One of the most interesting retail stores in Hawaii was a dry goods and fabric store named Musashiya. It began in Chinatown on the makai side of King Street near River Street in 1896.
One of the remarkable parts of its story is that it was the first, as far as I can tell, to advertise in pidgin in 1921 — 100 years ago.
The founder, Chotaro Miyamoto, hired an advertising guy named George Mellon who thought using his pidgin English in newspaper ads would endear him to the residents of Honolulu. A drawing of a smiling Miyamoto in a kimono and getas was in most ads.
An example of his pidgin are his directions — “HOW FINDING SHOP: If Musashiya shop too much hard finding, look at King Street until pass away in front famous Fish Market. After pass away, go for River but not there before see nice sign say so this place.”
Locals thought it was cute and mailed them to friends on the mainland. Papers around the world reprinted them. Soon his store was packed with locals and visitors.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin wrote that “Musashiya was at first inclined to look upon advertising as a sort of Aladdin’s lamp, nor could anyone blame him in view of the almost magic results that virtually jumped from the Star-Bulletin’s pages into his cash box.”
The ads were later assembled into a book, which was used in a Stanford University business class.
Aloha shirts
Musashiya was one of the first to design aloha shirts in the late 1920s. In 1928 a local man took them to the mainland when he went off to college.
Linda Cloward told me, “My father-in-law, renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ralph B. Cloward, was also a talented musician. As a senior in the McKinley High School band, he was asked to play first clarinet for the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra.
“In 1928 he left Honolulu to attend the University of Utah. He took with him his clarinet and a half-dozen colorful aloha shirts stitched from Japanese kimono cloth by Musashiya in Chinatown.” They were 95 cents each.
At the University of Utah, he organized a five-piece jazz band. “My boys wore the loud, colorful shirts I’d brought from Hawaii, which had never been seen in Utah, and probably nowhere in the entire U.S.A. We had a lot of fun and played good music, too!”
“Upon graduating in 1930, the Utonian yearbook elected him to its Hall of Fame ‘because he used to wear the most hideous shirts ever seen on this campus, and all the time he thought he looked just swell.’”
Ralph Cloward became a doctor and was Hawaii’s first neurosurgeon.
Changing hands
Miyamoto’s son, Koichiro, sold the store to George and Mary Fujii in 1933. They, in turn, sold it to Joyce Matsuda in 1978.
Carol Chun told me she worked there from 1966 to 1970. “While I attended UH Manoa, I worked in the men’s department at Musashiya during Christmas breaks and summers. I became quite adept at determining a man’s pants measurements and shirt size.
“Musashiya was a unique store. We had fabric, Japanese goods like tabis, and yukata fabric, which sold for $5 a roll. It would be valued closer to $75 today.
“We also sold custom-made futons. I could wrap a king-size futon by myself, usually climbing up on the counter to do so.”
While some were concerned for their safety in Chinatown after dark, Chun said she was not one of them. “I could walk the area without fear,” she said.
“Across the street from the store were a number of rooming houses where the majority of tenants were retired, unmarried, male Filipino plantation workers. They became my regulars, and I learned quickly not to sell them any white clothing or underwear because it showed the dirt.
“These men spent their days playing billiards in one of two pool halls. One (Cebu Pool Hall) was on River Street, between King and Hotel streets, and the other was around the corner on Hotel Street.
“I caught the bus to work each morning and got off on Hotel Street. As I walked along River Street, my friends would call out to me, ‘Good morning, Musashiya!’”
Thief! Stop!
“One day a teenage boy grabbed some shirts and ran out of the store past me,” Chun continues. “Having more guts than brains, I ran out after him. He ran mauka on River Street with me running after him yelling, ‘Thief! Stop!’
“My friends in Cebu ran out and told me to stop. Raising their cue sticks over their heads, they took off after the kid, who had this terrified look on his face. He dropped the shirts and took off toward Aala Park. The guys then escorted me back to the store still wielding their cue sticks. My manager just about had a coronary.
“Remember the ‘Boys Will Be Girls Revue’? My morning bus stop was in front of the Glades. Twice a week the emcee/costumer, Butch, would come into the store.
“He always came to find me in the men’s department, and I would help with his fabric selections. The fabric had to ‘shimmer.’ He sewed all of the costumes, and they were beautiful. He always invited me to see the revue, but I didn’t think my boyfriend would have agreed.”
Walking downtown by herself
Kathleen Miller Thomas remembers Musashiya. “My mother, a skilled seamstress, used to take me there in the 1950s to buy fabric for my brother’s and dad’s aloha shirts, her dresses, and my muumuus.
“I remember watching her lean over the counter as the clerk added up the cost of thread, trim and fabric with her pencil. Mother added it in her head faster than the clerk and upside down. This was the first time I witnessed what I later realized was an automatic action for her.
“As for Musashiya, I always poked my head in the store on my way home from trips to see our dentist, Dr. Ito, on River Street, beginning when I was about 11 years old.
“Oh, the heady freedom of walking in downtown Honolulu by myself back then. There was so much to see on King Street — the bars with loud music pouring out, the pawnshops, tattoo parlors, fish market and always the Navy Shore Patrol strolling through the crowds, their wooden batons swinging.”
Omochaya
Wayne Sumida said: “Back in the days before Ala Moana Center, my mom would go to Musashiya to buy material and notions.
“The parking lot was in the back of the store, and you drove in through either River Street or Nimitz Highway.
“But I remembered the store next door — Omochaya — the most. It had all kinds of Japanese goods and toys that I loved to browse through. I would always ask my mom to take me to Omochaya when she shopped at Musashiya.
“If I’m not mistaken, both Musashiya and Omochaya opened stores in Ala Moana Center. I believe Musashiya still had a store at Ala Moana until a few years ago,” Sumida concludes.
Omochaya had stores downtown, in Kalihi Shopping Center and in Waipahu Shopping Center. The downtown store began about 1959. I don’t see an Ala Moana location, and it looks like the stores closed by about 1983.
The last Musashiya, at Ala Moana Center, closed in 2000 after 104 years in business.
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