Sweet Revival: How TikTok Saved a 90-Year-Old Wagashi Shop - Sake Lees and Wooden Molds—There Were Two Innovators

The view count was "7." Sakutsuki swiped her thumb up and down across the smartphone screen twice, three times. The number didn't change. 7. Just four more than the "3" from last night. But in the comments section, there was a single line left by someone. ——"The shape of the wooden mold is beautiful." Sakutsuki had read that one line at least five times already. The account name was "和菓子すき🍡." Follower count was private. She had no idea who they were, where they lived, their age, or even their gender. But somewhere in this world, someone was living who had watched that clumsy video with the upside-down wooden mold reflected in it and thought it was beautiful. That was all. Just that, and yet yesterday's crushing defeat had shifted shape somehow. Sakutsuki shoved her smartphone into her apron pocket and stepped out into the back garden. The November morning was cold, thin mist floating on the surface of the stone basin. The moss, heavy with dew, was a deep green. The back garden of Toki no Niwa——a small space of about fifteen square meters——Sakutsuki surveyed with a digital marketer's eye. The light came in nicely. In the morning, soft backlighting filtered in from the east. The combination of wooden framework and white walls wasn't bad either. She decided to go look for materials. To be seen on SNS, first you had to decide what to show. Even if the video itself was clumsy, if what you filmed was real, it would catch somewhere. Yesterday's single comment proved that. She pulled on a down jacket over her white cardigan, checked the hairpin in her left ear, and passed through the noren curtain. The Honmachi shopping arcade still had most of its shutters down. One fluorescent light in the arcade was still flickering as always. Sakutsuki walked beneath it, then stopped in front of a shutter. On the shutter at number eight, a paper reading "Tenant Wanted" was pasted, and below it, the faded outline of an old sign remained. The letters were worn away, unreadable. But from the outline alone, she could tell something had been written there. It wasn't in the ledgers. Sumie had never told her about it. But Sakutsuki vaguely remembered from childhood what kind of shop this had been. A stationery store, maybe. Or a pharmacy. As she tried to match the memory against the shutter in front of her, an engine sound approached from the direction of the arcade entrance. A white light truck. It put on its turn signal in front of "Toki no Niwa" and came to a slow stop. Three cardboard boxes were stacked in the truck bed. Sakutsuki pulled out her smartphone and checked the composition. A white light truck and a wooden storefront. The angle of the light. Not bad. The moment she was about to shoot, the driver's side door opened. A man came around to the truck bed, reached for the cardboard——and turned around. Their eyes met. Through the smartphone camera. The man had short black hair with red mesh streaks and jade-colored eyes. A single silver piercing in his left ear. He was probably about 178 centimeters tall. A head taller than Sakutsuki. The kind of face that would show dimples when he smiled. But he wasn't smiling now. He raised his eyebrows in curiosity, staring intently at Sakutsuki's smartphone. Silence. "…Were you filming?" "I wasn't." "You had the camera pointed at me." "I was just about to." The corner of the man's mouth moved slightly. Dimples appeared. He was smiling. "Is there a difference between those two?" "There is." After saying it so firmly, Sakutsuki felt a little frustrated. Is there really? The man picked up one cardboard box and headed toward the shop entrance. He knocked on the glass door. "Sumie-san, it's Tanbaiya. I brought the sake lees." A short reply came from the back of the production room. The words weren't clear, but it was Sumie's voice. Confirming that much, the man set the box down beside the entrance and unloaded the remaining two from the truck bed. His movements were efficient. Practiced. Sakutsuki watched silently. Sake lees——probably used as an ingredient for wagashi. He'd said Tanbaiya. The sake brewery in the neighboring town of Mizuhiki Village, Tanbaiya Brewing——founded in Bunkyū 2, five generations of brewers——was that it? So this man was probably the fifth-generation heir. The man turned around after finishing the unloading. "Let me introduce myself properly. I'm Neiichi Tanbaiya from Tanbaiya Brewing. Fifth generation, technically." "I'm Sakutsuki Shiidō from Toki no Niwa." "Sakutsuki? Sumie-san's granddaughter?" "You knew?" "Sumie-san mentioned you'd come back," Neiichi said, scratching his head a little sheepishly. "Actually——could I ask you something?" "What is it, all of a sudden?" "I created an Instagram account. For Tanbaiya Brewing." He pulled out his smartphone. His jade eyes narrowed slightly, looking a little frustrated. "My followers——they haven't gone past twenty-eight. For three months now." Sakutsuki couldn't say anything for a moment. Then she pulled out her smartphone from her pocket and opened the app. She silently turned the screen showing "7" views toward Neiichi. "I——posted something yesterday, and it has seven views." The two of them stood in silence for a few seconds, looking at each other's screens. Neiichi burst out laughing first. Stifling his voice, laughing. Dimples appeared on both cheeks. "I mean——" "Yeah." "That's the worst introduction we could possibly give." "It really is." Sakutsuki laughed too. It came out naturally, surprising even herself. ——This person is stumbling at the same place I am. For four years at the Tokyo digital marketing company "Growth Spark Inc.," Sakutsuki had made her living growing clients' SNS presence. But the moment she became the one creating content, she got seven views. Someone who'd worked at a food manufacturer for three years had twenty-eight followers. Expert credentials meant nothing in the field. It felt like the two of them alone could share in that absurdity. "Want to sit?" Sakutsuki said. "Grandma's inside the shop." "Outside is fine." Beside one of the arcade pillars, there was a step in the stone pavement. The two of them sat down side by side. The stone in November was cold, but the morning light slanted in at a good angle. It wasn't a bad spot. As they talked, Sakutsuki gradually started speaking numbers. Monthly average annual sales of 380,000 yen. Annual expenses of 4.8 million. Annual deficit of about 240,000. Neiichi replied that Tanbaiya's annual sales were about 24 million, with EC sales still only accounting for eight percent of the total. After he said it, Sakutsuki was a little surprised. ——Why am I telling a stranger the ledger numbers? Strangely, there was no anxiety. Neiichi spoke just as openly, hiding nothing. There was a strange sense of solidarity that only came between people in the same position. "Have you ever tried our nerikiri?" Sakutsuki asked. "Can I eat one now?" Standing in front of the glass case, Neiichi chose a single nerikiri shaped like a pale pink flower. 380 yen. He took the wrapped package, put it in his mouth. He stopped moving immediately. He was silent for several seconds. Chewing. Swallowing. "It's good." Sakutsuki knew that already. But his expression said there was more. "But this price point——isn't it stuck in the Showa era?" "I thought exactly the same thing yesterday." Both of them pulled out their smartphones at the same time. "At Tokyo department stores——" "Wait, I'm looking it up too." "Takashimaya's wagashi floor starts at 680 yen——" "Kanazawa's old shops charge 750 yen per piece for premium wagashi as standard. Look, here." "Show me." "You were already researching this." "I'm not competing." "You're definitely competing." Thrusting their smartphone screens at each other, the two of them were running toward the same conclusion from different directions. Tokyo specialty shops, Kyoto old establishments, Kanazawa brand confectioners. The more they researched, the more strange the "380 yen" figure at Toki no Niwa became. It was natural that the discussion flowed from price to "how to change it." That was when——the first crack appeared between them. "In the end, I think we need to update the product itself," Neiichi said. His jade eyes had become serious. "If we want to reach younger generations, we can't just change the taste——we need to change the shape too. With our sake, I think sales would be completely different if we changed the label. Packaging is part of the product, isn't it?" "We only need to change how we present it." It was quiet, but there was no room for compromise. "The product is already perfect. It's a matter of how we show it." "But——" "Yesterday, I took a photo of the wooden mold and made it into a video, and I got a comment. 'The shape of the wooden mold is beautiful,' they said. Even without changing the product's shape, just showing the wooden mold reaches people. Depending on how you present it, what's already here looks completely different." "Are you talking about the video with seven views?" "The comment came. That's a fact." "I can't say this with twenty-eight followers, but——" Neiichi gave a wry smile. "Even if one out of seven people says 'it's beautiful,' isn't the road to making that into a business pretty long?" "That's why we keep going." "Are you——the type who absolutely won't touch the product?" "What Grandma Sumie makes doesn't need to be touched." The tone of her voice had changed. Sakutsuki was aware of it herself. Not the flat temperature of the debate from before, but words that came from somewhere deeper. Neiichi was silent for a while. Then he said, "Then prove it." His voice was calm, but it was a provocation. "If sales can change just from how you present it——" Sakutsuki looked at Neiichi's face. ——I don't feel like I've lost. But. In those jade-colored eyes, she found a light she recognized. Something beneath the provocation. The color of someone who wanted to bet on change if it came. If it really changed. Sakutsuki didn't put it into words. She didn't think she needed to. "I'll prove it." That was all she said. After a moment of silence, a low, rhythmic sound came from the direction of the production room. The sound of a wooden spatula moving across the bottom of a copper pot. "Grandma won't come out, even though she's here," Sakutsuki said, almost to herself. Sumie had been holed up in the production room since morning. Since Sakutsuki had come back, she hadn't seen her face. She was the kind of person who couldn't say a simple "welcome home" to her returning granddaughter. She'd always been that way. Neiichi's expression changed slightly beside her. "Sumie-san, since last year, she's been a little……" He stopped there. Sakutsuki looked at Neiichi's profile. "A little?" "No," Neiichi shook his head. "It's nothing. I'm glad she seems well." He said only that and changed the subject. It was a natural movement, but it felt unnatural. He'd started to say something and stopped. Sakutsuki couldn't see what came after that "little." A small thorn seemed to lodge itself in her chest. The morning light slanted across the shuttered storefront across the street. The air that had been fun and competitive until a moment ago had shifted slightly. Not awkward, exactly. But something felt suspended in midair. "I'll come back," Neiichi said, standing up. "I deliver sake lees regularly, so once a month." He reached for the truck door. Then he turned back. He stared intently at Sakutsuki's left wrist. "You've got some on you." It was a short phrase. The pad of his index finger touched Sakutsuki's left wrist. White powder from the nerikiri. Whether it got there when she handed him the package or when she touched it herself, she didn't remember. But there was definitely white powder remaining on the inside of her wrist. Neiichi'

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Episode 2

Name: Sweet Revival: How TikTok Saved a 90-Year-Old Wagashi Shop
Author: Novelia

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