About Us

Motonobu Aoki, President & Representative Director

Thank you for visiting the Wakuwakuen website. Allow me to share how our company came to be and what drives us as a mulberry specialty store.

I became fascinated by the remarkable power of mulberry leaves. As a parent, I also grew concerned about the safety of what we eat and drink, and I wanted to make something good with my own hands and bring it to the world. I wanted to shine a light on the mulberry fields that were disappearing.

From that wish, Wakuwakuen's mulberry and mulberry products were born in a small field rented from a silk farmer. We want to make mulberry widely known as a food and help our customers lead healthy lives. That is what we work toward every day.

Mulberry is widely known as the food of silkworms, and as the source of silk. Sericulture flourished in Japan from ancient times, and mulberry fields were once everywhere.

In regions where sericulture thrived, mulberry leaves have long been cherished and drunk as an elixir of longevity. Their medicinal properties are even recorded in the Shennong Bencao Jing, the classic of Chinese herbal medicine compiled in the early sixth century.

Times changed. In recent years, Japan's once-thriving sericulture has all but vanished under pressure from imported products. In Kagoshima, every silk farm in the prefecture had closed by 2005. That was the year Wakuwakuen sprouted.

Wakuwakuen is still small, but we will keep expanding our fields little by little, aiming to become the best mulberry specialty store in Japan — and one that stands on the world stage.