MATCHA MANIA BOILS OVER

Over four centuries, Japan built a tradition of drinking matcha that was based on four principles: wa, kei, sei and jaku, or harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity.

- Pete Wells

It took just a few years for a worldwide matcha craze to upend those values and replace them with disharmony, disrespect, impurity and fraud.

Highly respected Japanese firms are at war with scores of vendors who resell their matcha far above the normal retail price on Amazon, Facebook Marketplace and other sites.

Others are hawking the tea trade's equivalent of US$45 (S$58) Chanel bags, counterfeit packages filled with third-rate product or with ordinary tea ground to a dull yellow dust.

Tea companies that have built their reputations over centuries are in despair.

Marukyu Koyamaen, founded by Mr Kyujiro Koyama in 1704, has been taking action against counterfeiters for eight years, fighting them in court and making its packages more difficult to copy.

Some of the fakes are filled with "low-quality powdered green tea", Mr Motoya Koyama, the company’s president and a direct descendant of the founder, said in an email interview. “It would definitely be a great harm to us if those customers who purchased these counterfeit products think that they are produced by Marukyu Koyamaen.”

Other practices, while not as deceptive, are wildly untraditional.