No. The enclosed guide walks you through a simple way of making tea with four utensils and an electric kettle. The formal procedures can wait until curiosity takes you there.
What is a chabako ?
A chabako — literally, "tea box" — holds a complete set of utensils for preparing matcha, in a box small enough to rest on your open palms.
A tea bowl, a tea caddy, a scoop, a bamboo whisk: lift the lid, and everything is already there.
Wherever there is hot water, there is a tearoom.
For your own quiet hour, or as a gift for someone who matters.
For example, like this.
As a gift.
Bowl-and-whisk matcha sets have become a familiar souvenir of Japan, sold in tea shops everywhere.
We believe that things used daily deserve to be genuine — and the chabako is that idea in its finest form.
A complete set for preparing tea, each utensil chosen with care, resting together in one box.
With a paulownia gift box and aged matcha, it becomes a gift for someone who matters.
For yourself.
At the end of a long day, open the box on your desk.
Pour the hot water. Whisk the tea.
Switch your phone off, if you can — let the digital noise end here, too.
Ten minutes of tea, made for no one but yourself.
When it is over, the utensils return to the box, and the desk becomes a desk again.
And you return to your day. A little quieter, inside.
Welcoming a guest.
You do not need a tatami room to share the beauty and spirit of Japanese tea.
Carrying one's own utensils and serving tea wherever one happens to be — this is not a modern substitute, but a way of tea enjoyed since the days of Rikyū.
The box opens, the utensils appear, and tea is whisked before your guest's eyes.
The gesture itself is the hospitality.
Tame-nuri Lacquer CHABAKO Set with Pine Maki-e | CHABAKO -Japanese Tea Box
A complete chabako — everything needed to prepare matcha, resting together in one lacquered box.
The lid carries a pine motif drawn in fine gold lines. The pine stays green through every season; the trailing vine runs unbroken — an auspicious pairing, long favored on utensils meant to last.
Lift the lid, and the set appears, piece by piece: a small chawan (tea bowl); a natsume (tea caddy) and chasen-zutsu (whisk case) bearing a gold chrysanthemum-and-paulownia motif; a furidashi jar for small sweets; a chakin cloth and its case; a bamboo chashaku in its sleeve; two brocade shifuku pouches; a fukusa silk cloth; the kakegō inner tray; and an uguisu — the small metal pin that holds the whisk upright, used in the Urasenke "moon" procedure.
The wooden storage box is inscribed "Rikyū-gata Chabako" — the classic Rikyū form.
Unsigned, as most utensils of this kind are. What we can confirm, we list below; what we cannot confirm, we do not write.
A chabako temae uses no ladle and no water jar — hot water is poured straight from the kettle. An electric kettle is all you need. A guide to a simple, four-utensil way of tea is enclosed with every box.
Regular price
$741.00 USD
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Inside the box: every utensil, explained
Everything fits inside this one small box.
The design has been refined over centuries, by generations of tea people and craftsmen.
Hold the utensils and you will notice: each one is made a size smaller than usual, just for the box.
Making the same form smaller is, for a craftsman, harder — not easier.
That is what makes chabako utensils a quiet feat of craftsmanship in their own right.
Here they are, one by one.
Chawan (tea bowl)
A bowl one size smaller than a standard matcha bowl. The aroma and color of the tea come through fully; tilt the bowl to drink, and the world narrows, gently, to the tea. This small bowl is where the design of the whole box begins.
Natsume (tea caddy)
A lidded container for matcha, small enough to disappear into a closed hand.
Chashaku (tea scoop)
A slender bamboo scoop for measuring matcha, kept in its own sleeve.
Chasen and chasen-zutsu (whisk and its case)
The bamboo whisk that brings the tea to life, and the cylinder that protects its fine tines.
Chakin and chakin-zutsu (linen cloth and its case)
A small linen cloth for wiping the bowl, and the little cylinder that keeps its dampness away from everything else.
Furidashi (sweets jar)
A small stoppered jar for tiny sweets such as konpeitō, traditional star-shaped sugar candies. Tip it, and they tumble out.
Shifuku (drawstring pouch)
A brocade pouch that dresses a utensil, and cushions it on the road.
Fukusa (silk cloth)
A square of silk for purifying the utensils.
Kakegō (inner tray)
A shallow tray that nests inside the box, dividing it into upper and lower worlds.
Uguisu
A small U-shaped metal pin that holds the whisk upright. It is used in one of the formal chabako procedures of the Urasenke school, the "moon" temae. Even utensils few people can name have their place in this box.
There is an order to how everything is packed.
A folded silk cloth lines the well of the bowl; the caddy rests on it, wrapped.
The cylinders stand upright, and the silk holds everything softly in place.
Hard ceramic and delicate lacquer, packed so that neither can hurt the other.
In the way of tea, there are formal procedures — temae — defined for the chabako itself.
And chabako temae uses no ladle and no cold-water jar.
Hot water is poured straight from the kettle.
Which means: an electric kettle is all you need.
This is the single biggest reason a chabako fits so naturally into life today.
A history that begins with Rikyū ?
How old is the chabako?
By the time of Sen no Rikyū — the sixteenth-century master who perfected the way of tea — carrying one's utensils to serve tea away from home was already an established pleasure.
The chabako and its basket cousin, the chakago, were the vessels for that pleasure; boxes said to reflect the taste of Rikyū and of his grandson Sōtan still survive.
In 1590, Rikyū accompanied the military campaign at Odawara, and served tea in the war camp itself — a bamboo flower vase he is said to have carved there, named "Onjōji," is now in the Tokyo National Museum.
Even at the front lines of a war, a seat for tea was made.
That is how much the way of tea mattered.
The chabako is the box that carried it.
The chabako had no fixed procedure until the nineteenth century, when Gengensai, eleventh grand master of the Urasenke school, gave it one.
He created the Snow, Moon, and Flower procedures, then added "Unohana" for summer, completing the seasons.
Unohana was later refined by the thirteenth grand master, Ennōsai; the fourteenth, Tantansai, added "Wakei-date" and "Shikishi-date" — six procedures in all, practiced to this day.
The chabako is not a travel-sized compromise.
It is a formal instrument of tea, polished by generations of grand masters for over one hundred and seventy years.
We would like it to reach the hands of those who can feel what that means.
The tea: Matured Matcha
Why pair this box with aged matcha?
Because it is the tea that matches the time this box has gathered.
Tencha leaves picked in spring are sealed in a tea jar, rested through the summer, and opened in late autumn.
This tea — called kuchikiri, "the cutting of the seal" — has been considered the finest since Rikyū's time.
The aged matcha of Roppongi Tea Factory follows this tradition.
Tencha from Shōgyokuen of Uji — founded in 1827, its current master holding the tenth and highest rank of tea appraiser — is aged for about half a year in Roppongi, then stone-milled.
Koicha "Ryūdo no Mukashi." Usucha "Shinonome no Shiro."
A genuine vessel deserves a genuine Japanese tea.
Freshly made tencha leaves can sometimes retain a certain brashness of youth.
That is precisely why we let them rest in silence.
Buds picked in spring are sealed within a traditional tea jar and left to age through the summer in the quiet of a cellar. This is the authentic matcha-making process that Japan has preserved since ancient times.
Today, driven by a global boom, it has become common to grind tencha into matcha immediately, without letting it rest. It is perhaps a little unfortunate that we must now deliberately introduce what was once the standard as "Aged Matcha."
It is only in late autumn, at the traditional kuchikiri (seal-cutting) tea gathering, that the seal is finally broken, and the year’s matcha is ground for the very first time.
What awaits is a sweetness grown round and deep, and an overwhelming, lingering aroma.
We invite you to savor our "Aged Matcha"—crafted with unsparing dedication and the luxury of time at the Roppongi Tea Factory.
There is also research that supports what tradition already knew about taste.
In sensory evaluations, matcha prepared from tencha aged for six months showed more umami and sweetness, less astringency and bitterness, and a rounder, mellower character.
Vitamin C retention stayed above eighty percent, and chlorophyll was unchanged — nothing lost, only the flavor grown rounder.*
The centuries that tea people have given the chabako, and the half year this tea has slept in the middle of restless Roppongi, meet in one bowl.
*Shimada, K., "Why tencha must be aged to develop the characteristic flavor of matcha," KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C), 1997–1999, Yamaguchi Prefectural University.
As a gift
We pair the chabako with aged matcha and present them in a paulownia wood box.
Koicha "Ryūdo no Mukashi," or usucha "Shinonome no Shiro."
What you are giving is not a set of utensils, but the quiet hours its new owner is about to have.
About Secondary Market pieces
This chabako is not new.
Someone commissioned it, kept it, and passed it on.
We record only what we have confirmed — the box inscription, the contents, the condition — one piece at a time.
What we cannot confirm, we do not write.
CHABAKO FAQs
Do I need tea ceremony training to use it?
What else do I need?
Hot water — an electric kettle is fine — and matcha. Nothing more.
Is every chabako the same inside?
No. Each chabako has its own history, and its contents vary a little from box to box — some include a feather brush, some lack a pouch. Each box's exact contents are listed on its product page. Every chabako we offer has been checked by wanova to include everything you need to enjoy it.
Is a chabako the same as a tea chest?
The Japanese word is used for both, but they are different objects. Large cedar chests were once used to store and export tea leaves in bulk. The chabako on this page is the other kind: a small, refined box from the world of the tea ceremony, made to carry a complete set of utensils.
Do you ship internationally?
Yes
Japanese Ceramics
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Roppongi, TOKYO