Coffee Etiquette in Japan

“That’s for the sugar... The handle starts on the left so the customer can hold the cup steady with the left hand while stirring in sugar with the right. Once that’s done, the customer turns the handle clockwise, around the top, so the handle is easy to pick up with the right hand. That’s how we taught customers to drink their coffee.” — Japan coffee shop owner, Yasumi Yamabe

Coffee was hardly an everyday drink when Yasumi Yamabe started his career in the early postwar years. “Oh, coffee was still very much a luxury item then,” he confirmed. “A cup would set you back ¥50 when a portion of oden (stewed foods) or oshiruko (sweet red-bean soup) cost only ¥5. Most people weren’t familiar with coffee, so we had to educate them. Almost everyone in those days took their coffee with cream and sugar.”

No one knows exactly when coffee was introduced to Japan, but the first beans were probably brought in by 17th-century Dutch traders for their own use at their trading post at Dejima, near Nagasaki. Contact with foreigners was strictly limited, so if any Japanese were able to sample their coffee, it would have only been the few merchants, translators and prostitutes allowed to visit Dejima. 

The oldest known account of a Japanese drinking coffee was written in 1804, in which a man named Shokusanjin Ota described boarding a foreign ship and being served a drink called “kauhii.” It tasted quite unpleasant, he said, and was made by mixing sugar into water with a powder of roasted beans.

Formal imports of coffee began in 1858, and the first Japanese coffeehouse of record, the Kahiichakan in Tokyo, is said to have opened in 1888. Drinking coffee became fashionable among the intelligentsia and the upper middle class, but remained something of a rarity. 

Imports were halted in 1944, during the war, as coffee was branded both a zeitakuhin (extravagance) and a tekikoku inryō(enemy drink). It wasn’t until after the war, and the liberalization of imports in 1960, that Japan got on its way to becoming a major coffee-drinking nation. Today Japan is the third largest importer of coffee, after the United States and Germany.

At the All Japan Coffee Association, executive director Toyohide Nishino responded to the question of why the spoons are placed where they are when coffee is served in Japan. “Very often the inquiry comes from the executive offices of a large company, with the caller saying something like, ‘Our chairman is particular about manners and wants to make sure we’re doing it right.’ But actually there is no single accepted way to serve coffee in Japan.”

Even in the coffee industry, companies serve guests differently. Visitors to UCC (Ueshima Coffee Co., Ltd.) headquarters in Kobe get their coffee with the handle on the left, while at Key Coffee, in Tokyo, the handle is on the right.

Some hypothesise​ about the tea ceremony, in which the cup is placed so its front, or decorated side, faces the guest so its beauty may be enjoyed. The guest, in turn, expresses humility by turning the cup before drinking so as not to place one’s lips on the most beautiful part of the vessel. Nishino found the idea interesting, but concurred with Yamabe that having the handle on the left is for convenience when adding sugar. He noted that coffee shops used to offer kakuzatō (sugar cubes), which take more effort to stir into coffee than today’s standard of granulated sugar.

The oldest reference found was in a 1922 book titled “Seiyo-ryori no Tadashii Tabekata” (“The Correct Way to Eat Western Food”). In somewhat archaic language, Kaneko Tezuka, who was a professor at Japan Women’s University, wrote that when coffee is offered after a meal it should be served in small chawan (cups) with the totte (handle) turned to the left and the saji (spoon) placed in front. Unfortunately, Tezuka didn’t offer a reason for this placement, nor did she speak to its origins.

In any case, the orientation of the coffee-cup handle may well become moot as tastes and consumption patterns change. Today, taking coffee burakku (“black,” without milk or sugar) is the most common preference, practiced by 38.3% of Japanese coffee drinkers. In addition, there is a clear shift away from genteel service and toward take-out, with convenience stores grabbing a growing share of the coffee market. Seven-Eleven, which offers self-serve coffee for just ¥100, expects to sell a whopping 700 million cups this fiscal year — and in disposable cups with no handle at all. — From the Japan Times, 2013

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Japanese Etiquette

Bowing when one is seated on the soft mats of a Japanese house (by far the politest method) is much more complicated. 

Why the Japanese Are Called
 the “French of the East”
 👘⛩🗾🎏👘⛩🗾🎏

They Even Pass Beyond the Gauls in Their Excess of Formality

The Japanese are called the French of the East, and their complicated system of etiquette is indeed not unworthy of the most polished nation of Europe. The old-time ceremonies were long and laborious, and have to a great extent disappeared with the present busy era. But the every-day etiquette still remains, and many of the forms are pretty and quaint, and especially interesting to the foreign traveler in Japan as being so peculiarly oriental. 

It is especially curious to see how even the lowest classes, the coolies and the jinricksha men, keep up a form of etiquette among themselves and are exceedingly polite and ceremonious while pulling their two-wheeled vehicles or pursuing the lowest trades in the humble walks of life. 

One from the West would hardly expect to find a coolie bowing profoundly and apologizing to another in the most courteous of language for some mishap, or shouting out some expression of sympathy when a heavy burden was being carried or pushed along, and yet these are common, everyday occurrences in Tokyo.

In learning the etiquette of Japan a stranger will always do well to remember that self-abasement and humility to the extreme must be the guiding principle on which all actions are to be ruled. In America it is often the duty of a guest to accept little courtesies from his host, not because he thinks it is due him as a superior, but because he is simply the guest, and he receives them as a kindness which hospitality extends to him, and which he cannot refuse without appearing ungracious. 

In Japan the laws of hospitality for the host are no less rigid than in America, To welcome the coming and speed the parting, to entertain with the best that one has in the kindest and most friendly manner, to see that the guest lacks nothing which thoughtfulness might provide—these are rigidly the duty of the Japanese host.

The duty of the guest differs in that each separate act of courtesy, even though accepted in the end, must be met with many protests and expostulations, and must on no account be simply accepted. The extreme to which this is carried would no doubt seem tiresome to those accustomed to the free-and-easy etiquette of American life. 

Tedious Expostulations 

Every Japanese parlor has its place of honor and its honorable and less honorable side, the latter being usually toward the door leading to the other apartments, the bedrooms and the kitchen. The seat of honor is in the part removed from the door, and is in front of a raised alcove, where are placed a hanging scroll, a vase of flowers and the few ornaments which a room possesses. 

It is a matter of time, energy and many bows before a guest can be induced to take this place of honor, and it is a contest in which the host must be the victor in the end, or, if not entirely successful, he must at least persuade his guest to sit in the more honorable side of the room, so that he himself may take the humblest place on the other side. It is also a matter of importance as to who shall precede in entering a room, and much time is spent by two people, one waiting for the other and each refusing to enter first. 

In entertaining many guests the host's duties are arduous, and as each separate guest is bound to consider himself the humblest of all the company, it is no little work to persuade him to the contrary.

There is a great deal in the etiquette of bows. Handshaking is a foreign innovation, and bowing hitherto has been the only mode of salutation. When two acquaintances meet in the street a bow is made by placing the hands in front as far down as they will reach, and then bowing from the waist downward until the upper part of the body is almost at rignt angles with the lower. 

One bow is not usually sufficient at a meeting, for if words are exchanged a bow must accompany each expression of good-will and friendship. Bowing when one is seated on the soft mats of a Japanese house (by far the politest method) is much more complicated. One is not expected to hurry through as in the street, and there is no excuse for the omissions of all the formal phrases of courtesy, each of which must be accompanied by bows made with the hands placed on the floor and the head bent down to them. 

There must always be an exchange of congratulations on the continued good health of the families, thanks for past kindnesses or favor shown by any member of one family to the other, and very often a visit is accompanied by a gift, which is formally presented and accepted. —Sacramento Daily Union, 1897

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette and Japanese Omotenashi

“Customers are gods, as a saying goes in Japan, where staffers press for shoppers in department store elevators and hotel porters line up to bow to guests.” –Japan Times

Omotenashi — A Very Japanese Hospitality

The word “omotenashi,” which, ever since Tokyo won the right to hold the 2020 Olympic Games, is used to describe the Japanese style of hospitality and, when it’s covered by the media, a source of national pride. 

Any foreigner who has lived in Japan for an extended period of time will have been asked this question: "What's your favorite Japanese word?" In my own case I have often answered the enquiry with omotenashi and, without exception, my reply has garnered instant murmurs of approval. The tacit implication is that I have "understood." But what, exactly, is it?

Japanese Tea Ceremony 

Omotenashi is a singularly difficult word to define, let alone translate. It is very close to the Western phrase ‘Hospitality,’ yet it is palpably something else, one of those semi-mystical Japanese keywords that seem to tap into the very heart of the Japanese cultural DNA, yet remain somehow beyond literal explanation. One of my personal favorite attempts to decipher its meaning, comes from an unlikely source, the PR department of a major Japanese cosmetics corporation:

“Omotenashi is a word you have to translate with your heart,”says their copy, “It is a subtle connection in which trust, pleasure and respect are interwoven in an approach steeped in a natural sense of deference; an exquisite approach to the art of receiving guests.” Not a bad stab at it, methinks.

My own attempt goes something like this: “Omotenashi describes an atmosphere of conviviality and welcome in which individual needs and preferences are catered to impeccably, and of which an essential element is the unobtrusive, meticulous attention to detail. The term is primarily used in modern Japan in the hospitality and service industries, most notably in high-end hotels and restaurants, though its use is not exclusive to those trades; it may even be used to describe the hospitality found in the confines of a private home.”— Text By John Ashburne

Etiquette Enthusiast Maura Maura J. Graber is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia