Christmas with Peco-chan

The tea room was on the second floor. (Photos from back then show a neon sign that said “GRILL TEA ROOM” between the second and third floors, so there must have been a restaurant on the third floor.) What I remember is the tea room on the second floor, where I would plead for pudding and chocolate parfaits. The membrane of my nose still remembers that wonderful aroma of sweet vanilla essence and caramel mixed together. It’s one of those smells that remind you of those times.
Now, I will stop going down memory lane, and instead go back in the corporate history of Fujiya. The founder of Fujiyais Rin-emon Fujii, who established a cake shop specializing in Western cakes in Motomachi, Yokohama in 1910 (Meiji 43). If you walked into 2-chome from Maedabashi, you would find it around where Godiva stands now. A book on the corporate history has a photo taken around its opening and it was quite a modern townscape. The Fujiya store was in a wooden Japanese-style building but had a projecting signboard written in English that said, “FUJIYA FRENCH CAKES.” The store across the street was Chiyoda Butter, written out in Japanese, so it must have been a neighborhood with a Western taste and quite a butterish smell.
A book on Fujiya’s corporate history, published in commemoration of tis 80th anniversary, features a conversation between Rin-emon and Musei Tokugawa (held in 1959 to celebrate Fujiya’s 50th anniversary) on its opening. “Just around that time, there was a store in the foreign enclave of Yokohama that specialized in French groceries and cakes. An artisan named Tatsu-san who had worked there for quite a while was out of employment, and a voice persuaded me to hire him and sell Western sweets.’”
The advice was offered by Rin-emon’s brother-in-law. Young Rin-emon went to the US to learn about Western cakes. He managed to live on what money made operating a udon stall in Los Angeles and returned to Japan with knowledge of how to bake cakes.
In 1922 (Taisho 11), Fujiya opened a new store in Isezaki-cho, and the following year, in 1923 (Taisho 12), they came to Ginza. However, 27 days after its opening, it iwas hit by the Great Kanto Earthquake. The opening of the Ginza store marked the dawn of challenging times.
By the way, I am sure some readers are curious to know what kind of cakes they sold back then…… They were most famous for their cream puffs, which was even referred to as a specialty of Yokohama along with shumai (steamed Chinese pork dumplings). They also carried eclairs, baked apples, rolled cream pies called cornets….. The corporate history includes a menu from the Fujiya tea room in 1937 (Showa 12) which lists chocolate and strawberry parfaits, ice cream sundaes, Peach Melba, fruit punch…… not much different from what I recall from my childhood. This tells us that Fujiya had established quite a rich menu from before the war.
What impressed me reading the conversation between Rin-emon and Musei was the people who often came to the Ginza tea room.

　Fujii　Strangely, some of our constant customers included literary figures. From university students to Prime Minister Kishi; everyone would come to Fujiya.
　Musei　I would imagine.
　Fujii　And also that huge Dekao Yokoo and Tatsuo Saito, who has recently become quite popular on TV.
　Musei　That must have been when they were young. Dekao Yokoo passed away.
　Fujii　We have also served many Kabuki actors.

Nobusuke Kishi must have had a sweet tooth from when he was young. Tatsuo Saito had played supporting roles in Yasujiro Ozu’s movies and after the war he became a popular TV drama star. Picturing Dekao Yokoo with sweets is amusing. Dekao (literally, “big guy” in Japanese) was one of the first celebrities whose popularity was based on his obesity and I still remember him playing an artist in the first talkie Madam to Nyobo (Madam and my wife). To think that Fujiya’s old customers were all men with a sweet tooth makes me smile.
Anyone would imagine Peco-chan upon hearing the name Fujiya. This powerful mascot character was born in 1950, after World War II. Towards the end of 1951, the chewy milk candy “Milky” was released, with Peko-chan’s boyfriend, Poko-chan its mascot. (It was sold nationwide in 1952).
It was around this time that stores, including the Ginza store, started to have a Peko-chan, doll the height of a small child, standing in front of the store. In the 1953 (Showa 28) Toho movie Tokai no Yokogao (Profile of a City), which I have also referred to in my introduction of the soba restaurant, Yoshida, there is a very short scene where the lost girl teases the Peco-chan doll standing in front of the Ginza 6-chome store. (The Sukiyabashi store opened this year as well.)
Milky made Peco-chan popular throughout Japan. People of my generation remember the big boxes with rope handles. The boxes were the size of a small bag and were hung all over the old open and airy sweets shop, looking somewhat like scrub brushes swaying in the wind. On the larger Milky box, Peco-chan’s eyes had plastic coating and her eyeballs would move. It was amusing, but when the eyeballs go stuck in the corner, she looked scary.