What a 20th-Generation Chasen Maker Taught Me About Matcha

I recently attended a lecture that left me feeling both inspired and humbled.

Hosted by Nara Tea Company, the event welcomed Tango Tanimura, a 20th-generation chasen craftsman from Takayama, Nara—the birthplace of Japan's tea whisk tradition.

The afternoon began with a beautiful ryūrei-style Urasenkei tea service, complete with seasonal wagashi. Before a single word of the lecture was spoken, we were already being reminded that tea is about hospitality, beauty, and presence.

Then Tanimura-san began sharing the story of the chasen.

Like many tea drinkers, I have held countless whisks in my hands over the years. Yet I realized I knew very little about how they came to be.

What I learned was extraordinary.

Takayama has been producing tea whisks for approximately 530 years, dating back to the Muromachi period (1336–1573), the era during which many foundational aspects of Japanese tea culture were taking shape.

For much of its history, the techniques of chasen making were passed down orally from generation to generation.

There were no manuals.

No YouTube tutorials.

No written instructions.

Knowledge was protected through family lineage and direct apprenticeship.

One of the most fascinating stories involved the evolution of the whisk itself.

Before the modern chasen, matcha was mixed using a tool called a "sasara," a stiff bamboo implement originally used for scrubbing cookware. While durable, it was often too harsh for tea bowls and lacked the flexibility needed to properly incorporate powdered tea.

Over time, craftsmen developed the split-tine structure that we now recognize as the modern chasen.

The innovation wasn't merely aesthetic.

The flexible tines allowed matcha to be incorporated more thoroughly while being gentler on the tea bowl itself.

In other words, beauty emerged from solving practical problems.

Perhaps my biggest takeaway came from hearing Tanimura-san repeatedly emphasize that the two most important qualities of a great whisk are:

1. Durability

2. Flexibility

That simplicity struck me.

Hundreds of years of refinement ultimately distilled into two goals.

The lecture also highlighted the immense amount of labor hidden inside a single whisk. Bamboo may be cured for up to five years. Craftsmen spend years learning the process. Family members traditionally specialized in different stages of production.

The deeper I learned, the more the humble chasen transformed from a tea accessory into something else entirely:

A vessel of inherited knowledge.

A piece of living culture.

A reminder that some traditions survive because generation after generation chooses to care.

I left Portland with a renewed appreciation for every whisk I own.

And perhaps a deeper appreciation for tea itself.

Sometimes the smallest tools carry the largest stories.