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Fujiya Hotel in Miyanoshita, c. 1909.
Chinese cuisine (shippoku ryōri) operated there as well. Yet the latter
became fashionable outside the enclave only very briefly. 24
Before the 1870s no restaurants serving foreign cuisine were to be
found in Japan outside the treaty ports. Since foreigners were not allowed
to expand their commercial activities beyond the treaty ports, foreignmanaged
hotels and restaurants were confined to those areas. 25 From the
late 1870s Japanese owners of inns and tea houses in tourist spots and spas
gradually realized that Westerners were potentially a great business opportunity
and began to provide beds, chairs and Western food for their convenience.
New (semi-)European-style hotels and restaurants also emerged in
the spots frequented by foreigners. Fujiya Hotel in Miyanoshita – established
in 1878 – counted as a pioneering European-style establishment in the
area of the Hakone mountains (in the proximity of Mt Fuji), which became
a favoured resort for the Yokohama foreign community. By the end of
the century, similar establishments could be found in tourist destinations,
such as Nikkō, Kamakura, Kyoto and Shizuoka. Nevertheless, guidebooks
recommended to foreign tourists who knew little Japanese that they ‘may
feel themselves more their own masters by hiring a man-servant, or “boy,”
also able to cook, and having neither objection to performing menial functions,
nor opinions of his own as to the route which it will be best to take’. 26
Kusano Jōkichi (c. 1840–c. 1886), who is credited with being the first
Japanese to set up a Western-style restaurant in Japan, had learned to cook in
the service of the Dutch in Nagasaki. The restaurant Irabayashitei, which he
43