In Europe, Japanese food is becoming more popular, especially after it has been added to UNESCO intangible heritage list.

Whilst this great trend is taking place we have witnessed that there are few Japanese dishes available in the Western market. As Japanese with an obsession for traditional Japanese dishes, we decided to establish this brand simply to introduce those beautiful dishes to as many people as possible.

A traditional Hakozen is a large table mat sized wooden box. It contains one rice bowl, one soup bowl and one side dish plate which you are given when you are born and use it for your whole life. At meal time you flip the lid of the box which then becomes a table top. The box itself is a dining table for you. In the course of westernisation this tradition has died away, but this was once very common culture back in the 16th century. Our Hakozen is a modernised version of it which has same combination of very carefully chosen dishes in more minimum and sophisticated wooden box.

It is said in Japan that one characteristic of Japanese dishes is their flexibility to serve many different types of food. I believe that Japanese dishes should celebrate not only Washoku, but also a diverse range of European food.

There is a saying in Japan that ‘When you eat, you taste the dish too’; meaning that the look and feel of the dish really affects the way you taste the food. We hope that I can spread this Japanese food culture to the rest of the world through Hakozen.

Instead of westernising our Japanese dishes to match European lifestyle, We would like to introduce the traditional Japanese dishes. We invite you to enjoy creating a marriage between the dishes and the food that you serve, based on your personal values, sense, and perspective. As a team we have very carefully selected the best dishes from many places in Japan to enable you to do that. We really hope that Hakozen will enrich your everyday life in a way you have never felt before.

Ichijyu Issai means 'one rice, one soup and one side dish' in Japanse. It is all about eating a well balanced diet; just enough food, in only three dishes of minimal size. The concept of Ichiju Issai and Hakozen are tightly entwined. Traditionally the food was very simple and modest, but the well portioned diet had supported Japanese wellbeing and a long life expectancy. We believe that this very old concept can embrace the current trend towards wellbeing and answers issues surrounding a culture of excessive eating.

In the old days the Japanese poured hot tea onto the used dishes after the meal to wash the dish with some pickles. They would then drink the tea that now contained any leftover food that had been removed from the plates. The idea being that no food was wasted, but also you don't need to wash the dishes every time (they didn’t used to have oil in meals).

We feel that this is too much adopt these days, but the idea of using the dishes with great care over the course of a lifetime would seem to be in line with our value of life.

To introduce traditional Japanese dishes and the food culture around them is everything We would like to do. We will continue to rediscover Japanese traditional dishes from across Japan as well as refining the wooden box to best integrate into modern European lifestyle. Finally, we will create visual stimulus, such as a short movie and imagery to enable people to start imagining how their life could become so much richer by enhancing their culinary experience.