His dream - to become Japan’s best coffee producer. The path to Tokunoshima Coffee Project

Japan is among the world’s top coffee consumption countries. In recent years, specialty shops where you can select coffee beans from all over the world have become common, but very few probably have seen domestic coffee. It is said to grow best in the “Coffee Belt” between the latitudes 25º north and 25º south - the tropical region. In Japan, part of Okinawa and Ogasawara Islands barely belong to the northern edge of the Belt, which limits Japanese coffee production to only a few places, let alone a mass production for nation-wide sales.

However, a big project is going on at Tokunoshima in Amami Islands that can turn the conventional wisdom upside down. It is called Tokunoshima Coffee Production Support Project, which began in 2017, upon a collaboration with the food producer AGF, the general trading company, Marubeni, the island’s coffee producers and Isen Town Office. Their ambitious target is to provide Tokunoshima Coffee to the whole country of Japan.

”Coffee seedlings take 4 - 5 years between planting and harvesting. The trees that were planted at the birth of the Project just barely began producing the berries,” Yoshitama said with the harvested fresh coffee cherries in his hands. He is president of Tokunoshima CoffeeProducer Association and also the Father of Tokunoshima Coffee who started coffee production first 40 years ago. Based on the commonsense of the Coffee Belt, it is hard to determine whether Tokunoshima near the latitude 25º50’ north is fit for coffee agriculture. Despite no precedent on Tokunoshima, Yoshitama decided to give it a try based on his own reasoning.

”Do you know cassava? It’s a tuber from Brazil and other Middle and South American countries. The tropical potato grows naturally on Tokunoshima. It may have been brought from overseas during the war when food was scarce, Seeing cassava growing, I thought coffee would be grown on this island.”

Yoshitama’s knowledge on tropical produce came from his interest to immigrate to Brazil as a farmer in his teens. He ended up not immigrating but worked in Osaka until he was 36 when he decided to seek farming and moved to Tokunoshima with his wife, Michiko. He was working hard on a sugarcane farm when he found cassava, which brought back the memory of his youth which inspired him to grow coffee beans..

The first step into the unknown coffee cultivation began with extended trips looking for coffee seedlings. Despite his hope to find one in Okinawa, he came back discouraged, when he heard someone on Amami Islands owns coffee trees. He took two bottles of Shochu wine, ran over there and obtained 100 seedlings.

Finally, he was at the start line, but he had no idea if coffee could be grown on the island. Yoshitama had to investigate what kind of environment was favorable for the cultivation.

“I began an experiment by planting the trees from north to south, from the beach to the mountains. In the results, the north side of the island had north wind that brought down the temperatures and was no good. The beach had salt water, the mountains got too cold in winter, and they were no good. Among the gloomy reports, the ones in Isen Town in the south of the island began producing red berries.
The most critical condition for the growth of seedlings is protection from the wind. The flat area like sugarcane fields is not good. I found out the narrow abandoned grounds, unfit for regular farming, was the best match. Isen town has that kind of ground with red soil and plenty of water. I concluded, If I grow coffee, it’s got to be in Isen Town.”

Back then, information on coffee farming was scarce. He kept seeking what cultivating conditions contribute to delicious coffee, how to block winds and create fertilizer, and when and how to prune the trees. It took seven years of farming until the quality of his coffee was finally recognized.

In the beginning, his harvest was small, barely enough for his own home consumption. From there, it grew enough to provide home-roasted Tokunoshima coffee year-round at his wife’s cafe “Coffee Smile” in Cape Inutabu. In 2000, Yoshitama established Tokunoshima Coffee Producer Union (current Association) and began actively calling on the growers inside and outside the town to make the coffee the island’s specialty beyond his personal interest. His long, untiring efforts were noticed by large corporations and led to the 2017 launch of Tokunoshima Coffee Production Support Project.

Full five years have passed since the project started. Nearly 20,000 seedlings have been grown, none of which had been cultivated in Tokunoshima before. Yoshitama says “I will observe the growth and select the species that match Tokunoshima’s climate and soil.” Today, almost 30 coffee farmers are involved and a selection facility was built to meet bigger harvests.

“Growing seedlings is tedious. We outsource it to the support facility for the disabled here and Tokunoshima High School. High schoolers help us with transplanting, tree maintenance and harvest as a part of the curriculum. To make coffee as the island’s main industry, we must pass it on to the younger generation. There’s only so much we can do alone. As they experience how coffee is grown, I hope it will lead them to dream and take on coffee farming.”

The current harvesting goal is 1 ton. Yoshitama says “It’s daunting,” and laughs. To increase the planting fields, more helping hands are essential. To achieve that, he calculates with a cool head to “produce good stuff and prove that coffee will benefit the island’s economy.”

40 years ago, coffee farming began from the idea of one immigrant. Who could imagine at that time today’s development? “I will take a trip to the farm to taste that coffee.” Such tourism may be established in Tokunoshima in the foreseeable future.