Official
Smoking equipment specialty store in Ginza
This time, if you have a pipe smoker like me, I visited Ginza Kikusui, a famous store that I have visited at least once. In this interview, Mr. Tatsuya Imai, a friend of the same club, worked hard, and thanks to Mr. Hiroyuki Naito, President, was able to directly talk to him. Thank you very much for your very interesting story.
A very historic shop, all of its history, can't be written on the blog, so it's a little bit. Kikusui was founded in 1903, before the Russo-Japanese War (1903). The following photo shows the appearance of the shop of each age.
around 1925
around 1951
around 1964
1974
2011
I, who are young in my life, have only remembered since the time of the green sign, but just looking at this shows that in each era, it was always a specialty shop in Ginza.
According to the private version of "White Flower" written by Naito's grandfather, Choichi Naito, the change of Tokyo and Ginza during the turbulent times of the Great Kanto Earthquake, World War I, the Sino-Japanese War, and World War II was terrible. And at the turn of the times, it is not unusual to be flexible at each time and remain until now. Here, I would like to extract a sentence from "White Flowers" that shows the reason for that wonderful shop I felt a little.
The following text "I think Ginza has to make and sell Ginza-like products. I think we have to come up with products that compete with so-called mass production, such as Shinjuku, Asakusa, and Ginza. And as expected, I think we should deal with things that can be said to be Ginza-style products."
How about it? In this word, you can feel the pride of the ancestors who set up the shop in the wonderful large Ginza, where there were many specialty stores. Also, even when tobacco did not come in after the war, he hired a pipe craftsman specializing in repair, and there is no time to spare.
Well, let's take a look at the modern Kikusui's store.
As shown in the photo, each pipe is carefully displayed like a jewelry, and it invites the excitement when choosing your own collection. Take the pipe that has been cherished to the house. I feel like that. And what I feel like this has been going on for a long time is the antique meshampipe, which is enshrined in the back of the store.
This is not an atmosphere that can be served overnight. I am also collecting a little antique mesham, so I understand. Looking at here, I felt a lot of history in what was written in "White Flowers", and I was sick involuntarily.
Finally, we asked President Naito what you are thinking about as a smoking device specialty store in Ginza in the future. The president said, "Inbound, I would like to send tobacco as a taste and culture of adults as a retailer. There are times when Kikusui can only do it."
In recent years, when the pipe population has increased due to the time of the coronavirus pandemic, the spirit of Kikusui, a specialty store in Ginza, seems to be still alive.