Tea came to Japan from China with Buddhist monks, and the first garden was planted at Toganoo west of Kyoto around the end of the twelfth century. It was drunk as matcha: powdered, whisked, and taken at the imperial court as a medicine and as something precious. It helped monks meditate longer.

When tea spread to other regions, the tea from Toganoo was called honcha, the original. Production in Uji itself started in the middle of the thirteenth century and became the most famous in Japan, carried by the patronage of the court, the shogunate and the temples of Kyoto.