Nothing Drab about This Shopping Bag

Bruce Rutledge talks to Seattle artist Enfu

Eighty-one years ago, Fujimatsu Moriguchi drove his delivery truck around Tacoma’s thriving Japan Town to sell fishcakes to Japanese fishermen, farmers and loggers. He’d stop by the Sisson House where the laborers stayed or drive down to the sawmills and fishing camps to sell the laborers lunch. Pretty soon, those fishcakes were flying off the back of the truck. Moriguchi couldn’t have known it at the time, but he was planting the seeds of what would grow over the next eight decades into a family empire.

Of course, Moriguchi’s immediate future was not so bright – the Great Depression was lurking around the corner, giving way to the hard-scrabble 1930s and the indignity of a World War II internment camp, where he and his family were eventually shipped. Still, Moriguchi must have been tenacious, for upon being released from the camp in Tule Lake, California, he and his family settled in Seattle and began their business from scratch once again. Today, his sons and daughters run the robust Uwajimaya supermarket chain in Seattle, Bellevue, Renton and Beaverton, Oregon.

The humble beginnings of the Uwajimaya supermarket chain are celebrated in a new “eco-bag” created by Seattle artist enfu. The new vinyl shopping bag, on sale since September, shows far more than fishcakes flying out of the back of the delivery truck. And Mr. Moriguchi evidently handed the keys to someone called Niko-Niko Boy, a fellow with a perpetual smile.

Enfu is attempting to link Moriguchi’s humble start to today’s Uwajimaya, which is a bastion of Japanese food, trinkets, exotic vegetables, hard-to-find fish and cutely wrapped candies.

“At first I had Niko Niko Boy riding a rice cooker like it was a rocket, but it didn’t work because I wanted it to be horizontal and it felt vertical,” enfu says over a bowl of pho at his favorite lunchtime hangout on the Eastside. In the end, Moriguchi’s delivery truck provided the inspiration he needed for a horizontal piece.

The products practically explode out of the truck in enfu’s piece. A rice cooker sits on top of the truck, and from it come all sorts of rice-based products – rice balls, sushi, donburi bowls, even cuts of eel over a bed of rice. Soy sauce, bags of rice and Kewpie mayonnaise fly onto the back of the bag. Candies are sprinkled throughout. And what about all those smiley faces? “A nod to Roger Shimomura,” enfu says, adding that within the context of the piece, it is Niko Niko Boy who is dispensing the smiles.

The artist insisted on keeping strict control of the images to keep the piece from becoming a product-placement nightmare. “They are all hand-drawn logos, and they’re not color matched,” enfu says. “Otherwise it would end up looking like a marathon runner’s jersey” with corporate logos ruining the overall aesthetics.

In typical enfu style, he embeds certain classic Asian motifs – wispy clouds, rays fanning across the background and a traditional kamon pattern — amid a rain of candies and smiley faces.

He also tossed in a few fortune cookies to make a point that those Chinese restaurant staples may not be as Chinese as some people think. “You can google it and see that it’s a point of debate. Some people say it was a Japanese American who sold the idea to Chinese restaurants in the United States. And there’s a history in Kyoto of making cookies” similar to the American fortune cookies. Combine that with the Japanese tradition of getting their fortunes, or omikuji, at temples and you have a pretty good argument that Japanese Americans or Japanese immigrants may have invented the concept.

The enfu eco-bag is on sale at all Uwajimaya outlets for $4.99. Be warned: Now that there is at least one fashionable eco-bag on the market, it will soon be a fashion faux pas to tote a dreary cloth bag with an uninspired corporate logo to the market. The day of the eco-bag as accessory has dawned.

If you swing by the Uwajimaya in Seattle’s International District to pick up your bag, make a stop at the nearby Wing Luke Asian Museum to see enfu’s “Milkie Roll.” The piece, a combination of two iconic childhood treats — the American Tootsie Roll and the Japanese Milky — is enfu’s way of depicting a “childhood innocence concentrate.” The piece will be on display in the museum’s children’s exhibit until December. Also, if you’re interested in picking up a print of enfu’s ode to Uwajimaya, you can buy one for $25 at the supermarket or the Kobo @ Higo gallery on 6th and Jackson.

Art by Enfu