in tea-garden area, known in particular for pioneering deep-steamed sencha processing.

No dedicated release paper for Takane-wase was found in 茶業研究報告 (Tea Research Journal) on J-STAGE, nor any record in CiNii Research or the National Diet Library catalogue, which is consistent with its origin as a private grower’s registration rather than a station-bred cultivar with a published trial programme. It appears by name only, without further detail, in the two general cultivar-registry tables consulted (Japanese Tea Sommelier’s master list and My Japanese Green Tea’s cultivar list), both of which confirm the 1985 registration date and Yabukita-seed origin but add nothing beyond it. No current vendor, tea shop or single-cultivar product bearing the Takane-wase name was found in this research, in contrast to some of its wase cohort (Terakawa-wase, for instance, still turns up in small Mie Prefecture lots).

Characteristics

Takane-wase is documented as early on both counts that matter for a wase cultivar: its own registration text states that its budding period (萌芽期) and its picking period (摘採期) are both rated early, and lists both as grounds for distinguishing it from Yabukita. Against the other three comparison cultivars the registration rests its distinctness on other characters, so nothing in the record places it ahead of those three. No source found quantifies that gap in days, so “early” here should be read as officially confirmed rather than precisely measured.

The registration’s plant description is otherwise detailed. Tree form is open (spreading) with strong vigour and a somewhat large stool spread; trunk diameter and leaf-layer thickness are both medium. At picking time the new shoots are somewhat large, numerous, somewhat long, and somewhat uniform in development. Young leaves are long-elliptical, medium in size and thickness, green, with abundant fine pubescence; mature leaves are long-elliptical, somewhat large, dark green, with somewhat glossy surfaces, little leaf-margin waviness, and little curling. Branching is somewhat frequent with somewhat long internodes. Cutting propagation is rated medium for rooting success. Yield potential is described as high in young trees and somewhat high in mature trees, relative to the comparison cultivars, though no kg/10a figures were recorded.

The finished product is described in the registration as superior in shape, with colour, aroma and flavour all rated medium-to-upper, superior liquor colour, and high total nitrogen and amino acid content — the last two typically correlating with a fuller, more umami-forward cup and lower relative astringency, though no independent tasting note was found to confirm this in practice. Disease resistance is reported as strong against both red blight (赤枯病) and bacterial wilt (青枯病); no data on cold hardiness was found.

Set against its documented traits, Takane-wase reads as a competent, disease-resistant early selection from good breeding stock, in a district that already produces some of Japan’s most heavily processed deep-steamed sencha. What is missing is any evidence that it went anywhere commercially: unlike Yabukita’s other early-budding relatives that spread into named regional specialities, no source in this research found Takane-wase still in cultivation, in a shop, or in a tasting note. Whether that reflects the cultivar quietly falling out of use after its Plant Variety Protection Act term lapsed in 1994, or simply a private grower’s selection that was never taken up beyond its own field, cannot be determined from the sources available.