Japanese Sampuru

I found much to love in Japan when we visited in 2001. Our cruise was headlined, The Treasures of Japan, and we took many detours off the beaten path to see monuments, temples, gardens, and traditional performance art. But there were smaller items of interest that captured me, like the manhole covers. They were their own works of art, brilliantly designed and unique to each community.

Beyond this artistry, and beyond anything I’d ever seen before, was the Fake Food, known to the Japanese as Sampuru. Every restaurant window had dishes on display, and only after looking closely did I realize the food wasn’t real. I tried to find out how to buy some, even asked restaurant owners. I thought a Bento Box with a collection of fake sushi would make a lovely piece of art for our dining room wall. But I couldn’t find any for sale. When I got home and did more research, I did find there was one factory that supplied most of the Sampuru to restaurants across Japan, but they did not sell to the public, not then.

Legend has it this all began in 1932 when a Japanese businessman saw wax dripping from an apple and had the idea. He began to create wax food samples and soon the idea spread across the nation. As the restaurant business grew, every window had their full menu on display. The idea became even more popular during WW II when the American military occupied Japan, and our soldiers couldn’t read the menus. Tourists today, like those soldiers, can just point to the dish they want in most of Japan’s restaurants.

In the 1970’s the artists made another advance and switched from wax to plastic, giving the realistic models more color and durability. The models are still primarily made in Gujō Hachiman, a small mountain town about three hours from Tokyo where skilled artists use actual samples of food and photos sent by restaurants to make a mold, then with great skill and delicate detail, paint the mold to become an exact replica. While the Sampuru costs about 20 times more than the actual food, this process allows the models on display in each restaurant to be unique; the sushi displayed in one restaurant window is not the same as the one next door. It is now part of Japanese culture that the first taste of a dish is by sight, a unique concept that has been part of Japanese culture now for nearly a century.