Not so long ago, Japanese people loved to travel. So much so, that tourists from Japan became parodied the world over for their snap-happy camerawork and breathless travel schedules. But hard economic times have more recently curtailed many consumers’ taste for adventure. Instead, they make their own travel fantasies closer to home, with the help of entrepreneurs like Atsuhiko Iijima and his Traveler’s Factory. In 2005, Iijima was overseeing production for a line of stickers at a stationery company. It was a job, but not a vocation. “Work was work, and the things I enjoy – books, motorcycle touring, coffee, rock music – these were separate,” he says. “I wondered if there was a way I could blend the things I loved with the work I was doing.” He teamed up with a colleague to enter a contest to create a concept for a tall, slim notebook. The result had a leather cover and a variety of smooth filler paper that is equally at home in a Harley driver’s leather satchel as in a fashionista’s It Bag. Iijima wanted his notebook to convey a passion for discovery to those who bought it, and he needed his shop to do the same. After a year of searching for the right location, he found a former box factory only a few hundred metres – albeit with plenty of twists and turns – from Nakameguro Station. “The idea is that the trip to the store should be a journey in itself. And then the space I found, I guess that represents the ethos of customising something original, while letting its flavour become richer with time,” Iijima says, referring to the building’s original patterned window glass and preserved vertiginous staircase, which juxtapose its modern light fixtures. Traveler’s Factory, as he called his shop, is a place as much for dreaming of destinations. Curated international stationery finds – vintage postcards from Russia and rolls of old British bus tickets – sit beside collaborations with storied travel icons like Braniff Airlines and Hong Kong’s Star Ferry. On the upper floor, Iijima has turned the storage loft of the original factory into a sunny, intimate space to read, drink a cup of the store’s coffee custom-roasted, and customise their Traveler’s Notebooks. “One woman decorated hers with stickers of the Eiffel Tower and glued lace to the front, a guy stitched a rawhide pen strap into his cover, and another painted a skull on his,” says Iijima. So why exactly does this notebook strike such a chord? Iijima thinks it’s about the act of making it one’s own. “To decorate it, you have to really think about what appeals to you,” he says. “You end up wanting to explore the things you like more deeply.”
Toga
Long before she became a high-profile name in the fashion industry, Yasuko Furuta was a stylist in a far more private arena: her own bedroom. For her primary school graduation ceremony, the budding talent chose to wear a tweed three-piece suit. It was a bold choice for a child, but one that garnered many compliments. “I was commended for having exceptional taste,” she recalls. “I felt proud that I might have talent.” Now an established designer, Furuta tries to give all her customers a similar opportunity to find their own style. Her brand Toga, named for the garment of ancient Rome, does not limit itself to promoting and peddling its current collection. Instead, to give her customers maximum choice, Furuta invites them to browse an edited closet of Toga designs from previous seasons under the moniker ‘Toga Archives’. “We hoped our customers would enjoy putting things from different seasons together, that they’d get creative and establish their individual style,” Furuta says. “I’m lucky because they naturally took a liking to this new way of shopping and dressing.” After graduating in 1994 from the prestigious ESMOD-ISEM fashion school in Paris, Furuta returned to Japan to design eye-catching costumes for celebrities on television. Her work needed to be bold and original. It was the perfect testing ground. “The more I did that kind of work, the more I knew I wanted to become a contemporary designer, making complex designs that would be available to everyone,” she says. She launched Toga in 1997, and with its bold prints and silhouettes, the brand continues to have a glamorous, almost televisual appeal. Her looks are unashamedly edgy – moody, modern, sometimes slightly masculine – and with a confidence that makes them stand out among other Japanese womenswear designers. Located on a quiet street in an often-forgotten corner of Harajuku (albeit less than a minute’s walk from the main crossing), Toga’s capacious store gives Furuta and her team space to have fun with and create different enclaves for each of the brand’s sub-collections. “It’s a kind of Toga souvenir shop,” she says. As well as the most recent collection and Toga Archives, there is also Toga Pulla, for day-to-day basics and shoes; Toga Virilus for menswear; and Toga Picta, Furuta’s own line of one-off vintage remakes. A tent semi-permanently standing outside the store contains more vintage items handpicked by the designer. “I adore vintage. Each piece is a discovery that can transport you somewhere new and exciting,” says Furuta. “I only want to own things that I’ll cherish.” She describes her creative process as something akin to a treasure hunt, “picking up clues,” as she puts it, from the things she reads, touches, hears and smells. “I try to tie all those things together by thinking hard about why each thing excites me. Then I try to communicate that to other people.” As a Japanese woman who has also lived and found success overseas, a message that Furuta clearly communicates is that she wants her customers … Read More
L’Effervescence
As a young man in Japan, Shinobu Namae always knew he was living in a bubble. “It was very convenient here, very efficient,” says the youthful executive chef of L’Effervescence with characteristic self-awareness. “I appreciated that. But I also knew Japan was a bit sterile.” Namae was determined to travel, and foraged for a career that would satisfy his inquisitive instincts. He intended to become a journalist. Then he was obsessed with Italy – “I wanted to be Italian.” But it was on holiday near San Francisco, while dining at Chez Panisse, that he encountered his true calling. “A simple arugula salad, garlic soup, beef sirloin with basil paste… Even now, I can remember every flavour,” he recalls of the meal at Alice Waters’ iconic Californian restaurant. “I never imagined I could get such satisfaction from a salad.” More than a decade later, on the other side of the Pacific, Namae set out to offer every guest at his own restaurant a distinct memory of time and place. For his ebullient project, he chose a tantalising name: L’Effervescence. The location he secured is refreshingly roomy for Japan’s cramped capital, where space itself is a luxury. During each sitting, the chef makes sure to visit every table and personally greet and thank his patrons for coming. “I’m grateful for every moment,” he says. “For me, work is life, and life is work, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” On a plate called ‘Beautiful Scene of Summer’, two small local freshwater fish known as ayu (sweetfish) appear to be jumping along a stream of sunshine – a picture painted with mango, radish and a mountain of sansho pepper, and with a powerful spot of ‘guts-flavoured gastric sauce.’ On ‘Transparency,’ airy foie gras, garnished with grapes, celery and walnuts, seems ephemeral enough to almost vanish before the first bite. Nominally French, Namae’s food also reflects his youthful Italian fetish; the influence of his two celebrated tutors, Michel Bras and Heston Blumenthal; and, from his home country, strong seasonal rhythms. His microscopic attention to detail comes from his father, a stern, introverted man who designed microchips sitting behind a blueprint-covered desk. It was his mother who taught him to take pleasure in food. “Honestly she isn’t a great cook,” he says. “But she loves to explore new restaurants. She appreciates every mouthful and every moment.” Softly spoken yet candid, Namae confesses to having a rebellious streak. After graduating from university with a degree in politics and social psychology, his decision to cook for a living went against the wishes of his father. Now in his early forties, he is one of several rising-star chefs unafraid to challenge the boundaries of his native culture. “I grew up just as Japan’s bubble economy was bursting. Since then things haven’t always gone well for us Japanese,” he says. “So we needed to learn to do things differently, and to enjoy ourselves along the way. We needed this culinary revolution.” In late 2013, Chef Namae attended … Read More
Ota Memorial Museum
With its pop boutiques and streets packed with fashion-crazed teens, Harajuku may feel like an odd place to go to look at woodblock prints. But Michi Akagi, curator of the Ota Memorial Museum of Art, doesn’t entirely agree. “Young women 200 years ago looked at these pictures for fashion and make-up tips,” she explains. “So they were not that different from the Harajuku girls of today.” It’s true, ukiyo-e (the name means as ‘pictures of the floating world’) were the gossip magazines of their era, purveyors of fashion and scandal. Produced cheaply for mass consumption until the 19th century, they idolised kabuki stars, lionised sumo wrestlers and made pin-ups of fashionable courtesans. Some functioned like travel magazines, promoting scenic spots around the country, while others raised eyebrows with their graphic erotica. The late insurance magnate Seizo Ota, who died in 1977, recognised the value of the prints at a time when other establishment grandees dismissed them as lowbrow fodder. He used his personal fortune to fight the tide of foreign demand. Sold by the pound, the pretty pictures were often used as linings for the souvenir boxes of early international visitors. When they reached Europe, artists including Vincent van Gogh admired their exotic imagery and unusual lack of perspective. The museum Ota built to house his collection occupies a low-rise modernist building in one of Harajuku’s many hidden corners. Works in the main gallery are arranged around a rock garden complete with a bench for contemplation. The collection has grown to about 14,000 prints and scrolls, including works by Hokusai Katsushika, Hiroshige Utagawa and Utamaro Kitagawa, the discipline’s most famous artists. Ukiyo-e artists were the political satirists of their time, delighting the masses with their cheeky antics. Utamaro in particular was famous for his portraits of beautiful women, especially geisha from the infamous pleasure quarters. “These courtesans were banned from appearing in ukiyo-e prints at that time,” explains Akagi, referring to shogunate laws to stamp out decadence. “But Utamaro pictured them anyway, and in his prints he left small hints as to their famous names. The public loved these illicit riddles. His work was the people’s art.” The people’s art of modern Japan is the comic book, or manga – also dismissed my many in the elite as lowbrow fodder. The word manga was used by Hokusai to describe the ‘playful sketches’ he made for his students to copy. Even today, manga artists reference books of the artist’s sketches like church-goers consulting their bibles. “These pictures helped set trends that influence us even today,” says Akagi. “So what better place to show them than in one of the coolest neighbourhoods on the planet?”
Nihonbashi Yukari
Just like wine makers, Japanese chefs value terroir – the sense of place communicated through the ingredients they use and the dishes they make. For Kimio Nonaga of Nihonbashi Yukari, the place he wants to share is the heart of old Tokyo – the place he calls home. Nihonbashi is a mercantile district named after the bridge of the same name. The proverbial centre point of the capital, the bridge and those who travel over it are guarded by statues of dragon-like creatures – winged giraffes, according to folklore – and Nonaga’s restaurant is located just a short walk away. “They have a special meaning to us,” he says. “They tell us to protect our heritage while also flying forwards. In Nihonbashi, we must always be a bridge between the present and the past.” Nonaga is a member of a rare tribe known as edokko, or ‘child of Edo,’ a term reserved only for the most authentic citizens – people whose parents and grandparents were all born and raised in the city now known as Tokyo. His grandfather founded the restaurant in 1935, naming it after his favourite kabuki play, and the young Kimio took the reins from his father at just 24. In the private rooms, waitresses in kimono serve formal kaiseki – fixed menus containing many small, artfully prepared dishes. At the counter, patrons can chat with the chef as he prepares their meals. Like most traditions, kaiseki is governed by strict rules, and like most great chefs, Nonaga knows when to break them. There’s cured prosciutto ham and made-in-Tokyo mozzarella cheese in his kitchen – hardly traditional Japanese ingredients. “The scent, texture and taste of the cheese are just a little bit different from Italian mozzarella, because it comes from our own climate,” he says. “But I guess that’s why it goes so well with my cooking.” The most important rule, however, can never be broken: kaiseki must follow the rhythms of nature – not merely the obvious four seasons, but its 24 micro seasons, fleeting moments during which some ingredients are available for just a few short weeks each year. Baby bamboo shoots take centre stage in early March, but just two weeks later edible cherry leaves are in bloom and appear, salted, on the plate. The valuable matsutake mushrooms prized in early autumn are quickly replaced by glorious orange persimmons – hollowed out and re-stuffed with a mixture of their own fruit and seasoned tofu. Given Nonaga’s breeding, his preference for local produce is no surprise: the seafood comes from nearby waters, the pork from farms on the edge of the city. Some of the vegetables are even grown on the restaurant’s roof, right there in Nihonbashi. “Kaiseki has a clear understanding of ingredient, place and time,” Nonaga explains. “But more than that it’s about hospitality, and it’s about healing. After eating it, you feel well.”
Kohoro
The windows of the smart shopping complex near Futakotamagawa station show off posters of pouty European models putting their faces to international names. The ritzy suburb appears to be all glittering high-end retail. But nestled on a pedestrian side street only a few steps away is a shop with a certain serenity. Beyond the open sliding door, noise and neon are absorbed by wood, iron, linen, and bamboo. Lettered discreetly on the window is ‘Kohoro’, a word that harkens back to a past time as it describes the sound of a horse’s saddle settling into its packing box. But if Kohoro offers not a wholesale return to a simpler way of living, it at least provides a way of adopting some wisdoms of generations of Japanese. Shopkeeper Hiromi Onda took over eight years ago, and has grown to love using its old-fashioned tools in her daily life. “Visiting friends always ask me to make white rice,” she says. “Apparently it’s special.” She’s young enough that even her mother’s generation used electronic rice cookers. But she says what makes her rice special is her clay gohan nabe, a crock pot that cooks directly on a gas burner. The thick pottery heats slowly and evenly, its heavy lid forcing the steam back into the grains. If there is any left over, Onda puts the rice in an ohitsu, a lidded container specifically for cooked rice. The ones at Kohoro are made from Akita Prefecture cedar, which maintains the fluffiness and moisture content of the rice, while its antibacterial properties keep it fresh for several days without refrigeration. She also likes using bamboo chopsticks with an extremely fine point. “They make it easy to eat anything, even something challenging like grilled fish,” she says. To make tea, Onda uses an iron kettle known as a tetsubin. Showing off one from an historic iron-working region of Yamagata Prefecture, she explains that when water is boiled in it, it picks up minerals from the iron that give the tea an extra smooth taste. Hers has a tiny Japanese eggplant moulded into its handle – a symbol of good luck. And for miso soup, she uses a bowl made of urushi, Japanese traditional lacquer. Unwrapping one of black, with subtle shimmers of a red under layer peeking through, she explains that with enough use, the black will start to wear away. Though this erosion lends its own wabisabi beauty to the lacquerware, the bowls do come with a lifetime guarantee: if the lacquer ever wears through, they can be returned to Kohoro for a fresh coat. So where to begin in infusing one’s modern life with a touch of ancient Japan? If Onda were to recommend one piece, it would be a ceramic rice bowl. It’s just the right size and shape to pick up and hold in one hand while eating, a mannerism that’s very Japanese. There are many patterns to choose from, reflecting the work and personalities of different artisans. And then, as Onda … Read More