Christmas cakes in Japan: An affectionate history

Beautiful layers of white cream adorning a fluffy cake with plump strawberries atop—this has long been the image of Japanese Christmas confectionary. But, did you know that Christmas cakes were only first sold in Japan in 1910? And that the ubiquitous ichigo shotokeki (strawberry shortcake) only hit the shelves of this country in 1922? In fact, it took all the way to the postwar period, in 1952 to be exact, that the strawberry shortcake Christmas cake became more accessible to the general public and cemented its place in Japan’s Christmas imagery (and stomachs across the nation). To understand the history of this tasty tradition, we have to peek into the past of Fujiya, a storied Japanese confectionary maker.

Introducing Christmas cake to Japan

Fujiya, now with branches across the country, is a patisserie that was originally based in Yokohama. In 1910, Fujii Rinemon opened his first shop in Motomachi, the upscale neighborhood adjacent to the Yamate and Kannai districts where the foreign population of Yokohama lived and worked. As the Meiji era dawned, the Motomachi area blossomed and the streets were soon dotted with cafes, clothing stores and bakeries. The Fujiya store was at the vanguard of this explosion of western culture in Yokohama where many overseas customs and wares spread to the rest of the country.

Indeed, in December of the same year it opened, Fujiya offered the first Christmas cake sold in Japan. Arranged simply with silver ball decorations, the cake was a single layer glazed with white fondant frosting, made by mixing sugar and water. But, the difference with today’s decadent fresh cream concoctions was not merely aesthetic; the cake was not a Japanese sponge cake—known now as the shortcake— but rather a fruit cake, steamed in the oven and made of plums, dried fruit like raisins and alcohol.  

1921 was a particularly bustling Christmas and a fateful one for Fujii. With business booming, thanks in part to a craze that year for decorated cakes, he opened a second store. To his surprise, his customer base was also changing from foreign customers to Japanese. In 1922, Fujii came up with a special cake to sell at his two shops, inspired by what he had learned studying abroad in the United States. 

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