This afternoon, one of my students brought us a special treat from her trip to Nagoya, "Nagoniyan" cookies.
As you can see from the photo, Nagoniyan cookies are baked in the shape of a cat's paw.
Very often, the names of Japanese souvenirs and products are built around word-play. A good example of this tendency is a rice-cooker called "Gopan" that makes bread from rice. The name "Gopan" combines the Japanese words for rice, "gohan," and bread, "pan." By blending these two words together, the name succinctly communicates the product's functionality—making bread from rice.
In a similar vein, though with less emphasis on functionality, "Nagoniyan" is a playful combination of "Nagoya" and the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat's meow, "niyan":
Nago..ya
......niyan
Nagoniyan by Pasco
Nagoniyan is produced by the Japanese confectionary company, Pasco. According to their website - https://www.pasconet.co.jp/release/1949/ - "Nagoniyan" cookies were released just 11 months ago:
"Introducing 'Nagoyan,' a charming baked confection inspired by adorable cat paw motifs! 'Nagonyan' 1 piece and 4 piece sets, newly released on June 1, 2023."
Further down the page, the blurb informs us that they are not a completely new creation, but rather a variation of an older product:
These baked confections have gained popularity as a Nagoya specialty. By incorporating white chocolate cream into the same yellow bean paste used in our beloved 'Nagoyan,' they offer a smooth texture and creamy sweetness. With their adorable paw-shaped design, they're perfect for snacks and make great gifts."
Nagoyan by Pasco
It turns out that "Nagoniyan" is a present-day adaptation of a 1950s confectionary called "Nagoyan":
"The Nagoya specialty 'Nagoyan' has been a long-selling product of Pasco since its release in 1958. It was named 'Nagoyan' with the intention of being more familiar to locals in Nagoya. Made with domestically produced wheat castella dough filled with smooth yellow bean paste, its moist texture and gentle sweetness are beloved by people of all ages, from children to the elderly, boasting high popularity."
More Word Play
The "-yan" ending in "Nagoyan" is another example of wordplay as it combines "Nagoya" with the colloquial ending "-yan," which is akin to "isn't it" or "aren't you" in some dialects of Japanese. (In Hiroshima, the locals prefer the harsher-sounding "-jyan" ending... Hiroshima dialect can sound quite threatening and intimidating to people from other parts of Japan.)
So there you go. The snack I enjoyed in my afternoon class today, is a new iteration of an old Nagoya classic. They've added the cat's paw imprint to the top, white cream inside the sweet bean paste filling, a white cat mascot (suggestive, I guess, of the white cream filling-within-a-filling), and used that as a pretext for some extra wordplay in renaming the product so that it still sounds familiar, but has a new pussy-cat-twist.
What about the taste?
I like the texture and the flavours. Indeed, I much prefer this kind of snack to Hiroshima's famous "Momiji Manju" snack that is pumped out by the hundreds of thousands every day in the confectionary factories on the holy island of Miyajima, but that is another story.
Cheers!
David Hurley
#InspiredFocus