All Japan Coffee Association

All Japan Coffee Association (AJCA)

The All Japan Coffee Association is the industry-wide trade body for coffee in Japan. In Japanese it is 一般社団法人 全日本コーヒー協会 — a general incorporated association, the ordinary Japanese legal form for a non-profit membership body, meaning nobody owns it and its members run it.¹²

Two things make it matter to the rest of this wiki. It is the umbrella the Japanese coffee trade sits under — roasters, importers and green-coffee traders all belong to it through their own smaller associations. And it is the body that counts the coffee: the national consumption and import figures quoted on Japan coffee market are its numbers.¹³

It is not a competition organiser, not an auction house and not a buyer. It publishes no cupping scores, no lot prices and no farm data. If you are looking for Japanese championships, certification or the Tokyo trade show, that is the Specialty Coffee Association of Japan — a separate, specialty-focused body.

Where it came from

The association began in 1953 as a voluntary group, with no legal personality, and was reorganised as an incorporated association in 1980. AJCA’s own Japanese overview page states both dates; its English page mentions only “established in 1980”, which is why the 1980 date is the one usually quoted abroad.¹⁴

Its stated reason for existing has barely changed: to unify the Japanese coffee industry, promote coffee drinking, and “contribute to the further growth of the coffee industry and improvement of the diet of Japanese people”.⁴

AJCA’s own site confirms that funding research on coffee and health is one of its five core activities.¹ A Japanese government database of research-funding institutions adds a motive for it — that when AJCA was founded, coffee in Japan was widely assumed to be bad for you without much evidence either way, and the association set out to fund proper research to settle the question. That entry was not retrieved directly on this pass, so the motive is reported second-hand.

Who belongs to it

AJCA is an association of associations plus a set of direct corporate members — 3 member organisations and 15 member companies as of 2025.¹⁵

The three member organisations:⁵

Japanese name	English
全日本コーヒー商工組合連合会	All Japan Coffee Commerce and Industry Unions Federation
日本珈琲輸入協会	Japan Coffee Importers Association
日本グリーンコーヒー協会	Japan Green Coffee Association

Roughly: the first covers the roasting and retail trade, the second the importers, the third the green-coffee (unroasted bean) traders. Between them they cover the whole chain from ship to shelf.

The 15 member companies are the large drinks and coffee firms that join AJCA directly rather than through a sub-association:⁵

味の素AGF (Ajinomoto AGF) · アートコーヒー (Art Coffee) · 石光商事 (Ishimitsu Shoji) · 片岡物産 (Kataoka Bussan) · キーコーヒー (Key Coffee) · キョーワズ珈琲 (Kyowas Coffee) · 高砂香料工業 (Takasago International) · 日本珈琲貿易 (Japan Coffee Trading) · 日本ヒルスコーヒー (Japan Hills Coffee) · ハマヤ (Hamaya) · 豊産業 (Yutaka Sangyo) · ユニオンコーヒーロースターズ (Union Coffee Roasters) · ユニカフェ (Unicafe) · UCC Ueshima Coffee · ワタル (Wataru)

That list is the Japanese coffee establishment in one line — the canned-coffee giants, the instant-coffee giants, and the green traders who buy the beans. UCC Ueshima Coffee, the company that put coffee in a can in 1969, is a member. So is Wataru, one of the green importers that shows up behind Japanese buyers at origin.

What it actually does

AJCA’s own overview lists five lines of work:¹

• 広報事業 — public relations. Promoting coffee knowledge and consumption, including Japan’s observance of International Coffee Day.
• 科学情報事業 — scientific information. Funding and publishing research on coffee and health. This is the strand that goes back to the founding motive above.
• 安全安心事業 — safety and assurance. Consumer-facing work on product safety.
• 国際交流・協力事業 — international cooperation. Working with coffee-producing countries.
• 統計情報事業 — statistics. Demand-trend surveys and international coffee statistics.

The last one is the one this wiki leans on hardest. AJCA runs the national demand survey and collects the import data, which makes it the primary Japanese source for how much coffee Japan drinks and where it comes from — the figures used on Japan coffee market and Kissaten.¹³ When a market-research vendor’s Japan number disagrees with AJCA’s, AJCA’s is the one to trust: it is the trade association counting its own members’ volumes, not a modelled estimate.

Contact

• 〒105-0004 東京都港区新橋6-9-5 JBビル5F (JB Building 5F, 6-9-5 Shinbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-0004)¹
• Tel 03-6381-5589¹

To verify — the English site and the Japanese site name the member groups differently

AJCA’s English “About” page says the association comprises the All Japan Coffee Roasters Association, the Coffee Importers Association of Japan and the Nippon Green Coffee Association.⁴ AJCA’s Japanese member page names 全日本コーヒー商工組合連合会 (a federation of coffee commerce-and-industry cooperatives), 日本珈琲輸入協会 and 日本グリーンコーヒー協会.⁵ The second and third pairs are plainly the same two bodies under different translations. The first pair is not: a “roasters association” and a “commerce and industry unions federation” are different names for different things, and no source consulted explains whether one body was renamed, whether the English page is simply out of date, or whether “All Japan Coffee Roasters Association” is a loose translation. The table above uses the Japanese page, which is the more recently maintained of the two.

To verify — who chairs it

No officer is named on any AJCA page reached here; the chairman’s-message link on the site did not resolve. Japanese Wikipedia names Kohjiro Hagiwara (萩原孝治郎) as representative director and chairman of AJCA.² A secondary blog article instead identifies Hagiwara as chairman of the roasters’ association, not of AJCA.⁶ Both cannot be assumed correct, and neither is a primary document. AJCA’s full board, its membership fees and its budget are not published on any page consulted.

To verify — a second, different Tokyo address is in circulation

A Japanese government database of research-funding institutions (UMIN, 研究費補助機関データベース) is reported to list AJCA at 〒103-0015 東京都中央区日本橋箱崎町6-2 マックスビル別館3F (Nihonbashi Hakozaki, Chūō-ku) with phone 03-5649-8377. That database was not retrieved directly on this pass. AJCA’s own site gives the Shinbashi address and phone number above.¹ The most likely explanation is a relocation the government database has not picked up, so the association’s own page is used here — but no registry record confirming a move was retrieved.

To verify — whether AJCA founded the Japan Coffee Qualification Authority

A secondary article states that AJCA established the Japan Coffee Qualification Authority (JCQA) in April 2003 to certify coffee appraisers and to run Japan’s first comprehensive coffee knowledge examination.⁶ JCQA is real and its Japanese name is 全日本コーヒー検定委員会; its site advertises four levels — Grade 3, Grade 2, Grade 1 and 鑑定士 (appraiser) — and links out to AJCA as a separate organisation.⁷ But JCQA’s own pages consulted here do not state who founded it or when, and AJCA’s pages do not mention JCQA at all. Treat the 2003 founding and the AJCA parentage as a single-source claim.

To verify — Tadao Ueshima as AJCA's first president

This wiki’s UCC Ueshima Coffee note already flags a claim that UCC’s founder Tadao Ueshima was instrumental in founding AJCA in 1980 and served as its first president. Nothing on AJCA’s own site or in the Japanese Wikipedia entry mentions Ueshima in any role.¹⁴² UCC is confirmed as one of AJCA’s 15 member companies today,⁵ but that is all this pass could establish. The presidency claim remains unconfirmed.

Related

• Japan coffee market — the market AJCA measures, and where its consumption and import figures are used
• Specialty Coffee Association of Japan — the separate, specialty-focused Japanese body that runs the championships, the Tokyo show and the qualifications
• UCC Ueshima Coffee — the canned-coffee giant, and one of AJCA’s 15 direct member companies
• Kissaten · Doutor Coffee — the drinking culture and the chain era underneath the statistics
• National Coffee Association · SCAP · Brazil Specialty Coffee Association — equivalent national trade bodies elsewhere
• International Coffee Organization — the intergovernmental body AJCA’s international statistics come through
• Green coffee buying · Premiumisation · Q Grader

Official links

• Official site — All Japan Coffee Association (全日本コーヒー協会)
• Official site — All Japan Coffee Association, English pages

Footnotes

1. 全日本コーヒー協会 — 協会について (official overview: legal name, 1953/1980 dates, address, activities) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

2. 全日本コーヒー協会 — Wikipedia (Japanese) ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. 全日本コーヒー協会 — official site (statistics and survey activity) ↩ ↩²

4. All Japan Coffee Association — About (official English) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. 全日本コーヒー協会 — 会員団体・会員企業 (official member list) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

6. Coffee Associations in Japan: AJCRA, JCQA, AJCA, and SCAJ — Japanese Coffee Co. ↩ ↩²

7. 全日本コーヒー検定委員会 (Japan Coffee Qualification Authority) — official site ↩