I got into matcha obsessively — the way ADHD minds do, drilling down into details until you hit bedrock. One question wouldn’t let go: where does the whisk come from?

The chasen, that delicate bamboo tool that’s been whisking matcha for centuries, had to be made somewhere. And it had to be made well.

So I asked a trusted source in Japan’s tea industry. Her answer was sobering: authentic, handmade Japanese chasen are nearly impossible to find. Even in Japan. Most high-end whisks now come from China — quality ones, sure, but not Japanese. The real craftspeople who carve these from a single piece of bamboo? Vanishingly rare. Booked for years. Not interested in small orders from overseas.

That sounded like a challenge.

I knew chasen came from Takayama, a quiet region in Nara prefecture that’s been the heart of whisk-making for five hundred years. So I did what I always do: I researched. I planned. And I decided: I’m going.

The First Master Says No

My translator — a friend fluent in Japanese and patient with my questions — and I arrived in Takayama with a few meetings loosely arranged and absolutely no idea what we were walking into.

The first master we met was Jun Tanimura, the 20th generation to carry the name 谷村丹後. Twenty generations. His family has held this title since the 1500s, and he runs it with the kind of quiet precision you’d expect from someone stewarding five centuries of craft.

Jun is in his sixties now, fit and focused. Online, his Instagram bio cheerfully lists his loves: golf, sake, the Yomiuri Giants baseball team, and Azuki, his sixteen-year-old red toy poodle. In person, he’s direct. He agreed to show us how a chasen is made — how a single piece of bamboo becomes, through patience and impossible precision, a tool for whisking tea.

Through the technical sections, my translator couldn’t keep pace with the speed and detail. So we switched to live AirPods translation — a five-hundred-year-old craft, explained through earbuds to a founder from Dubai. He didn’t object.

But when we asked to buy his chasen, he said no.

He had limited stock. Orders were backed up for years. He wasn’t interested in retail sales to unknown buyers, even ones who’d traveled this far. It was a clean, professional no. I understood it. I also wasn’t leaving without trying.

We told him the truth: we’d flown all the way from Dubai for this. We weren’t resellers or speculators. This mattered to us. We’d come to his workshop, sat with him, learned from him. We were asking for a chance.

He paused. Then he offered us two chasen.

Two. Not a wholesale deal. Not a partnership. Two handmade whisks from a master whose name has been carved into this craft for four centuries. I took them like they were made of glass.

The Museum, The Family, The Philosophy

Over the next three days, we moved through Takayama like we were collecting pieces of something we didn’t yet understand.

We found a small museum dedicated to chasen-making — the kind of place where entry is tight and the knowledge runs deep. While we were there, a meeting of chasen masters was happening. One of them, noticing us, invited us to his home.

His father answered the door. Also a master. He had a photograph on the wall — a medal, government-recognized, for his lifetime of work in the craft. We sat in their workshop while the family worked, carving and binding, the day’s routine of their family business playing out around us. His mother brought tea and sweets. His sister joined us. They asked about Dubai, about AICHA, about why matcha mattered to us.

And then he told us something I haven’t forgotten. He said his mission — the reason he does this, why he carves chasen day after day in a small workshop in rural Japan — is to make matcha feel less intimidating. Less formal. He wants the day to come when people drink matcha at home with friends as casually as they drink coffee. When it’s not a ceremony. Just a moment. Just tea.

 

I realized, sitting in his workshop, that this is exactly what we’re trying to do in Dubai. We’re taking something that feels distant and formal and precious, and we’re making it warm. Making it approachable. Making it for people.

He also showed us a detail I’d never noticed: the decorative thread at the bottom of every chasen. He explained that these threads can be customized — woven with colors or patterns that matter to you. A separate artisan handles that work. But it meant that every whisk could be uniquely yours, if you wanted it to be.

 

The Others

Over those three days, we met other masters too. One, a sports enthusiast, incorporates designs of Japanese baseball teams into his work — small trinkets woven into the chasen itself. Another sources bamboo that’s been aging for a hundred 

years, material so precious he uses it sparingly, creating pieces that are more sculpture than tool.

Each had a different philosophy. Each saw chasen-making not as a dying tradition to preserve in amber, but as a living craft worth innovating within.

 

Coming Home With Twenty Chasen

By the end of three days, we’d collected close to twenty-five handmade chasen. Each one sourced from a different master. Each one a small piece of a conversation we’d started by asking a simple question: where does this come from?

It was the legwork that mattered. The translator who knew the language and the culture. The willingness to show up in a small town and knock on doors. The respect we tried to carry into every workshop. The listening.

When I look at these chasen now, they’re not just tools. They’re proof that the old crafts aren’t disappearing — they’re just waiting for people who care enough to find them.

And now, when someone in Dubai whisks matcha with one of these, they’re holding five hundred years of Takayama, and the hands of a master, and a philosophy that matcha should feel like home.

That feels like something worth protecting. Worth flying to rural Japan for. Worth three days of legwork.

Worth sharing