Honolulu once had five tea houses. Natsunoya is the last.

As recently as 1988, Honolulu had five Japanese tea houses. By the spring of 1999, three of them had closed: Kanraku in Kapālama, Kyo-ya in Waikīkī and Rainbow Garden in Mōʻiliʻili. That April, Rod Ohira of the Star-Bulletin wrote about one of the two still open.

“It’s a dying industry,” Laurence Fujiwara Jr. told him. He had been running Natsunoya since his father died in 1996. “But this place has a lot of charm, and people still come here for the atmosphere and tradition. It’s a place where they can feel comfortable.”

Fixing the place up

With friends and staff, Fujiwara was repairing and painting the 78-year-old, two-story wooden building. “My first project was to fix the place up, and it’s cost about $100,000 so far,” he said. “But if I had to hire someone, our cost would have tripled. We’re trying to make the place look more like a museum to preserve our Japanese heritage.”

11,400 bentos

He had started catering, too. “We’re doing lacquer-box bentos, where we deliver and then go back to pick up the boxes,” he said. “We also do regular bentos. Last Labor Day, we did 11,400 bentos for Unity House. Friends, relatives and staff cooked for three days for that one.”

The people who stayed

Natsunoya’s reputation was built on its food. Head chef Masao Matsuda, known for his intricate food sculptures, called ikezukuri, as well as his cooking, Japanese food specialist Chikao Yasui and sushi chef Hidemoto Kawai had each been with the Fujiwaras for more than 25 years.

The customers stayed as well. One family had been celebrating anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, reunions and graduations at the tea house since the mid-’60s, four generations of them. “We’ve kind of grown up with the staff, and it’s easy because they know what we like,” one of them told the paper. “The food is good, and the staff is almost like family to us.”

Still here

Natsunoya is now the last full-time tea house in the islands. Shokado bentos can still go out in lacquered boxes, and the boxes still have to come back. And the view from upstairs is the one Fujiwara described in 1999: “You can see all of Honolulu’s city lights even though there are more obstructions now than there used to be.”

Source: Rod Ohira, “Alewa teahouse one of the last of its kind,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, April 12, 1999.