Merry White > Quotes

“The drink that characterized these new spaces quickly became a “normal” beverage: like the café itself, coffee subtly lost its foreignness. Providing what one café historian in Japan calls “dry inebriation,” it was also seen as the drink of thoughtfulness, of solace, and it became associated more than any other drink with being “private in public.”
― Merry White, Coffee Life in Japan

“From the early 1900s coffee, a drink for every day, became a commonplace and Japanese beverage. The expansion of the world's coffee industries, I will argue, was in its early days closely related to the rise of coffee drinking in Japan. Japanese coffee workers in Brazil, in concert with the aspirations of the Brazilian coffee industries, made Japan a world-beating destination for beans and taste.”
― Merry White, Coffee Life in Japan

“The first coffeehouse chain in the world, the Paulista group, was created in Tokyo and Osaka in 1907, appealing to young West-leaning customers, with its Brazilian decor and French-style service.”
― Merry White, Coffee Life in Japan

“The café is, as we shall see, a safe place to be private in public when privacy itself can be socially problematic and when there are few times and spaces for being alone. And of course men and women can meet in public spaces like these with impunity—flaunting social mores safely—as they have since the time of the first cafés of the early 1900s.”
― Merry White, Coffee Life in Japan