A new study has found that the roots of domestic coffee production were near Naha. This overturned the common belief that the first coffee cultivation in Japan took place on the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo.
Mutsuko Kuga, editor-in-chief of the magazine ‘Shiki no Coffee’ (‘Coffee for the Four Seasons’), recently published a study on the history of Japanese coffee cultivation, based on a re-evaluation of several documents, including a book written by an agricultural scientist from the Meiji era (1868 to 1912).
The discovery came as a surprise to many in the coffee industry, and farmers in Okinawa expressed hope that it would serve as a catalyst to boost coffee production in the prefecture.
