Liu Hua
Bread has a long history, and the ancient Egyptians began to bake bread and eat bread more than 3,000 years ago. In Japan, where rice has always been its staple food, bread is much later, and Kimuraya in Tokyo only baked the country's first bread oven in 1869.
Starting late does not mean slow development, and then it has happened in many industries in Japan, cars, whiskey, denim... The same goes for bread. In 2011, for the first time, Japanese households spent more on bread than rice. Around that time, Japanese bread became more and more famous. "Japanese thick cut toast" is sought after in bakeries all over the world.
There are more and more excellent bakeries in Japan, and when European gourmets from bread countries indulge in the delicious taste of sake, sashimi, and Wagyu beef, they are pleasantly surprised to find that Japanese bread is also so delicious.
Boulangerie JIN, a bakery in Hokkaido
Isolated place with good bread
"That's one of the best I've eaten so far." American best-selling author Matt. Matt Goulding said this about Boulangerie JIN. Boulangerie JIN is a bakery in Hokkaido, owned by Yuki Shin, a baker who studied in France and is one of the authors of the book "Building a Bakery in Hokkaido" that comes next.
Baker Shinyuki
Japan seems to have a tradition of opening bakeries in the countryside – the more remote the place, the better bread exists, especially in Hokkaido – perhaps the wood stove in the snow and ice is particularly healing, and the baked bread is particularly fragrant.
In the movie "Bread of Happiness", the male and female protagonists bake bread against the picturesque scenery every day. The life of Boulangerie JIN's Shinyuki family is a movie remake, Shinyuki is a baker, his wife is responsible for selling in the front shop, and his 4-year-old son grows up day by day playing in the house with the smell of bread.
The bakery opens at 9 o'clock
Boulangerie JIN has been around for years before Bread of Happiness was set.
As in the movie, it is remote enough, and the village of Makari, where the site is located, is located at the foot of Mt. Yotei, more than a hundred kilometers away from Sapporo or Otaru, and there is no other way to get there than by car. But this did not affect the bakery business, in addition to the locals, there are a large number of fans from all over Japan and even around the world, including Boulangerie JIN wrote in the book "Rice, Noodles, Fish - The Soul of Japanese Popular Food" Matt Goulding.
Boulangerie JIN often queues up at the door before it opens in the morning, even in the snowy winter.
This situation made Shinyuki very anxious, and he obviously underestimated the future development when he returned to his hometown to open a shop in the early years, from facilities to space, there was some shortage of space, and the bakery needed to be upgraded. So, on a winter evening after finishing toasting, he threw a handwritten letter he had prepared the night before into a snow-covered mailbox.
As the letter was sent, the story began.
Architect Yoshifumi Nakamura
Bread offsets design fees
The recipient of the letter is the architect Yoshifumi Nakamura, who asks him to help him rebuild his own bakery.
In the letter, in addition to introducing himself, he clearly listed the needs: a bakery where huge bread kilns could be placed, a wood-cutting hut and a place to store firewood, a bright and comfortable shop that was not too big, and living spaces attached to the corners of these places. Not exaggerated, very ordinary, from the outside it doesn't even look like a shop.
In the architectural world, Nakamura is not as famous as Tadao Ando or Kengo Kuma, but is loved for designing many warm and intimate small houses, and his clients include writer Haruki Murakami and master carpentry master Ryuji Mitani.
He was also a writer, writing best-selling books such as "House Tour" and writing columns in magazines, and Yuki Was the one who read his articles and was circled, and thus came up with the idea of letting the other party design his own bakery.
Bread hut before the makeover
Mr. Nakamura, who received the letter, accepted the invitation almost without hesitation, not only because he thought it was "a job of real value that tests the 'cabin fans'", but also because "I have not received a handwritten letter of entrustment for a long time, and my chest seems to be lit with a lamp, even warm."
"My mood now is that I must not leave this job to other architects!" An equally handwritten reply ending in such a text indicates Nakamura's attitude. When the reply was sent, not only did he start a two-year construction project, but he also began co-creation with Shinyuki—as summarized in the book's subtitle, "The Collection of Letters from the Architect and the Baker"—a correspondence that included architectural design, but also food, travel, and other elements of the good life.
The design begins between letters. Letter after letter allows us to see the project advancing in the passage of time, and also to read a good idea inspired by each other.
Shinyuki said: "When the bread is put into the bread kiln, the bakers used to draw a cross on the chest to pray for the future. I have always been convinced that there are gods living in the bread kiln."
This sentence inspired Nakamura, who left behind the old wood that was demolished, and designed a cross-shaped beam to support the new roof, closely connecting the past and the future. And the requirement to "open a passage in the middle of the interior of the building as a space to change his mood" made him feel as if the nine links had been unraveled at once, suddenly opening up the design progress and making a big leap forward...
Design drawings and real-life drawings of the girder in the shape of a cross
Designers and clients, here are like two kendo masters of equal rank, between moves, creative electric flint burst out, making people feel extremely pleasant to read.
You can't build a house by writing letters alone. Three months after the design began, Nakamura went to the bakery for the first time. The two sides saw each other as they were, and the meticulous on-site inspection and delicious croissants made Nakamura's work progress rapidly, and the design draft was finalized after the revision to the seventh time, and finally entered the construction stage.
Snow Bread House
In addition to admiring such smooth and pleasant cooperation, I often worry about the budget for Shinyuki Yoshiki: Nakamura repeatedly travels to the site in different seasons, transfers craftsmen from Tokyo, and even finally leads the whole company to 18 people to work on site, how high is the cost?
I seemed to hear clearly the sound of a large amount of cash rushing out of the Divine Fortune Ledger. Admittedly, I am the one who is worried. Just when Shinyuki was also worried about budget overruns and loan approvals, Nakamura offered a plan: offset half of the design fee with bread installments. In addition to thanking him, Shinyuki immediately returned the favor: twice a month he sent bread to Tokyo until Boulangerie JIN or either side of the design firm disappeared from the world. ”
There is a lot of love, I thought it only appeared in the manga, it turned out that there was such a thing!
Whether or not you can return to the original depends on who has existed for a longer time - the book summarizes it. To this end, I gossiped and did some research. Boulangerie JIN, which was revamped in 2011, is becoming more and more famous, while Nakamura mentioned in a recent column that the bread collection was in 2018. It seems that this agreement is still ongoing, and it is difficult to tell who earns money and who loses money, but the bakery has alleviated the cash pressure, and Nakamura and his colleagues at the office have a steady stream of bread to eat. From a cooperative or friendship point of view, they all win.
Fragrant bread
A new stop on Nakamura's design tour
One review I've read before refers to "Building a Bakery in Hokkaido" as the designer's and client's "84 Charing Cross Street." It is also a collection of letters with warm words, and the two are indeed similar in style and style.
However, in my opinion, there are more "dry goods" in the "Bakery" than the warmth of "84 Charing Cross Street".
Inside the bakery study
There is no doubt that the knowledge and information on design is extremely rich, after all, it is the subject of the entire book. Nakamura's texts convey values, ideas, inspirations, details about construction and techniques, accompanied by hand-drawn sketches that have been continuously improved in one edition after another, which can basically be used as a textbook for designers to communicate with customers.
From Shen Xingji's pen, how customers can clearly explain their needs according to the required functions, reasonably put forward opinions, and express their own ideas is also a model for Party B. In addition, the debate and clash of views on aesthetics between the two sides is also a highlight of the book - only architecture backed by functionality and rationality is a "beautiful architecture".
Bread sprinkling during the beaming ceremony
In addition to architecture and design, the book also provides a number of useful travel guides. Yuki Yuki took two trips in his spare time, once staying at Nakamura's own vacation cottage LEMON HUT and visiting the hut of another idol, Ryuji Mitani.
On another occasion, he simply traveled through Japan, from Shikoku to Tokyo, an almost unprecedented "Nakamura Design Tour", and admired his design works scattered all over the country, from Akira's Akira to Ehime's Itami Thirteen Memorial Hall and Ichigo Bunker.
Seeing this, I realized that I had visited the last two, and I was particularly impressed by the Ichigo Bunko, which was facing the Dogo Onsen Main Building where Natsume Soseki had written. I was sitting at the cake-shaped table of the fruit shop eating the same cake, and the rickshaw puller outside the window bowed hard to solicit customers. But at that time, Nakamura and his works were not known, patronizing and eating cakes, and did not appreciate the building itself...
Final draft of the bakery floor plan
Final renderings of the Bakery
Perhaps Shinyuki did not expect it during that trip that his bakery would later become a stop on others' "Nakamura Design Tour". But it did, and the queue at the entrance of Boulangerie JIN grew longer and longer. Perhaps in the near future, Nakamura will receive his new project again. The promise of bread offsetting design fees seems to be going to last forever.
Building a Bakery in Hokkaido: A Collection of Letters from Architects and Bakers, [Japanese] Yoshifumi Nakamura/Yuki Shin, Yatian Sun/Translation, Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House & Chuchen Culture, June 2020
Editor-in-Charge: Qian Chengxi
Proofreader: Luan Meng