Mugicha: A Short History of Japanese Barley Tea

It’s Japan’s inescapable drink, especially come summertime. You’ll see it for sale everywhere in vending machines. Go to a restaurant and you’ll be served so much you float. But how did Japanese barley tea – a.k.a. mugicha (麦茶) – become such a staple of Japan’s culture?

Mugicha’s history

Historians suspect that barley has been in Japan since sometime around 300 to 200 BC. Barley can’t be eaten directly without cooking, so many reason that barley tea drinking started around the same time that humans began harvesting it for food.

The first written record of drinking mugicha dates back to the Heian era. A description appears in a Hein-era dictionary, the Wammyouruijujou (和妙類聚抄), describing a drink created by drying barley, grinding it into powder, and stirring it into hot water.

Mugicha made its next appearance in 1517 (Tenshou 15 by the Imperial Calendar). The drink receives a shout-out in a record left by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. (Toyotomi loosely ruled Japan before his vassal, Tokugawa Ieyasu, subjugated his enemies and unified the country.) Similar records describing hot barley drinks exist from Japan’s Edo era. The drink has been a staple of most households since the Edo Era[2].

June 1st is marked as “Mugicha Day” （麦茶の日; mugicha no hi), as June is when farmers begin reaping barley. It also marks the start of “mugicha season”, when people in Japan begin drinking large volumes of cold mugicha to stay hydrated during the country’s insufferable summer months[3].

Why is mugicha so popular?

To say that mugicha is a popular drink would be an understatement. According to a survey by Internet polling company MyVoice, mugicha is the summer drink of choice for over 40% of respondents. The next popular drink, mineral water, garnered a mere 9%[4].

You can easily buy cold mugicha from one of Japan’s ubiquitous drink vending machines. About USD $1B of the stuff is dispensed from vending machines throughout the year.

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Mugicha is so popular that even foreign companies can’t resist the opportunity to grab a slice of the market. Last year, Coca-Cola started selling its own brand, Kettle Mugicha (やかんの麦茶; yakan no mugicha). To date, it’s sold over 500 million bottles[7]. That’s a lotta barley.

So why the immense popularity? One reason is that it’s just plain good for the body, especially in the summer months. Mugicha contains potassium, which gets depleted quickly in the steamy heat of Japan’s rainy season. In Chinese medicine, non-fermented teas like mugicha are thought to help cool the body.

Mugicha is also rich in alkapyrazines. These chemical compounds may be effective at eliminating blood clots and can confer additional health benefits. Alkapyrazines are also found in other food that are thought to carry special health benefits, including cocoa and natto[4].

What foreigners think of mugicha

If you don’t live in another major Asian country, then you likely had to adjust to mugicha when you first visited or moved to Japan. It’s one of those things like natto (sort of) that, if you didn’t grow up with it, falls into the “acquired taste” category.

(I’m led to believe root beer is like this for non-Americans, many of whom swear it tastes like a degenerate cough syrup. My US bubble was burst the day I heard this. The things you learn by hanging out on the Internet, man…)

What about folks outside of Japan who have had it? In a completely scientific (cough) survey, we asked Unseen Japan’s Twitter followers – a good chunk of whom live in Japan – what they thought of mugicha. The results were interesting. (Keep in mind these results are very highly skewed towards residents of non-Asian countries.)