Latest news with #Kikkawa
SoraNews24
21-05-2025
- SoraNews24
Respect the salmon – a visit to an off-the-beaten-path foodie destination in Niigata【Photos】
This charming town on the Sea of Japan coast is a great place to dive into a local culinary culture without massive tourist crowds. By now, there are certain parts of Japan that just about any traveler knows are famous for certain types of food, such as Kobe for beef, Hokkaido for sea urchin, and Osaka for takoyaki. But part of what makes Japan such a great place to explore is that there are always other hidden gems off the beaten tourist path, and today we're taking a trip to a lesser-known culinary culture destination, the town of Murakami in Niigata Prefecture. For many foodies, rice is the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Niigata, as it's where the prized Koshihikari strain of the grain is grown. Murakami, though, is all about salmon. Murakami is located on the coast of the sea of Japan, and the river which flows through the town is also a salmon run waterway. Salmon are deeply engrained in the local way of life, and the locals' respect and gratitude towards the fish is so great that it's said that Murakami has over 100 different salmon recipes, so that as much of the fish as possible can be eaten and only the bare minimum thrown away. ▼ Salmon drying in Murakami It'd take far more than a single visit to Murakami to sample all of its salmon specialties, but we still wanted to try as many as we could fit into or schedule/stomach, so we headed to Kikkawa Izutsuya, a Murakami restaurant that offers multi-course salmon meals. ▼ Kikkawa Izutsuya As you might imagine, though, Kikkawa, which is only open for lunch, tends to fill up with reservations pretty quickly, and unfortunately we'd rolled up without having arranged for a table. This didn't turn out to be a major problem, though. The restaurant doesn't start serving customers until 11 a.m., but at 9:30 they start a waiting list for non-reserved tables for the day. After giving them our name they told us the approximate estimated time for when they'd be able to seat us, and while it was several hours away, this meant that instead of having to stand in line, we could go explore the town. The neighborhood around Kikkawa Izutsuya has some very picturesque machiya (traditional townhouse) architecture, and even amongst the buildings that don't have the look of Edo-period shopfronts there are some with the cool retro atmosphere of two or three generations ago. Since we had a while to go before our Kikkawa Izutsuya seating, we went cruising for breakfast, and found it at a place called Echigo Iwafuneya. ▼ The walk from Kikkawa Izutsuya to Echigo Iwafuneya Full disclosure: Echigo Iwafuneya is a sweets shop. While we're being honest, though, we should also say that we have very few qualms about eating sweets for breakfast while we're traveling, especially when the glazed dango mochi dumplings look like this (and yes, they tasted as good as they looked). ▼ Plus Echigo Iwafuneya has an eat-in area, so in our book it counts as a proper restaurant. By the way, the 'Kikkawa' part of the name of the Kikkawa Izutsuya restaurant we were waiting to eat at refers to its parent company, which sells dried salmon, salmon roe, and other salmon-related foodstuffs. Aside from the restaurant, Kikkawa's main store is also located in the area, and is worth a visit even if you're not planning to buy anything. ▼ Echigo Iwafuneya to Kikkawa main store ▼ Kikkawa main store Not only does the building look extremely cool from the outside, inside you'll see… …just how much dried salmon they produce! You might expect the…bouquet of that much fish to be unbearable, but there's also a strong aroma of salt, since it's used in generous amounts as part of Murakami's local drying process. After being left salted for roughly a week, the salmon is rinsed and hung up to dry, with the best results said to come from salmon that dries in the cold winter wind. We still had time to spare before our Kikkawa Izutsuya seating, so next we strolled down Murakami's Kurobei-dori, or 'Black Wall Street,' so named for the classically styled dark wooden panels at the edges of the properties on either side. ▼ Kurobei-dori is found near Anzenji Temple (walking route from Kikkawa main store to Anzenji shown) As further proof of how much Murakami loves salmon, on the north side of the town you'll find Murakami Salmon Park… …and inside the park is the Murakami salmon museum! ▼ Anzenji Temple to salmon museum Inside are all sorts of exhibits about the life of salmon and their importance to the local community. Not only are there a recreation of a traditional fisherman's dwelling and salmon-inhabited aquarium tanks, there's also a window that looks directly out into the river that's adjacent to the park, so if you come during the salmon run season (late fall/early winter), you can see them swimming upstream on their return to their birthplaces. Visiting the salmon museum (which is officially called the Iyoboya Kaikan) filled us with both an admiration and hunger for salmon…and luckily it was now time for us to head back to Kikkawa Izutsuya for our long-awaited meal! As the bilingual explanatory sheet shows, nothing is wasted in Murakami salmon cuisine. Kikkawa Izutsuya offers salmon meals with eight to twenty-two different dishes, and we opted for the 11-dish set, for 4,048 yen (US$28). Coming first to our table were sake-marinated dried salmon, a salmon temari sushi ball, and winter wind-dried salmon milt (pictured clockwise from right in the above photo). The dried salmon in particular was full of flavor, but we didn't have too long to get lost in reverie since the waitstaff next set a shichirin grill down in front of us with breaded strips of sake-marinated salmon skin cooking on it. They curled as they heated, and when we popped one into our mouth, it was delightfully crunchy. Next we were presented with dishes of stewed kabuto (salmon head), grilled pickled salmon, and miso-stewed salmon roe, arranged left to right in the picture below. All of the above items are also part of the eight-dish course meal, but upgrading to the 11-item one also got us simmered salmon milt, salmon sashimi, and kombu (kelp)-wrapped salmon, lined up top to bottom on the right side of this shot. While no dish alone was a huge portion, the number of different items meant that we had plenty to eat, avoiding the feast-for-the-eyes-but-not-so-much-for-the-stomach problem presented at some fancy restaurants, especially since we also had the star of the show… …the grilled dried salmon, which was fantastic. This is also part of the basic eight-dish set, and in addition to eating it by itself, we highly recommend eating some ochazuke-style, as a topping for a bowl of white rice and green tea. So with 11 Murakami salmon dishes down, but still about 90 more to go, we've got a lot of reasons to visit the town again next time we're craving fish. Location information Kikkawa Izutsuya / きっかわ 井筒屋 Address: Niigata-ken, Murakami-shi, Komachi 1-12 新潟県村上市小町１−１２ Open 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Website Iyoboya Kaikan / イヨボヤ会館 Address: Niigata-ken, Murakami-shi, Shiomachi 13-34 新潟県村上市塩町13-34 Open 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Website Iyoboya Kaikan interior photos: Murakami Tourism Association All other photos ©SoraNews24 ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter! [ Read in Japanese ]
Japan Forward
19-05-2025
- Business
- Japan Forward
History of Innovative Entrepreneurs in Japan, by Takeo Kikkawa
Takeo Kikkawa's History of Innovative Entrepreneurs in Japan (Springer, 2023) combines the things I am passionate about: biography, Japan, innovation, and history. Having them all in one makes the book essential reading for me and hopefully for those reading this review. Kikkawa is a professor of business history at the International University of Japan in Niigata Prefecture. He is also a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo and Hitotsubashi University. In his book, he offers a comprehensive exploration of Japan's entrepreneurial evolution from the 17th century to the present. This open-access volume delves into the lives and innovations of over 20 Japanese entrepreneurs. Significantly, it provides insights into the nation's economic and business history. Remarkably, this 291-page treatise with 20 case studies is not a collection of essays by different authors. Rather, except for one essay, all are prepared by Kikkawa himself. I can only imagine the years of work and decades of knowledge that went into the timely book. I write "timely" in that while it is a historical study, Kikkawa seeks as well to understand the "post-bubble stagnation." He notes for his fellow scholars (and readers in general) that "uncovering the true causes of Japan's economic slowdown is an essential task for a business historian in order to explore ways to revive Japan's economy" (p 2). In other words, it is important to study the past to extrapolate possible lessons for the future. The book addresses three critical questions: Why did Japan industrialize earlier than other non-Western countries? What factors contributed to its remarkable economic growth between the 1910s and 1980s? Why has the economy stagnated since the 1990s? Kikkawa attributes early industrialization to a combination of proto-industrial activities and the adoption of Western technologies. The subsequent economic boom is linked to systematic innovations and effective management practices. Conversely, the stagnation period is analyzed through the lens of Japan's struggle to adapt to disruptive innovations emerging globally. Kikkawa organizes the book into three distinct periods. The first part, entitled "The Era of Breakthrough Innovations," covers two sub-periods — the Edo Period and the Meiji Period. (See the section titled "From Port Opening to Post Russo-Japanese War.") It examines early industrialization efforts, discussing in detail, many for the first time in any detail in English, the following figures: Zenemon Konoike, Takatoshi Mitsui, Genzaemon Nakai, Hikojiro Nakamigawa, Yataro and Yanosuke Iwasaki, Zenjiro Yasuda and Soichiro Asano, and Eiichi Shibusawa. Each laid, respectively, the groundwork for Japan's economic transformation. The new 10,000 yen bill features a hologram of Eiichi Shibusawa's face. (©Kyodo) As with the other parts, Part 1 includes "Overviews" at the beginning of the sub-periods and a "Discussion Point," which draws comparisons of the entrepreneurs covered and their interactions, at the end. In this particular part, Kikkawa includes Japan as a "latecomer nation" to industrialization (p 85). This reviewer has chosen not to include the name of the company these men are identified with because, in some cases, they have created multiple companies and/or are known for so many contributions to business and society as a whole. Instead, I encourage readers to pick up the Open Access book and read for themselves. Some of the family names, of course, will be instantly recognizable. Part II, "The Era of Incremental Innovation," covers the time from World War I to the 1980s. This is an unusual but interesting way to look at the 20th century. While it may be viewed as an example of "rise and fall" or "rise and fall" twice over, Kikkawa is more concerned with the technological progress made and the effects of incremental innovations on long-term growth (p 216) over the 80 decades covered. In this period, more well-known, yet still historic, names are introduced: Ichizo Kobayashi, Yasuzaemon Matsunaga, Saburosuke Suzuki II, Kiichiro Toyoda, Shitagau Noguchi and Yoshikawa Aikawa, Sazo Idemitsu, Yataro Nishiyama, Konosuke Matsushita, Masaru Ibuka, Akio Morita, Soichiro Honda, Takeo Fujisawa, and Toshio Doko. These men contributed to high economic growth, enormous technological innovation, and rapid and deep global expansion. Tadashi Yanai, Chairman and CEO of Fast Retailing, on August 1, 2024. Finally, the third part looks at the period since the 1990s. Entitled "The Era of Struggle: Japan Caught Between Two Types of Innovation," it looks at how Japanese-style management turned "dysfunctional" (p 222). In this shorter chapter, he looks at four modern entrepreneurs, most of whom are household names. They are the late Kazuo Inamori, Toshifumi Suzuki, Tadashi Yanai, and Masayoshi Son. Addressing the economic stagnation known as the "Lost Decades," Kikkawa analyzes the challenges faced by these modern entrepreneurs in adapting to global competition and bringing about disruptive innovations. The book ends with a concluding chapter providing a summary of its content. It includes a discussion on "Ways to Revive Innovation." In it, Kikkawa calls on Japanese companies to "confront breakthrough innovation from developed countries and disruptive innovation from less developed countries and regions" (p 263). Chairman and President Masayoshi Son nominates shareholders during a Q&A session at the SoftBank Group's shareholders' meeting in Tokyo. (Screenshot via video) No matter one's interest or industry, this book will provide key insights. Its main strengths include the depth of the author's knowledge, the comparative discussion, and the detailed case studies. The case studies provide concrete examples of entrepreneurial innovation across different eras. While the book provides extensive coverage of major entrepreneurs, it could benefit from a deeper examination of lesser-known figures and regional enterprises that also contributed to Japan's economic development. Additionally, more comparative analysis with entrepreneurs from other countries could offer a broader context. With this said, History of Innovative Entrepreneurs in Japan is a must-read and hopefully will give birth to future innovators, too. (Book cover) Title: History of Innovative Entrepreneurs in Japan Publisher: Springer Nature Author: Takeo Kikkawa Translators: Two translators brought this book to the English-reading world: MS Murphy and Kazuya Hirai ISBN: 978-981-19-9453-1 (hardcover), 978-981-19-9456-2 (softcover), and 978-981-19-9454-8 (E-book) Get the Book: This book is Open Access. Anyone can download it from the publisher for free. (Hardback and softback versions are also available for sale.) Reviewed by: Robert D Eldridge, PhD Dr Eldridge is a former political advisor to the US Marine Corps in Japan and author of numerous books on Japanese political and diplomatic history. He was a 2024 Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Fellow at Tamkang University and is a consultant on a broad spectrum of Japan-related matters.
