A new study has found that the roots of domestic coffee production were near Naha, overturning a common belief that the first coffee cultivation in Japan took place in the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo.
Mutsuko Kuga, editor-in-chief of the magazine “Shiki no Coffee” ("Coffee for Four Seasons"), recently published the study on the history of Japan’s coffee cultivation based on a reevaluation 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 for boosting coffee production in the prefecture.