Time Travel to Strawberry Shortcake
I received a gift order for one of my scarves online.
As I wrapped up a blue silk scarf, I imagined who was sending it to whom.
I put the scarf into a clear bag with a gift card that read “Happy 40th Birthday!” Then, I placed it into a white box, tied it with a brown ribbon, and attached a sage-colored sticker.
I hope she will like it.
When I was wrapping this gift, my mind suddenly flashed back to a pastry shop that I often visited in my childhood.
The shop, Newmount, was located on a commercial street down the hill. Its showcase was always lined with freshly made cakes. In the kitchen behind the showcase, a gentleman wearing a chef's hat was baking cakes. I pointed out cakes one by one –– “This one, this one, this one, and this one.” As I placed my order, a lady wearing a headscarf and apron carefully picked each cake from the showcase and put it into a box. Her movements wrapping the box and tying it with ribbon were rhythmic, and it was just like a dance. The sound of wrapping paper and ribbon was music. To me, warm and fluffy cakes with sweet smells were also dancing in the kitchen.
After handing my money to the lady, I carried the box by holding the ribbon with my little fingers and hurried up the hill. My mother warned me in advance, “Be careful not to jostle the cakes. Don’t run and fall.” Snack time when I could eat cake was 3pm. Chocolate cake, Mont Blanc, choux à la crème ... but my absolute favorite was strawberry shortcake.
Strawberry shortcake is the Queen of Cakes in Japan. No matter what new tasty sweets have been introduced from Western countries to Japan, strawberry shortcake has always been the number-one choice. (The type of strawberry shortcake I am referring to here is a sponge cake layered with whipped cream and strawberries.) One of the reasons for its popularity is strawberries. Japanese strawberries become available in November and peak around April and May, which is now. It is said that Japan ranks first in the world for consumption of raw strawberries. That’s quite understandable to me. We have as many as 300 varieties of strawberries. When it comes to spring, it’s strawberries! Japanese people’s passion for developing and refining the quality is beyond comprehension. Tochiotome, Amaou ... the quality and taste of Japanese strawberry varieties just keep getting better and better. A gem-like, lustrous surface, the beautifully balanced texture of crisp seeds and juicy fruit, the exquisite sweetness and aroma –– these strawberries are truly works of art. Different varieties of strawberries as well as shortcake made with these strawberries tempt my palate in spring!
I remember that a shortcake topped with a “mammoth strawberry” (mega-sized strawberry) was featured in Dr. Slump, a manga series released in 1980. One of the characters, a precocious toddler named Kinoko Sarada, loves this shortcake with a mammoth strawberry. At snack time, she eats it with her mom, who resembles Peko-chan (the girl mascot of the Fujiya sweets company), and her dad, who resembles Poko-chan (the boy Fujiya mascot). Kinoko saves her beloved mammoth strawberry for her last bites. When her dad notices she has left it on her plate, he eats it while saying, “Oh, you don’t like it, do you?” Since Kinoko is the type of person who saves her favorite for her last blissful bites, she gets mad at her dad, who didn’t understand her intentions. Then she decides, “I’m going to be bad,” and runs away from home. After running away, however, she gets hungry and returns home by dinnertime. I think that episode depicts a five-year-old girl’s emotional development very well. It’s been 40 years since I read it, but the romanticism and luxury of the 80s –– represented in a shortcake with an unbelievably big strawberry –– and Kinoko's habit of saving the tastiest part for last still resonate with my heart.
“I shall eat the leftover cake –– deformed strawberries and dried whipped cream.”
This is part of the lyrics to a song I happened to listen to while driving.
The song was used in a visual performance entitled Fruits Born from Rust by Tabaimo (visual artist) and Masahiro Hiramoto (musician).
I saw it in New York on March 7, 2020, right before the pandemic.
The title symbolically signifies the repeating actions of stability and instability –– the process of iron oxidizing and forming rust –– and the fruits as a result of those actions.
The musician played behind a translucent screen, and manipulating the lighting and projections made him visible sometimes and invisible at other times to the audience.
Tabaimo created and controlled visual images by using three projectors. Dance, visual images, and music were intertwined on stage in this performance.
One of the images used in the performance was a strawberry shortcake. Tabaimo’s shortcake looked grotesque and scary.
The images of eroded daily life and rustic fruits really caught me –– it was a dynamic visual performance. Do the fruits symbolize us? Spring is the season when all living things awake from their sleep and become active, so it’s a very unstable time, honestly. Let’s be aware of that.
It seems my brain has traveled back and forth within and between warmth in spring, strawberry shortcake, and daily life.
Yuh Okano, April. 2021
