History

It is based on the Hosoya lacquerware store, which was established in the late Edo period.

The ancestor of the Hosoya family, Sukezaemon, moved from the Hosoya area of ​​Wajima City to Wajima-cho in the Kansei era (1790s) of the Edo period and started a somen shop with his younger brother, Kanemon. The somen they made was of high quality and quickly became popular, and it was purchased through Nakai as a purveyor to the Kaga clan and sent to Kanazawa and Takaoka. Records show that once delivered, it was eaten by the Maeda clan, and used by the Edo shogunate, feudal lords in various places, and court nobles in Kyoto. At the same time, they were sent to temples across the country via local temples (Sojiji, the head temple of the Soto sect), etc., and spread throughout the country. It was so highly rated that people said, "There is Wajima somen in Hokuriku. It's a specialty of Hokuriku."

The brothers work together to become the head of the 75 somen shops (including side businesses) in the town at its peak, and the head of the town's leading union. Chairman of the current Chamber of Commerce. Even after the two retired, Sukezaemon's son, Hyoemon, followed by Kan'emon's sons, Kanbei and Hisanosuke, became the head of the union. Since then, each clan has always had one head of the union. Later, Kan'emon became the town's liver roast (now called mayor).

However, the popularity of Wajima Somen did not last long. In the Noto Peninsula, rival production areas such as Suzu Town appeared, and competition with other countries intensified. The raw material wheat is purchased from Echigo and Echizen, but those areas were also large consumers of somen: customers. Women are the main players in the production of somen, and there is no end to the number of cases in which women with production techniques are brought to the production area at the request of the production area to teach them the techniques. At the same time, Wajima somen, which was branded, continued to lose its reputation due to continued deterioration in quality and misrepresentation of weight.

Under such circumstances, brothers Sukezaemon and Kan'emon, who had a sense of crisis, drafted 'Somen business family protocol' and 'Somen family policy book' (Renbansho) as measures to recover from the downfall (Bunka 10: 1813). . The Somen Family Intermediate Protocol was established to improve the quality of somen noodles and prohibit the transfer of technology to other countries . The names and seals of Sukezaemon, his son Hyouemon, and his younger brother Kanemon are at the head of the 75 members.

The reason for this is that they found that if the wages of the craftsmen employed by somen shops were low, their motivation would drop and the quality would tend to decline. I think this is a theme that will never change.

However, production technology was not so advanced, Wajima Port was a major port of call for Kitamae-bune ships, and production tools were also exported. will decline to When Sukezaemon died and his grandson's generation came, the clan withdrew from somen and converted to a tofu shop. Even after Kanemon passed away, his family continued to run the somen shop for three generations.

At the end of the Edo period, the two families also abolished the tofu and somen shops and changed jobs to Wajima lacquerware. My great-grandfather: Hikozaemon became a Wajima lacquerware craftsman. This is the beginning of Wajima lacquerware by our ancestors.

*The Hosoya lacquerware store has the character "Assist" of Sukezaemon engraved on it.

In the Edo period, Wajima lacquerware was expensive, so Wajima products developed an installment payment system. Until then, Wajima-nuri, which had been limited to samurai, merchants, temples, shrines, inns, and restaurants, became popular among ordinary people. The logo of Hosoya Lacquerware is a combination of the first letter "suke" from the name of the founder of the family, Sukezaemon, and the word "mutual help".