09/13/2026
The tea house on this cap has been serving tororo-jiru since 1596.
Mariko was the twentieth of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō, a series of ukiyo-e woodcut prints created by the famous artist Utagawa Hiroshige, and what travelers remembered was the food: wild mountain yam grated to silk, loosened with miso and dashi. Hiroshige subtitled his print of the station Meibutsu chamise (名物茶店), the famous tea shop. Bashō had already put it in a verse, a send-off for a disciple leaving for Edo: plum blossoms, young greens, and the tororo soup at Mariko station. Chōjiya still serves it there today, fourteen generations on.
The cap holds Hiroshige's scene, plum branches budding, the sign still reading 名ぶつ とろろ汁. The barrel, inscribed 鞠子冬, turns to Mariko on a night of falling snow.
Maki-e by Masanori Omote (b. 1938), named a Dento Kogei-shi in 1994: urushi brushed on and gold sprinkled in, layer over layer, each cured before the next, on the sleek Takumi body.
Made for the writing you do between one place and the next. Mariko is waiting at Urushipen.com ✒️
#蒔絵 #漆
