For more than 370 years, Yagenbori's merchandise has added zest to Japanese meals. The seven-colored seasoning is sprinkled on a variety of dishes, from a steaming bowl of soba (buckwheat) noodles to grilled fish.
At the store in the heart of old Asakusa, seven small mounds of ingredients await the customers, ready to be mixed to taste. The Yagenbori rainbow consists of black (sesame seed), yellow (dried mandarin peel), brown (roasted red pepper) and orange (fresh red pepper), moss green (sansho, Japanese pepper), beige (poppy seed) and gray (hemp seed). When the veteran mixer scoops spoonfuls of each ingredient into a small wooden pail, you get your own shichimi-togarashi, literally "seven-flavored red pepper."
"The manufacturing process has not changed since the early days. We cannot tamper with it," said Akira Kuronuma, a spokesperson for Yagenbori, established in 1625. The store was originally founded near a namesake canal shaped like a yagen (the chemist's mortar), in Ryogoku in old Edo, where many doctors lived and wholesalers of medicine were in business.