The second day of the Tokyo Coffee Festival Spring 2018 (TCF) might be overcast, but the atmosphere of the crowd gathered in United Nations University's central courtyard was only a caffeinated sip shy of well and truly buzzed. The nutty smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts through the air. Attendees queue for their favorite shops, willing to wait that extra moment or three for the barista to pour their coffee; those already with brew in hand clink mugs and sip appreciatively, or munch on artisanal donuts. Though the various baristas smile and joke around, their meticulous standards for each cup never waver; like so many things in Japan, pour-over coffee has been elevated to an art form.
The TCF is a product of the unexpectedly long history of Japanese coffee. The country's first coffee shop, the Kahichakan, opened in Tokyo in 1888 and quickly became a mainstay for cosmopolitan gentleman with Western sensibilities, offering coffee, billiards, newspapers and cigars. While the Kahichakan remained in business for only a few years, cafes in Japan began to function as public social spaces for both men and, increasingly by the 1920s and '30s, women. The postwar period heralded the rise of the kissaten coffee shops as we conceive of them today, and by the 1980s there were around 155,000 of these shops tucked in back alleys and basements throughout Japan. But third wave coffee, which only took off in Japan around 2012, is still a relatively new movement — and one that still needs some nurturing.
"When (TCF) first started, it was mainly just a chance to educate people who didn't know anything about coffee," says Hengtee Lim, the Tokyo-based staff writer for Sprudge, the U.S. coffee website. Founded in 2015 by barista Yuji Otsuki of The Local Coffee Stand, the initial goal of the TCF was to transform specialty coffee from a mere trend to a lifestyle. "The theory was if you can show someone how easy it is to make a coffee, they'll be a lot more likely to make that a part of their life, too," says Lim.