Hyogo stollen fest: born in Germany and growing in Kobe



It may be that Kobe city in Hyogo prefecture is a food base which has been supplying a lot of new foods which come from foreign countries to Japanese people.

Pizza, which was born in Italy, landed of The Kobe Port by foreign sailors. The first Lemon Soda was sold in Kobe. These were distributed from foreign countries to Japan, and these were remade so as that Japanese people would love them. On the other hand, canned coffee for the first time in the world was born in Kobe. Moreover, Kobe-beef-steak grilled on a heated iron plate in front of guests was invented in Kobe in order to enjoy freshly grilled beef. The reason that Kobe became such a base of new foods was that Kobe was the gateway of foreign culinary delights and there have been Japanese people with gastronomic desires behind Kobe.
Aside from being the birth place of the first bread in Japan, Kobe is traditionally one of the cities which has various bakeries. Especially, typically German bread is the core of the Kobe bread.

Stollen born in Germany
Stollen born in Germany is the traditional bread which people eat in the Christmas season. For approximately one month, by sharing, people eat it little by little with their families. Such a familiar food came to Kobe by a German baker who was a prisoner of World War I. For him Japan might not have been a desirable country. However, after the end of the war he began to bake bread in Kobe and he married a Japanese woman, at last, he won the popularity of Kobe citizens. Nonetheless, a war snapped his family’s happiness and seized their family’s destiny. World War II brought back his son to Germany, and after the war the Unite States prohibited the freedom of transportation by the surrender of Germany. His wife and he were stymied and he couldn’t come back to Kobe.
At the time a letter to the president of the US of A by the master of an orphanage in Kobe led his wife and him to be given their free transportation. They came back to Kobe, but their bakery had been burned by the war. The war negated their family’s carved footsteps of making bread. They were almost devastated by the war, the surge of the horrendous pain had struck them. Even though, they never lost their hope and wouldn’t dream of giving up. They might will themselves to complete their resolution of baking bread, after all, they built the new bakery at the present place, which is the site of a closed church. As before, the bakery became popular. And they have been giving stollen to the orphanage at every Christmas season with their gratitude. For them stollen fits the gift showing their gratitude.

Their bakery is The Freundleib, which is the most famous bakery in Kobe. The stollen the bakery makes is so popular that other bakeries in Kobe and in Hyogo began to make their own stollens.











Hyogo Stollen Fest
The stollen in Germany implies familiarity, sharing and long-life with celebration. On the other hand, the stollen in Kobe, which has a history of suffering, implies gratitude and presentation. Kobe citizens love the taste and flavor of stollen, but I think that Kobe citizens unconsciously love familiarity, sharing and long-life with celebration, and gratitude as well as presentation.
Last year the stollen in Kobe, Hyogo welcomed a new age. The fourth-generation owner of The Freundleib called other bakery owners to make stollen simultaneously and to build the festival of stollen. He is the owner whose blood lines has been fostering the stollen of their bakery, so it may be that he had some hesitation. Yet, he opted for new progress over the secret as they usually kept. A lot of owners endorsed his calling. They gathered bringing their own stollens, even though each stollen recipe should be secret. They appreciated each other around the table, and they combined the coterie of individual bakeries on deciding the basic common recipe of the stollen fest.


The stollen in Kobe, Hyogo added the new element of the human heart, I think. It’s to live together. That is typically Japanese, yes, it is “Wa”. The stollen in the festival became popular.
My wife and I enjoyed eating any stollen which was made by each way in accordance with the common recipe. Each is more than the average and characteristic. Such taste is the desirable aspect of “Wa”, I think. This aspect was never built in a brief interval. The former elements, which are familiarity, sharing, long-life with celebration, and gratitude and presentation through the long history of suffering, contributed to the formation of this aspect.
We wanted to give stollen to our familiar people, as we thought it was good as the gift of thanks for its inherent elements as well as its taste. Unfortunately, stollens in bakeries already sold before Christmas Day. The idea of Kobe citizens to the stollen was the same to us.


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