THE JAPAN NEWS

 

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The career of Mi Cafeto Co. President Yoshiaki Kawashima, 59, as a coffee distributor has been built through his unique experiences in Latin America. The following are excerpts from an interview with the man now known as a “coffee hunter,” which was conducted by Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer Shigeki Kurokawa.

About 130 days a year, I go abroad to visit coffee-producing regions around the world. I meet producers and check farms there before purchasing beans. In Madagascar, I discovered a coffee bean that was in danger of extinction. Since then, I’ve been called a coffee hunter. I’m the eldest son of a family that runs a company engaged in roasting and wholesaling coffee beans in Shizuoka. I’d long dreamed of going to Latin America.

When I was a sixth grader at primary school, I wrote a letter to the Brazilian Embassy in Japan that read: “I’d like to work on an agricultural farm some day. Please help me.” That really made my parents angry.
But I’m the kind of person who never gives up. Even when I was in middle school and high school, I kept saying I wanted to go to coffee-producing regions.

In 1975, I enrolled in a university in El Salvador. I wanted to study coffee cultivation at any price. I visited the national coffee research institute in the country and was turned away at the door. For a month, I stayed in front of the director’s room all day until I was accepted. I visited coffee farms and learned about disease damage, pest control and improving varieties while helping the lab’s research. It was a valuable experience.

Development in Jamaica

I moved to Los Angeles for safety in 1981 when the civil war in El Salvador intensified. In the summer of that year, UCC Ueshima Coffee Co. Chairman Tadao Ueshima visited me out of the blue.

He told me: “I’m finally running the farm I’ve always wanted in Jamaica, but I have no one who can cultivate coffee. Please come and help us.” It was an urgent, powerful approach. I joined UCC at the age of 25 after working part-time at a taco shop and began developing a farm of about 420 hectares located in the Blue Mountains.

Public order in the country was terrible. Laborers wielding machetes made an unreasonable request to raise their wages. I became a target because I rejected their request, and a painted sign reading “Hang [Kawashima] in a mango tree” was put up on the roadside.

However, they were surprised to see me growing good seedlings. There’s nothing like demonstrating knowledge and skills to win people’s confidence.

Independent at 51

Wine is evaluated based on which chateau’s vineyards it comes from and the year of the cultivation. However, there’s no such criteria for judging coffee beans. Take Colombian coffee, for example. The country is three times larger than Japan, and the quality varies widely. Unless they receive reasonable compensation, producers who are determined to make good beans cannot maintain the quality of their produce. That idea became stronger day by day in my mind.

I left UCC and established Mi Cafeto in June 2008. To convey to many people the excellent quality of our coffee beans, I began selling beans in a champagne bottle. At about the same time, my business was hit by the Lehman Brothers’ collapse.

I was severely criticized by people in the industry, who told me I shouldn’t have released such an expensive product at a time of deflation. The first two years were really tough.

In 2009, Japan Airlines offered to serve my coffee in its first-class section. Currently, we provide different grades of coffee for all the sections of JAL flights. We’ve also become big enough to open nine cafes, and supervise the coffee served at roadside stations and staff cafeterias. I want all the coffee served to be delicious. I believe the world would change if coffee changed.

Kawashima’s profile

Born in 1956 in Shizuoka, Kawashima has taught coffee bean cultivation in more than 20 countries, including those in Latin America and Africa. He is currently engaged in a project to make Thailand’s mountainous areas into farms to produce good-quality coffee. He has authored such books as “Konbini Kohi wa Naze Kokyu Hoteru yori Umainoka” (why does coffee sold at convenience stores taste better than that served at luxurious hotels?)

Mi Cafeto means “my coffee trees” in Spanish. The firm’s sales mostly come from business clients such as restaurants. Mi Cafeto is based in Minato Ward, Tokyo, and expects sales of ¥800 million for the period ending in September 2016.