Heping Road in Tianjin is a famous commercial street. From here it seems that you can walk down to the river in a few steps; and in that era when there were many concessions, there were three avenues and three avenues between it and the Haihe River. Some trails. The narrower of the three avenues is called Shu Street (today's Nenjiang Road). It is a legacy of early planning and the presence of Japanese merchants. Although it is a gentle and affectionate town, there are still some famous merchants at the intersection. At the intersection with the wider Miyajima Street (Anshan Road), there used to be a store selling food and groceries. It was this store that made the originally cheap street snack of North China, sugar-fried chestnuts, large-scale and cultural. He has made great contributions to the promotion and promotion of "Tianjin Ganli". Even at that time, when Japanese people mentioned this kind of food, the first thing they thought of was always the affectionate name, "Aganuri Taro".
Relying on the plump fruits produced in the Yanshan Mountains and exported through Tianjin Port, Amanuri Taro’s sugar-fried chestnuts came to Japan from a Japanese businessman who was working in the land of China; and relying on these businessmen’s clever advertising, they grew , popular to this day. Today, this businessman is regarded as a pioneer in Japan's Tianjin sweet chestnut industry, and the "Kanuri Taro" they raised is also a famous sugar-fried chestnut store in Kanto, Japan, which has been passed down to this day and has now celebrated its 100th anniversary. Its founders, brothers Kitazawa Juzo and Kitazawa Chiyozo, started from Tianjin and started the specialized import of chestnuts. They also trained themselves from being unknown to become an immortal legend in the market.
The Kitazawa family originally ran a small sake brewing business in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture, which is known as "mountain country" and is considered a remote place. However, the Meiji and Taisho society was turbulent, and a man's ambition was not satisfied with living in the mountains all his life. As the eldest son, Juzo first went to Beijing. After all kinds of setbacks, he set his sights on China. At that time, China experienced a series of wars and the people's livelihood was exhausted. However, for merchants and adventurers, it was a huge treasure house with God-given products. To this end, Chongzang made various attempts in China, but all ended in losses. On his way back home after all the troubles, he saw a seller selling sugar-roasted chestnuts at Shanhaiguan Station, bought some and tasted them, and found that they were cheap and delicious. A generation of Ganli pioneers, from which a century-old business began. What businessmen value is profits. Kitazawa Shigezo saw keenly that China is extremely rich in products, the Chinese people's living standards are extremely low, and prices are low. It is much cheaper to hire Chinese than to hire Japanese for the same workers; The raw materials for roasting chestnuts with sugar were the cheapest among the many products he had seen.
Chongzang immediately began to investigate chestnuts. He found that Japanese chestnuts had astringent skin, and Korean chestnuts were small and difficult to peel. Only chestnuts from the Yanshan Mountains were large, thin-skinned, soft and waxy in taste, and had a special of sweetness. At that time, Tianjin already had a developing Japanese concession, and many Japanese businessmen were engaged in import and export trade. Tianjin was also a major transportation hub in North China, with railways, inland river steamships, and ocean-going ships. The extremely developed transportation allowed a huge amount of products to pass through Tianjin. After all, many Japanese chaebols have not hesitated to invest huge sums of money to fund their activities in order to obtain greater wealth. Kitazawa Juzo followed the model of Japanese merchants in Tianjin and prepared to carry out specialized trade in chestnuts. Juzo also researched and studied grocery stores in Tokyo and Osaka that sold roasted chestnuts, and actively learned from other people's business experience. In 1914, Kitazawa Juzo opened his own store in Hongo District, Tokyo. In order to leave a deep impression on customers that was easy to understand and remember, he adopted an image similar to Momotaro as his trademark and named it "Amari Taro". Previously, sugar-fried chestnuts had always been relied on as an additional business, and "Aganuri Taro", which has this as its main business, is undoubtedly the pioneer of the sugar-fried chestnut business.