♪Dreams sometimes bloom from a cup of coffee ... (Ko Fujiura lyric)
According to the encyclopedia, coffee was brought by Dutch people who came to Nagasaki during the Edo period, but it seems that Japanese did not receive it. Nanpo Ota (Shusanjin), who worked in Nagasaki, wrote, "I can't stand it and taste it." In addition, Kano Siebold wrote, "It's strange that Japanese people who drink hot tea and like friends don't get acquainted with coffee." After the Meiji era, coffee shops and cafes opened and gradually became drunk, and according to statistics, it is now the third largest consumption in the world, with more than 10 cups per Japanese per week.
In March 1944, the first store called "Cafe Plantan" will open at 20 Hiyoshicho, Kyobashi-ku (currently Ginza 8-6). Seiki Kuroda and other Western painters Shozo Matsuyama (1884-1970), who studied with Seiki Kuroda and Okada Saburosuke at the Tokyo Bijutsu School, opened a European cafe in Temoto with a friend painter, Gonpachiro Hiraoka (1883-1943, and a member of the restaurant Kagetsuro in Takekawa-cho) in collaboration with a group of Kitahara Hakushu andOkada Saburosuke.
If it was my first time to call it a cafe, it was my first time to put a hand-held phonograph and play Western music such as classical and dance. Grape shelf at the entrance, large oil paintings drawn by Shozo Matsuyama were placed inside the room, and graffiti such as improvisation of visitors and caricatures were drawn on walls painted in white plaster, creating an atmosphere similar to a cafe in Paris. As for the menu, Western and Western sake are the main players rather than coffee, the specialties are hot sandwiches and macaroni, the sake is rich in assortment, and Western sake that is not familiar in Japan at that time were also prepared.
If so many celebrities gather, various anecdotes are left. Ougai's daughter, Mari Mori, was a young girl like a white hat, returned home from the Imperial drama taken by "Black Man" (Ogai), and drinking coffee for the first time in my life here. I put a hot coffee on my chest. ("Café Plantan of Memory") Also, drunk Shunro Oshikawa sold a fight with Kafu Nagai and Aoi Ikuta (Mt. Aoi), accompanied by the Tomoe family's Yaeji (later Seiju Fujikage). It was this shop. (Aoi Ikuta's "Plantan's Light at that time") Plantan was later pressed by Lion (Owari-cho corner) and Paulista (Minaminabe-cho), but it was a little threshold for ordinary people Is it partly due to the fact that it was considered a high shop?
The smoke of Macaroni and Mocha rises
Cuffet, outside the plantan window
Midnight in the early summer on the streets of Hiyoshi-cho (From Kafu Nagai's Improvisation)
Gonhachiro Hiraoka, who will draw his hand later, is the creator of the poster (1913) of "Kaidai Bijin" playing the biwa at Mitsukoshi Kimono Store. Shozo Matsuyama's child is the fifth generation of actor Kunitaro Kawarasaki (1909-1990), and his grandchildren are Eitaro Matsuyama (1942-1991) and Masaji Matsuyama (1947-). At the cemetery of Meiseiji Temple in Chofu City, Shozo, Taro Kuni, and Eitaro are one grave and sleep forever.
[On the photo] Around the present Namiki-dori St., where there was a plantan.
[Lower photo] The tomb of the Matsuyama family in Chofu.
