To New Coffee Culture | José Yoshiaki Kawashima | TEDxHamamatsu

When Mr. Kawashima talks coffee’s quality, you would know that coffee is agricultural product again.　He went to El Salvador and leaned how to cultivate world-class coffee at the age of 18. Moreover, he dedicated to develop farm and preserve imaginary species of coffee. While he had another name – the coffee hunter – and flourished all over the world, Japanese coffee industry had changed.
We want to remark Mr. Kawashima who went to 3,000 coffee farms for more than 40 years connects producers with consumer countries, rises value of coffee, and makes new coffee culture.

Born in 1956 in Shizuoka and lives in Tokyo
Coffee Hunter
CEO of Mi Cafeto Co., Ltd.
Mr. Kawashima was born in Shizuoka City in 1956.
Born as the eldest son of a wholesale coffee roaster, Mr. Kawashima grew up surrounded by coffee. This led him to cross oceans and he eventually became known as one of the world’s leading “coffee hunters.”

At 18 he studied abroad at the National Coffee Research Institute in El Salvador and mastered the art of coffee bean cultivation and selection techniques. In 1981 he joined the UCC Ueshima Coffee Co., Ltd., during which he established coffee plantations in Jamaica, Hawaii and Indonesia.

In 1999, he discovered the endangered coffee bean species Maskarocofea in Madagascar Island and Bourbon Pointu in Reunion Island, and has since worked towards the revival and commercialisation of these beans. Since then, he finds rare species and contributes to their conservation and cultivation as a coffee hunter. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx