Makoto Hagiwara

Makoto Hagiwara (萩原 眞, Hagiwara Makoto) (15 August 1854 – 12 September 1925) was a landscape designer responsible for the maintenance and expansion of the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California, from 1895 until his death in 1925. He is often credited with the invention of the fortune cookie in California.

Biography

Hagiwara was born to a farm family in Japan and emigrated to the US in 1878. He opened the first Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, and records show that he was the owner of a restaurant called Yamatoya.

After the close of San Francisco's 1894 World's Fair, Hagiwara was then hired to manage the fair's tea garden site. He personally oversaw the modification of the temporary Japanese Village fair exhibit to the permanent Japanese Tea Garden and was official caretaker of the garden for most of the time between 1895 to his death in 1925. It was there that he is said to have introduced the modern version of the fortune cookie, which he is believed to have adapted from Japan's tsujiura senbei (辻占煎餅)