私と珈琲の香しい歴史

喫茶店が捨てる珈琲の出し殻の香（かぐわ）しさが
私と珈琲の初めての出遭い

大阪の私鉄沿線の駅前に住んでいた子供の頃、私の家より２軒ほど駅前寄りに、この界隈で初めてといえる喫茶店があった。この喫茶店は、朝一番に煮出した珈琲の殻を店横のゴミ箱に捨てる。珈琲色が染みついた大きな白いネルの袋を裏返して、中身の珈琲の殻をゴミ箱にごそっと入れるのだ。冬の寒い日には、珈琲の殻をゴミ箱に捨てるたびに、ゴミ箱の周辺を覆うばかりの湯気がパッと上がる。それと同時に珈琲の何とも言えない香（かぐわ）しい匂いが辺り一面に広がるのだった。それが私の珈琲とのファースト・コンタクトにあたるものだった。当然この頃は、珈琲の匂いこそ知ってはいたが、実際の珈琲の味は知らなかった。
朝の食卓で、私より年上の兄弟や、父や母そして祖母は珈琲を飲んでいるのだが、私と弟だけは珈琲を飲むことが許されなかった。当然、なぜ飲んではいけないのかと母親を問い詰めるのだが、母はお酒と一緒で子供の成長に悪い影響を与えるから飲めない。だけどもう少し大きくなったら飲めるようになるのだと説明してくれた。

珈琲は大人の飲み物。珈琲牛乳は、珈琲の練習用

しかし珈琲の香りが快く感じられるのは避けられないことで、１日でも早く珈琲を飲んでみたいと思う気持ちは日々募っていったが、なぜか母親の許可は下りなかった。ところが、ある日、喫茶店の店員で淡路島からきたお兄さんが、私の珈琲を渇望する気持ちを汲んでくれたのか、家の近くの牛乳屋で私に珈琲牛乳を飲ませてくれた。のちになって考えれば、珈琲牛乳は珈琲とは違ったものだが、喫茶店の珈琲の殻と似た香りを放っていた。喫茶店のお兄さんも言っていたが、珈琲とは少し違うが、同じ成分が子供用に配合されているので、いわば珈琲の練習用だと教えてくれた。そんなことで、これが珈琲と出遭った二つ目の事件だった。

中学の食堂で飲んだ珈琲もどきが、珈琲の初体験

それから私も多少成長してやがて中学生になった。私が通うことになった中学には食堂があった。しかもこの食堂には、メニューに珈琲があったのだ。普通の珈琲カップに入っているのではなく、利き酒用の白い湯呑のような容器に容れられていたのだが、容器の底に青い色で「蛇の目」と呼ばれている二重丸が描かれていて、まさに利き酒用の容器を流用しているとしか考えられなかった。ところがこの中学の食堂の珈琲は、これも後で知ったことだが、珈琲の粉をネルの袋に詰め込んで大きな鍋か何かで長時間煮込んだものらしい。だから、その苦さと珈琲豆のあくが混じった煮汁を飲むような気がしたものだった。
確かに微妙に珈琲の匂いはするが、アロマなど期待できるはずもなかった。それでも初めて珈琲を飲んだというある種の満足感を与えてくれたのだ。それからは、中学校の通学路にこれも大阪らしく、駄菓子屋に毛が生えたような老婆が営んでいる喫茶店があった。そこでは、一応ギリギリ珈琲と呼べるものが飲めたので、もし私の年代記を書くとすると、この時点から私は珈琲を飲むようになったと記載することができる。

それからは、多少ませた中学生として珈琲を飲み始め、私の本格的な珈琲歴が始まった。といっても特別にマニアックということもなく、同じ世代の日本人と同じような珈琲の愛好者としての道を歩んだと思う。それ以降は、珈琲文化の面でインスタン珈琲の登場、フリーズドライのインスタント珈琲の発売、それに大型珈琲チェーンの登場などがあって、珈琲そのもののことではないが、珈琲を飲む環境に大きな変化があったと思う。ただ、昔ながらの小さな喫茶店などは、数が大きく減少したということはあったとしても、落ち着いた室内インテリア、クラシックやライトジャスなど、静かで快適な音響空間、ドリップ珈琲もしくはサイフォン珈琲にこだわるスタイルなど、喫茶店の環境はほとんど変化がなかった。

喫茶店を思い出せば、誰と珈琲を飲んだか思い出せる不思議

自身のこととして、珈琲と自分の関係がどのように変化したかと言われると、おいしい珈琲は自宅で、自分が好きなように淹れる…がまず原則。外で飲むケースとしては、外向けの対人関係に関わる場合はホテルの珈琲ラウンジなどが多いが、それも機会は多くない。それ以外の大型珈琲チェーンでの珈琲が圧倒的に多くなったのだが、その際の相手となると、やはり仕事先の人との仕事上の打ち合わせ、知人との軽い談話などになる。つまり大型珈琲チェーンでの談話となると、どうしても具体的に相手の顔を思い出すことができない。逆に言えば、好みの喫茶店で珈琲を飲んだことを思い出せば、必ず誰と飲んでいたかも思い出す。私は京都、大阪、東京にそれぞれ15年以上は住んでいた。それぞれの場所に、地元でも評価の高い好みの喫茶店があった。今もその喫茶店のことを思い浮かべれば、誰と飲んだかもはっきり思い出せるのが不思議だった。その不思議さが私にとっての珈琲文化だった。

My aromatic history with coffee.

The fragrant smell of coffee grounds discarded by the coffee shop was my first encounter with coffee.

When I was a child living near a station on a private railway line in Osaka, there was a coffee shop that could be considered the first of its kind in our area, just a couple of houses closer to the station than my home. This coffee shop would discard the grounds from the coffee brewed first thing in the morning into a trash bin beside the shop. They would turn a large, white flannel bag, stained with coffee color, inside out and dump the coffee grounds into the trash. On cold winter days, every time they threw away the grounds, steam would rise up and surround the trash bin, filling the air with an indescribably fragrant aroma of coffee. This was my first encounter with coffee. Naturally, at that time, I knew the smell of coffee but not its actual taste. At the breakfast table, my older siblings, father, mother, and grandmother would drink coffee, but only my younger brother and I were not allowed to have it. Naturally, I would press my mother on why we couldn't drink it, and she would explain that, like alcohol, coffee could negatively affect a child's growth, but that we would be able to drink it when we got a little older.

Coffee is an adult's drink. Coffee milk is for practicing drinking coffee.

However, it was inevitable that the pleasant aroma of coffee would continue to entice me, and my desire to try it grew stronger each day, but for some reason, my mother never gave her permission. Then one day, a young man who worked at the coffee shop, and who had come from Awaji Island, seemed to sense my yearning for coffee. He took me to a nearby milk shop and let me try coffee milk. In hindsight, coffee milk was something different from real coffee, but it had a similar aroma to the coffee grounds from the shop. The young man at the coffee shop had told me that, while it wasn’t quite the same as coffee, it contained the same ingredients, specially blended for children, making it, in a sense, a way to practice drinking coffee. And so, this became the second significant encounter I had with coffee.

My first experience with coffee was a coffee substitute I drank at my middle school cafeteria.

After that, I grew up a bit and eventually became a junior high school student. The junior high school I attended had a cafeteria, and on its menu was coffee. It wasn’t served in a regular coffee cup but rather in a small white cup, similar to a sake-tasting cup, with a blue 'snake-eye' double circle at the bottom, clearly repurposed from a sake-tasting set. However, the coffee at this cafeteria, as I later learned, was made by stuffing coffee grounds into a flannel bag and simmering it for a long time in a large pot or something similar. As a result, it tasted like a bitter brew mixed with the astringency of coffee beans. While it had a faint coffee aroma, there was no expectation of any sort of refined fragrance. Even so, it gave me a sense of satisfaction from drinking coffee for the first time.

After that, there was a small coffee shop run by an old woman, which was more like a candy store, along my route to school, a typical sight in Osaka. There, I could drink something that could just barely be called coffee, so if I were to write my memoirs, I would say that this was when I began drinking coffee.

From then on, I started drinking coffee as a somewhat precocious junior high school student, marking the beginning of my true coffee journey. That said, I wasn’t particularly obsessed with it, but I think I walked the path of a typical coffee enthusiast for my generation in Japan. Since then, there have been significant changes in the coffee culture, such as the advent of instant coffee, the launch of freeze-dried instant coffee, and the rise of large coffee chains, which changed the environment in which coffee is enjoyed. However, despite a decline in the number of traditional small coffee shops, the atmosphere of these places, with their cozy interiors, soothing music like classical or light jazz, and their dedication to drip or siphon coffee, has remained largely unchanged.

It’s curious how just thinking about a favorite coffee shop can instantly bring back memories of who I shared a cup with.

When it comes to how my relationship with coffee has changed over time, my principle is still to brew delicious coffee at home just the way I like it. When I drink coffee outside, it's often in settings related to interpersonal relationships, such as hotel coffee lounges, though those opportunities are not frequent. The majority of my coffee consumption now happens at large coffee chains, and these instances usually involve business meetings or casual conversations with acquaintances. In these cases, it's hard to remember specific faces associated with the coffee experience. On the other hand, when I recall drinking coffee at a favorite café, I can always remember who I was with. I lived in Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo for over 15 years each, and in each city, I had favorite cafés highly regarded locally. It's strange and fascinating that I can clearly remember who I was with whenever I think of those cafés. This mystery is what constitutes my coffee culture.