Today, matcha lattes and green tea are everywhere in America — in cafes, supermarkets, and on restaurant menus from coast to coast. But few people know that over 150 years ago, one young Japanese man was already trying to bring Japanese tea and goods to American hands.
His name was Sato Momotaro (佐藤百太郎), born in 1853 in Sakura, in what is now Chiba Prefecture. At a time when Japan was just beginning to open its doors to the world, Sato crossed the Pacific — first to San Francisco in 1867, then to New York, where he studied at what is now a branch of Brooklyn’s Polytechnic Institute. He wasn’t just a student. He was paying close attention to how American business worked.
By 1875, Sato had established a trading company in New York — the Japanese American Commission Agency — dealing in Japanese tea, ceramics, lacquerware, and other goods. The tea he shipped wasn’t matcha powder as we know it today, but loose-leaf green tea (sencha), carefully exported from regions like Sayama and Sakura. In 1876, he gathered a group of young Japanese entrepreneurs — later known as the “Oceanic Group” — and together they ran a shop called Hinode Shokai on Front Street in Manhattan, selling Japanese goods to American customers at a time when almost no Japanese person had tried to do so directly.
The venture was bold. It was also difficult. The business eventually struggled, and Sato returned to Japan without achieving the lasting success he had envisioned. But the path he walked — a Japanese businessman standing on New York soil, trying to sell Japanese culture directly to American people — was one almost no one had walked before him.
The next time you hold a cup of green tea, it’s worth remembering: someone was trying to share that same taste with Americans in the streets of Manhattan, 150 years ago.
Curious where your name’s story begins?
Japanese Surname Report | Roots to Japan
