Shinise* Café in Kyoto

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*”Shinise” means a long-established store having a long history, and tradition and reliability in the art. The word suggests that the store is not merely old but has proven a high and safe quality in that the store has been able to be operated for a long period of time.

Kyoto is a town having many universities, where many university students and cultured persons gather. There are many tearooms and cafés around a university, and students spend almost all their time at their favorite cafés. I paid an almost daily visit to a café “Sugiyama” when I was a college student. A nice middle-aged lady wearing a kimono was always there, and served really good coffee to us. My friends also crowded the café. I wasted time with my friends there until the closing time if I had nothing to do after the class ended.
On the other hand, there are many tearooms or cafés loved by writers and artists in Kyoto since the onset of the Showa Era. What tearooms or cafés do you know? INODA COFFEE, Ogawa Coffee, and MAEDA COFFEE open chain stores and so I think many persons know them.
This time, I’ll introduce Soirée and François to you which have been well-known as the shinise café having an atmosphere of the beginning of the Showa Era.

1. Tea Room Soirée
Soirée is a French word and means an evening party or lovely night. When you go out from the north side of the east exit of the Kawaramachi Station on the Kyoto Line of Hankyu Railway and face north along Takasegawa River, you will see the tearoom sign. The tearoom was founded in 1948. The inside of the tearoom is engulfed with blue light, which it has been from the time that it was founded, and you can enjoy a unique atmosphere in which you can feel like it’s night even if it is daytime or as is you were in the sea. It is said that a woman’s face looks beautiful and a man looks gallant under the blue light. The tearoom is decorated with works of art such as paintings painted by Seiji Togo and sculptures carved by Sadaharu Ikeno, and produces an atmosphere of a small art gallery. In addition to the above two artists, other artists and cultured persons including Rokuro Uemura, Ryozo Sasaki, and Isamu Yoshii were also related to the establishment of the tearoom. No BGM is played in the tearoom and only small talking voices and sounds occasionally made by saucers coming in contact with cups are heard, and you can be completely drawn into silence.

Speaking of Soirée, you should not forget “Jelly Punch” in which 5-colored jelly pieces are put in a soda pop. The punch appeared in 1975 and it was devised by the wife of the second tearoom owner (the daughter of the second owner has taken over the tearoom now as the third). The tearoom was a social meeting place for gentlemen at that time, but the tearoom owner and his wife wanted young ladies to come to this place. Please look at the photos of Jelly Punch below. This soft drink in which jelly pieces were twinkling in the blue light has the jelly pieces which aren’t so sweet and the soda pop produced in Kobe. The cake, which was served together with Jelly Punch, was sweet and sour, which was one of the tastiest cakes that I have ever eaten.

2. Salon de thé François
The salon, François, was named after the French painter, Jean François Millet, by the founder of this salon, who had aimed to be a painter when he was young and liked Millet. When you go out from the south side of the east exit of the Kawaramachi Station on the Kyoto Line of Hankyu Railway and go north along Takasegawa River, you will find the salon. The salon was founded in 1934, and the founder was an activist of the student movement, and created the salon to provide a place where anybody could talk together about peace, the future, literature and art in wartime or under an oppressive atmosphere such as regulation of free speech. The space created at the time that it was established still remains as it was in which the interior finishing looks like an interior of a luxury cruise ship. Classical music is flowing in the room from a phonograph, and artistic paintings are hung on the wall. A gas lamp and a wood carving of an owl have also stayed in the salon from the time that it was established. The uniforms worn by staffs are tidy and pretty. The uniform has two versions: one worn from olden times (forward in the photo) and the other recently has been made (back in the photo). The building was a Japanese traditional terraced wooden house built in the Edo Era; the previous generation purchased it and rebuilt it to create the current Southern Europe-like form. The building was first designated for café as a registered tangible culture property as a café. The salon has two rooms north and south, and the south room was used as a bookstore, Millet Shobo (Bookstore), some time after World War II and sold foreign books and philosophy books that were difficult to get at that time.

The cute girl on the menu was depicted in the posture of the childhood of the current salon owner. The sandwich is not on the menu, but was specially served at this time. The egg in the sandwich looked like a Japanese omelet including dashi (soup stock made using dried bonito shavings and/or konbu seaweed). It is a time-consuming cuisine and it isn’t served now. It is also regrettable that the box of matches, which is very chic, isn’t served now.

Elderly people in Japan are familiar with both Tea Room Soirée and Salon de thé François, but the owner of Salon de thé François said that this kind of shop may be peculiar to Japan. The cafés certainly have a different atmosphere from that in American cafés such as Starbucks. First, Japanese cafés started to imitate those in Europe but they have been uniquely developed in this country. There aren’t a few customers, even those who came from Europe, saying that the atmosphere of the café is different from that in our country, and they remark that it’s very good or they like it. In the conventional Japanese cafés, as described above, customers, of course, enjoy food and drink, and more than that, the customers expect to be completely drawn into the atmosphere of their favorite cafés (for example a café where only jazz music or only classic music is played, or a café where you can read cartoons). Some things like that are the reason for which Europeans say that the Japanese café has uniquely developed. Even the salon owner who was said so doesn’t know the details, though.