Aesthetically Kinako is reminiscent of sandy beaches with its light tan coating of nutty soybean powder. It’s extremely soft with a smooth housemade white bean filling, shiro-an, made with lima beans.
By Lydia Baik | Photography By Julian LeConte & Coline LeConte | Fall 2025
Silicon Valley is a hot spot for authentic Japanese cuisine and supermarkets, a gift of the local Japanese community that has been rooted here for over five generations. In this culturally rich valley manju (pronounced MAAN-ju) and other wagashi (Japanese confections) can be found in the snack aisle or even a Daiso checkout line. Though delicious in their own right, these packaged sweets are often mass-manufactured and processed. But for 73 years, Shuei-Do Manju Shop in Japantown, San Jose, has been delivering an arguably better and far fresher version of these delicious treats.
Founded in 1953 by California-born Hatsuyo Ozawa and her husband, John, the shop was praised for its mouthwatering sweets, high-quality ingredients and traditional handmade techniques. Shuei-Do would become a beloved institution among the Japanese community in the Bay Area over the coming decades, and the Ozawas would eventually sell the business to Tom and Judy Kumamaru, passing along their recipes and traditional cooking methods to the next generation.
That sale of the shop back in 1988 was anything but transactional. In fact, it had never even occurred to the Kumamarus to envision a future as small business owners, or a bakery on top of that. The Ozawas realized that their own children were not going to take over the shop, and as they approached retirement age John Ozawa was determined to find a successor. He turned to his fishing buddy, Judy’s father, and began to plant the seed. And as any fishing friends know, there’s a lot of time to talk and plan and dream on the boat.
It’s remarkable to hear that the Kumamarus bought the shop without ever viewing the kitchen or a single recipe. Today, Tom chuckles at the likelihood that the Ozawas held
back these details for fear that the sheer labor in the kitchen would scare the couple off. Regardless, the sale went through and the Ozawas would stay on for five months to train the Kumamarus on each recipe and traditional cooking technique. The Kumamarus have now run the shop for 37 years, just two years longer than the Ozawas.
Sheui-Do Manju Shop operates under a bakery license; and while there is a lot of kneading, shaping and filling in the kitchen, there is little pastry dough involved. Instead, a glutinous dough made from a Japanese staple, mochiko, is primarily used. When combined with generous amounts of sugar and water, this soft fine-powdered, dry-milled glutinous rice flour forms a sticky and elastic mochi dough commonly used as the exterior wrapper for their bean-filled confections.
The shop’s namesake—the manju—is a sweet and densely filled steamed bun. Traditionally served with hot tea, the manju has come a long way from the 1200s when its culinary blueprint, the steamed Chinese mantou, was brought to Japan by a Buddhist monk. Its round form, once featuring savory filling or no filling at all, has evolved across the eras into the sweet, red-bean-filled dessert that we know today.
At Shuei- Do, manju is made from a wheat flour shell with mashed red azuki bean filling. Periodically, the shop presses custom stamps onto the buns to celebrate anniversaries, graduations and the like. Shuei-Do Manju Shop offers traditional and modern takes on Japanese desserts such as manju, inaka mochi and more, many of which are vegan and gluten free!
HOT KITCHEN, HOT BEANS, HOT DOUGH
At 4am Tom Kumamaru gets up before sunrise and heads to the back kitchen. He must rinse, boil, simmer, peel and mash the beans for the day’s anko; 40 pounds of thick and smooth red bean filling and 25 pounds of a chunkier, whole-bean filling. Three round metal stoves sit close to the ground from where a flame is lit underneath; scorched and timeworn wooden lids sit on top to trap in the steam. The beans boil for four hours before they are rinsed, only to be placed back on the stove to simmer and thicken for another three hours. The Kumamarus’ son helps carry and rinse the beans, a heavy but essential step to get rid of excess starch and bitterness. After water and sugar are added, the mixture gets separated into deep metal pans where they are prepped into the two anko fillings. They all know by look and feel when the beans are done, never using a timer. The kitchen is already hot as they begin to prepare the dough. The process is laborious as the heavy dough must be held and worked with by hand while it’s pliable and still piping hot.
The Kumamarus sit at the back table across from one another. Here they place the anko onto mochi dough, forming at least a thousand units per day, all of which usually sell out. Several times the two have worked all-nighters to fulfill custom orders of up to 4,000 items for major celebrations like New Year’s.
And while this is obviously hard work, the couple say that being together at the back table became their precious quality time: When they started, they were already busy raising three little kids. Admiration for the shop has spread, even going beyond the Bay Area with great reviews from across the country.
Their delicacies were even served to the Emperor of Japan. When speaking about their shop, Tom is quick to recognize his community—the nearby church, the temple, Santo Market and more—as a source of encouragement and motivation. It’s changed a lot over the years with new flavors and menu items, along with a younger and more diverse customer base, but the love that people have for these sweet treats have encouraged the Kumamarus to keep at it after all these years.
ON THE MENU
The pickup window at Shuei-Do Manju delivers trayfuls of pastel colors, powdered shapes and sweet bean fillings. Here are the most popular items to try:
Yomogi, translated to Japanese mugwort, has a beautifully dark green mochi wrapper filled with smooth red beans. The flavor is earthy, robust and classic. The herb has been used throughout Eastern Asian cooking and medicine for over a millennium.
Pink White has a soft pink mochi casing and white bean filling. It’s wonderfully soft and creamy, with the beautiful color of sakura blossoms.
White and brown Inaka appear as two steamed buns with anko peaking through their semi-transparent cake shells: dense, sweet and filled with whole beans. One is made with white sugar and the other brown, as apparent by their colors.
Chi Chi Dango is a popular menu item with rotating flavors like the tropical guava and passionfruit, or melon and strawberry. It’s a pillowy soft and decadent slice of mochi made with condensed milk without any bean filling.
Lydia Baik is a creative with a techie spirit. A Bay Area native, she has recently shifted her passion for writing towards food-related stories, giving her a renewed opportunity to experience all of the wonderful cuisines that the Bay Area has to offer through a writer’s lens. This new journey has also reminded her of many childhood memories centered around amazing food discoveries.
Julian LeConte finds creative ways to capture the little things and give them a moment in the spotlight. He also builds his own drones to work on his FPV skills and aerial photography.
