CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Rory Sandobal adds a mochi mix to the Japanese-made Rheon machine, which wraps dough around the filling, then pinches off individual pieces of the confection. Anna Hose removes the mochi, shapes it and dusts it with flour.
Fujiya looks to the future
with new ideas, yet strives
to uphold valued traditions
Mochi-making is a midnight enterprise, on a professional level, anyway, which is why Shigeko Yokota's work "day" begins at midnight. Except on Tuesday, which is manju day and she doesn't have to show up until 1:30. That's a.m.
Yokota, 66, has been doing this at Fujiya, the Kalihi-based maker of Japanese confections, for 25 years, which is exactly half the lifetime of the company itself.
"I used to already, so not too bad," Yokota says, wearing a what's-the-big-deal? kind of smile.
Her job is to run the production line at Fujiya. She keeps recipes in her head for several kinds of mochi, chichidango and manju. It's the sort of position that the operation depends upon and Yokota doesn't begrudge the hours.
She's never abandoned her post -- except for that time several years ago when she lost a finger. Yokota is vague on the details, just that she was cleaning up when somehow her right pinkie took a mean slice.
"I cut finger," she says, by way of explanation. "Was hanging, yeah?"
A trip to the doctor, though, and she was back the next day.
Fujiya is 50 years old this month, its label familiar in markets all over the island, even in the check-out line at Longs Drug Stores.
Yokota is one of 15 full-timers and among the most senior. Henry Onishi, the new owner of Fujiya, says her story and her sense of duty are typical of the many long-timers who through the years have shaped the soft, pink pillows of mochi and set up the little bean-filled turnovers of manju to steam.
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Shigeko Yokota, one of Fujiya's most senior employees, arranges the equipment used to steam rice.
An immigrant who spoke little English, Yokota took one of the few jobs available to someone of her limited skills, then made it her own. The work ethic of that generation really built the company, Onishi says.
As the owner of Bel Air Distributors, Onishi bought Fujiya last year, believing the products would mesh well with the Japanese goods he imports for resale in Hawaii. But he had a personal, cultural interest in mochi as well.
Mochi-pounding -- the old-style way of making mochi by pounding rice into a paste -- was a family tradition throughout his childhood. As a University of Hawaii student in the 1970s, Onishi helped organize mochi-pounding demonstrations through the ethnic-studies program. He still keeps a scrapbook cataloging his interest in the tradition.
A business like Fujiya will always be more than dollars and cents, he says, "because our past is touched by this mochi-pounding, or mochi consumption."
Fujiya's story begins in 1953, when Hifumi Tamada and his wife, Haruyo, took over a small mochi business in what is now Victoria Ward Centers.
It was a simple storefront operation, but the company steadily grew, producing not just mochi, but also Japanese tea cookies, or senbei, in several flavors. Expanding beyond its own boundaries, Fujiya began supplying other stores.
In 1962, Tamada moved the operation to Waiakamilo Road, leasing 5,000 square feet in a concrete block building that still houses the factory and a small retail counter.
Tamada's daughter, Margaret Yoshida, remembers that her father had a wholesaling business, Tamada & Sons, when he took over Fujiya, and he drew those sons into the new business. One handled sales, the other was the baker. She signed on a few years later.
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Fujiya can produce 4,800 to 9,000 pieces of mochi a day.
"Dad liked to have all the family together," she says.
Family loyalty was more important than experience -- "I started from scratch without knowing anything," Yoshida says, but from her first job as a packer she tried to learn the entire operation.
In 1985, her brothers having moved on to their own businesses, Yoshida and her husband, Kazuo, took over Fujiya. "I got left holding the bag," she explains.
Yoshida saw her role as maintaining quality. Although she didn't work the line herself, she came to work at 4 a.m. and monitored the various products.
"I taste and correct," she says. "Frankly, I was very particular."
Last year, at age 73 and facing health problems, Yoshida finally let Fujiya pass out of the family, selling to Onishi.
By then the product line had expanded to include fortune cookies and snack foods such as arare and iso peanuts. The mochi line had gone new-wave with peanut butter fillings and blueberry flavors.
But Onishi says the company was in financial peril and was facing closure within months of his taking over last April. He came in with the idea of modernizing immediately, mechanizing, bringing in skilled bakers.
Then he met people like the indefatigable Yokota and her daughter, Anna Hose, who joined her mother at Fujiya 10 years ago. And people like Seitaro Kumagai, whose 25 years with the company were preceded by 25 years of mochi-making in Osaka, Japan.
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Seitaro Kumagai inspects senbei, or tea cookies, as they move through the wafer-making machine. Kumagai has 25 years experience at Fujiya.
He realized that revamping the operation would endanger the product and alienate customers.
"Too many changes too fast, there's a chance it could die," Onishi says. "My mind had to totally change. My business thinking had to change, to understand their way of operating. They changed me."
So he sat down with line supervisors such as Yokota and figured out some production efficiencies. Sales people identified new customers, and got more aggressive about marketing. The result, he says, has been a 30 percent decrease in costs and a 30 percent increase in sales.
Onishi would still like to modernize the plant, but he understands the need to pace himself. "We have to do that slowly, with caution."
Indeed, Fujiya's regulars -- the customers who come to Kalihi to pick up their mochi rations in person -- seem to like the place just as it is. Hose, who runs the front counter, knows them all, and their preferences. She mentions one couple that comes in for five trays of peanut butter mochi at a time. They freeze the mochi, Hose says, and the wife eats one a day when she takes her medicines.
Elaine Nagasawa has placed special orders at Fujiya since the '80s, when she returned to Hawaii after several years in Japan.
She buys boxes of mochi as gifts. "I just tell them how much I want to spend and leave it up to them."
It's gotten so that they even recognize her voice on the phone, Nagasawa says. "You're not just a number; you're not just a dollar."
Joyce Omine has been coming a couple of times a month for 10 years, being fond of treats such as shoyu peanuts and arare. "They're like family," Omine says. "They're my personal mochi people."
The Fujiya store, 454 Waiakamilo Road in Kalihi, is open 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. weekdays; 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays. Call 845-2921. Products may be ordered online: www.fujiyahawaii.com.
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It’s not hard to make
your own mochi
Fujiya's mochi recipes are trade secrets, but mochi is an easy treat to make at home. These recipes have been published in the Star-Bulletin in the past, in answer to readers' requests.
For more, visit our Web site, www.starbulletin.com and use the search function: Type in "mochi recipe" and you'll find a host of ideas.
To make filling, combine peanut butter and honey; refrigerate until firm, a few hours or overnight.Peanut Butter Mochi
"Hawaii Soto Mission Cookbook: Our Tradition and Pride"3 cups water
1 cup sugar
1 16-ounce box mochiko (sweet rice flour)
Katakuriko (potato starch)
>> Filling:
1 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup honeyBring water to a boil; add sugar and stir until dissolved. Add mochiko a little at a time, stirring constantly. Continue stirring over medium heat until lumps are dissolved.
Place dough on a surface dusted with katakuriko. Allow to cool slightly. Sprinkle with more katakuriko and knead a few times until smooth. Form into a log.
Pinch off a 1 1/2-inch piece of dough and flatten into a circle. Place a teaspoon of filling in the center. Fold edges around filling and pinch to seal. Makes about 2 dozen mochi.
Variation: For strawberry mochi, coat strawberries in koshi-an (sweet bean paste), then wrap in mochi dough.
Combine all ingredients, except kinako. Mix well. Pour into a 12-cup microwaveable tube or bundt pan sprayed with vegetable spray; cover with plastic wrap. Microwave on high 5 minutes. Immediately remove plastic and cool. Pull mochi from sides of pan and remove to a cutting board dusted with kinako. Cut in 1/2-inch pieces and coat each piece with kinako. Makes 32 pieces.Banana Cream Mochi
Violet Tasaka1 cup mochiko
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons instant banana cream pudding/pie filling mix (1 tablespoon if using sugar-free)
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup kinako or cornstarchNutritional information unavailable.
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