2026Journal articleFree to read
Stephanie Stephanie, Tan Gia Bao Huynh
IAFOR Journal of Cultural Studies
This article examines how social media and content creators construct the category of “ceremonial grade matcha” through digital mythmaking and explores the cultural, economic, and agricultural consequences of these representations. While matcha has deep historical roots in Japanese tea culture, the Western wellness market has redefined it as a superfood and lifestyle accessory. Through a qualitative textual and visual analysis of the hashtags #matcha and #ceremonialmatcha on Instagram and TikTok, supplemented by blogs and online guides, this study identifies recurring myths that frame ceremonial matcha as pure, premium, and spiritually enriching. Visual tropes such as pastel aesthetics, curated rituals with the chasen (茶筅, tea whisk), and comparative marketing strategies like “Matcha vs. Coffee” or “Ceremonial vs. Culinary” are used to authenticate products while flattening cultural complexity. The findings suggest that these myths operate more as marketing strategies than as cultural designations. “Ceremonial matcha” emerges as a Western construct that appropriates the symbolic weight of Japanese tea practices while detaching the term from its historical and cultural roots. This rebranding commodifies spirituality into lifestyle performance, confuses consumers with oversimplified binaries, and displaces the Japanese standpoint in defining quality. Moreover, the cycle of trend-driven consumption threatens to commodify and exhaust matcha as yet another disposable superfood, placing additional strain on Japanese agricultural systems and raising domestic prices. By decoding these myths, this article highlights how influencer-driven wellness narratives transform a centuries-old cultural practice into a consumable fantasy, underscoring the broader dynamics of Orientalism…
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Study type
Observational (human)
Surveys, cohorts and consumer studies, with no intervention.
Assigned automatically from the title, abstract and subject terms.
Topics
Matcha is a main subject here (named in the title).
Stephanie Stephanie, Tan Gia Bao Huynh. (2026). The Price of Premium: A Case Study of “Ceremonial Matcha” and Social Media Myth-Making. IAFOR Journal of Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.22492/ijcs.11.1.12
DOI: 10.22492/ijcs.11.1.12
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