"The Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park - 1893-1941" (Book authors: Tanso Ishihara and Gloria Wickham)

In this book given to me by Tanako Hagiwara, the great granddaughter of Makoto Hagiwara, it basically states that, "It was the San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden founder, Makoto Hagiwara who introduced the Japanese Tsujiura Sembei to customers in his Tea Garden, in 1914, a year before the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Hagiwara served them with the newly introduced Green Tea in the picturesque house of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park."

An Open Kata

This kata is open to show how the plier-like device has a clamping mold inside which the Sembei is baked. A U.S. coin (one cent) is nearby to give scale to this cooking grille implement. The katas are stamped in Japanese in the handles with the tool maker's chop (ID).

Benkyodo's Katas

 Kata are individual baking irons or griddles that use to used to cook cookie dough singly. In Meiji-era Japan, bakers would have rows of Katas lined-up over a charcol grill and would turn them by their handles to bake on both sides. When baked, the baker would unclamp the Kata and remove the still hot Sembei and insert a fortune slip within and fold the Sembei cookie into the familiar fortune cookie shape, we know and love.

This was initially done by hand by the Hagiwara family members. When the demand for these treats grew overwhelmingly, they contracted with Suyeichi Okamura and his confectionary shop, Benkyodo to produce the fortune cookies and gave them enough katas to do so until Benkyodo developed a semi-automatic baking machine.

Photo-montage of the Sembei baking grills opening and closing.

 With a single hand-made miniature wooden model of a clam shell-like baking griddle,  multiple images of the wooden model (griddle) were photographed in different angles of openess and closure to make it appear that the griddles were opening and closing, as they would in the drawing of the Sembei cooking machine. The griddle model was placed on a record turn-table and photographed to show how the griddles opened and closed while rotating and baked under the gas flame sectiion of the carousel baking semi-automatic Sembei cooking machine.(Following slide, drawing)

Picking Out the Hot Baked Sembei

I recall bakery workers using a pick to pluck-out the hot Sembei before putting in the fortune slip in and folding them.

Fortune Cookie Slip

This just shows basic steps how the round flat Sembei is folded to hold the fortune slip and the lower drawing shows how the cookie could be encouraged to fold-back enveloping the fortune slip inside. After the folded cookie is cooled, you have a delicious ready to eat fortune cookie!

Sembei Dough Pours into Griddle

This drawing shows a closer view of roughly how I recall how the Sembei cookie dough was poured into the Sembei griddle mold/

Drawing of Sembei Baking Machine

 The actual griddles were made of cast iron and rested on a steadily rotating circular stage above a section of a gas-flame burner, which baked the cookie dough inside. A metal peg on the tip of the griddle upper section rode on a metal track that opened and allowed for the removal of the baked cookie and then the closing of the griddle top after fresh dough was automatically poured into the open griddle.

As my rough drawing shows, one or two employees could work at the end cycle of the baking and then pluck-out the hot sembei, place a fortune slip and fold the cookie into the closed shape that we all know. The folded cookie would then be placed in a wooden holder to allow the cookie to cool and harden and then placed into a tin container.

"Made in Japan" (fortune cookie Made in Japan)

 The title image implys correctly that the Fortune Cookie originated in Japan or is "Made in Japan." Although most Americans including Japanese Americans assumed that the fortune cookie is Chinese, it actually was invented in Japan in the early Meiji-era. The early version was a bit larger and the taste was savory, named Tsujiura Sembei.

This Album attempts to explains the Benkyodo fortune cookie production in the years follwing WWII." Read the Discover Nikkei article Japanese American Fortune Cookie: A Taste of Fame or Fortune which this Album supplements.
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fortune cookie Made in Japan

Fortune Cookie with Made in Japan fortune slip

Kata with engraving of Japan Tea in front of Mt. Fuji ( (a))

Like the kata with the engraved M.H., some had Japan Tea and a stylized drawing of Mt. Fuji engraved inside. According to testimonies, Makoto Hagiwara, 1893 founder and caretaker of the the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, formally introduced Green Tea to America along with the fortune cookie in the Tea Garden in 1914. The flat sembei with the engraved design must have been an optional cookie to have with tea. (note the engraved image has been photographically reversed. Otherwise, it would not be legible on the flat sembei)
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(a)

a

Engraved Kata Mold ( (Inside Kata plate with engraved MH initials))

Some of the Katas (hand griddle) that were in Benkyodo's possession (six shown in another picture), had the initials MH engraved inside. I verified with Tanako Hagiwara, great grandaughter of Makoto Hagiwara, that the initials stood for his name. I conjecture that Makoto Hagiwara, whose Japanese Tea Garden used to make fortune cookies by hand, gave some katas to my grandfather's Benkyodo Company to make fortune cookies for them until my grandfather designed and had built a semi-automatic sembei baking machine as seen in another of my drawings. Some of the katas were plain inside, but the engraved kata could still be used to make fortune cookies, by folding the embossed design to be inside the folded cookie. Beside fortune cookies, they used to make flat wafer cookies and so the design could be appreciated in the unfolded shape.