Japanese Wasabi
生わさび（根茎）Water grown rhizome from a named valley. The most researched line we have and the one nobody else can reliably supply.
Specification, not suggestion.
Everything on this page is either a published figure with a source or a gap we have written down. Nothing is a guess dressed as a fact.
Readiness: 6 of 6. We answer six questions about every line before we sell it: supply, cost, price, regulatory, buyers, margin. This one has 6 of them answered.
| Detail | What we state |
|---|---|
| Species | Eutrema japonicum |
| Method | Sawa, grown standing in moving spring water on terraced beds |
| Time to harvest | 18 to 24 months for Mazuma |
| Carriage | Chilled, 1 to 3 C, air freight |
| Shelf life | Weeks, not months |
| Customs heading | 0709.99, to be confirmed by your broker |
What we know, and what we do not.
Most suppliers answer the first three and let you discover the other three after you have ordered. All six are here, including the ones where the honest answer is that nobody has looked yet.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Supply | Japan ships 354.8 tonnes of water grown rhizome in a year, nationally. Shizuoka 172.8, Nagano 157.2, Tokyo 10.0, Iwate 7.5, Shimane 3.0. A realistic ceiling for one new entrant is 1,500 to 3,000 kg a year. |
| Cost | Landed cost modelled by grade and month against Toyosu and Ohta market data. No grower has quoted yet, so every figure is a model. |
| Price | A 216 row plan by segment, grade and month. The season moves cost by roughly two and a half times between July and February. |
| Regulatory | One APHIS PPQ 587 covers every prefecture, grower and cultivar, so sourcing from six valleys adds no federal paperwork. Japan excludes five island groups from export; every origin on our list is on Honshu. |
| Buyers | 1,008 US accounts scored and segmented. 461 omakase bars want an estimated 6,087 kg a year between them, which is twice our entire ceiling. |
| Margin | Modelled across five years and three scenarios. The premium grade currently returns less per kilo than the general grade, which is a pricing fault to settle before quoting. |
The things that turn a good price into a bad one.
Cultivar
Mazuma and Daruma are different plants sold under one word, and the difference is most of the price.
Season
June to September carries disease loss in the beds and somebody pays for it.
The lane
Chilled wagyu moves at 0 to 2 C and wasabi wants 1 to 3 C, so the two share a manifest. Frozen cargo would destroy it.
What we would need to quote this properly.
- A grower quote, from a person
- What Utogi alone can ship in a year
Sources
- Shizuoka Prefecture official statistics
- Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market monthly files
- APHIS eFile PPQ 587 guide
- MAFF Plant Protection Station
What leaves Japan this month.
Once a month: the prices that moved, the reason they moved, and what we can allocate before it is spoken for. Written for people who buy, by the people doing the buying.
Buyers and distributors only. We do not sell the list and you can leave in one click.