Ceramic electronic component and method of manufacturing the same

A method of manufacturing a ceramic electronic component, the method comprising:

• alternately stacking green sheets for dielectric layers and conductive pastes for internal electrode layers so that the internal electrode layers are alternately exposed to two edge faces opposite to each other so as to form a ceramic multilayer structure having a substantially rectangular parallelepiped shape;
• firing the ceramic multilayer structure to form a multilayer chip;
• and
• forming a pair of external electrodes respectively on two edge faces of the multilayer chip, the pair of external electrodes including neither glass nor ceramic,
• wherein the firing includes adjusting a firing condition so that an average crystal grain size of ceramic, which is a main component of the dielectric layers, in a cross section becomes 151 nm or less in a dielectric portion that is in contact with at least one of the external electrodes, and a CV value of a grain size distribution of crystal grains of the ceramic in the cross section becomes 26% or more and 35% or less in the dielectric portion, the dielectric portion being defined as a region made of the ceramic in the multilayer chip that is in contact with the one of the external electrodes and that has a width of 5 μm from said one of the external electrodes.