YouTuber Mom Brings Japanese Cooking to Global Viewers

Kimono Mom in a You-Tube scene

    YouTube sensation Moe, dubbed as “Kimono Mom” and a former geisha, is based in Japan but her audience is global.

    Currently with 1.2 million followers from 192 countries, Moe’s Kimono Mom YouTube channel regularly uploads videos about Japanese home cooking, as well as her daily life with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

    Struggling to find a way to overcome her postnatal depression, Moe started her YouTube channel in 2020 hoping to leave something meaningful for her newborn daughter. She is also a co-founder of ForSmiles, an organization to introduce Japanese home cooking and culture to an international audience and help provide easy access to Japanese cooking tools, sauces, spices and more.

    At 29, Moe finally found a place where she can be herself. But the path to where she is today was not straight or easy.

    Moe shared the story of her life on Aug. 25 during an online event, “The Flavors of Japan to Your Table,” hosted by the Japan America Society of Chicago.

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Make it stand out

    Born in Kyoto, Moe spent her childhood breathing in the traditional Kyoto culture on a daily basis. Her grandfather was a calligraphy teacher in Gion, Kyoto’s famous geisha district. His students were professionals who were training to preserve Kyoto’s traditional culture and lifestyle – people such as kimono shop owners, Japanese incense sellers and Buddha statue makers, as well as geisha and maiko (apprentice geisha). Moe liked to watch them train themselves in their respective occupations.

    Moe was in junior high school when she first became interested in maiko, a teenage geisha apprentice unique to Kyoto. In her school research project on professional occupations, she learned about maiko – who they are, what they do, and how they were part of the Kyoto culture.

     A maiko candidate typically begins training at the age of 15. Moe was in high school when she told her parents about her wish to become a maiko. Knowing full well about the tough training she would have to go through, they were against the idea. Moe persisted, and they finally allowed her to quit high school and “go her own way.” She was 16.

    She went to live at an okiya, or a geisha house, to receive maiko training. It was a life of nonstop training of traditional Japanese performing arts – dancing, singing, and playing shamisen and other instruments. Moe would often talk with her mother on the phone for consolation at night, after a hard day of training. Her mother was always there for her, Moe says, no matter how late it was. Sometimes her mother made her favorite dishes and sent them over to her. Eating her mother’s homemade food made her cry.

    Nonetheless, what she learned through hard training were her assets for life, she admits.

    After spending six years as a maiko and a geisha, she married her first husband and moved to Tokyo with him. A life as a housewife was quite a culture shock to her.

    Her husband was frequently on business trips overseas. Moe tried to learn to be the wife of an international businessman. In search of what she could do, she took cooking classes.

    When she accompanied her husband on an overseas trip, she would pack many Japanese foods and condiments in her suitcase so she could cook Japanese dishes. Gradually, she developed an interest in cooking Japanese food for her friends overseas, using locally available ingredients.

    But her husband wanted her to stay home in Tokyo at all times. Feeling “uneasy” about being a fulltime housewife, Moe eventually came to a decision for a divorce.

    A new life alone in Tokyo was not easy. She wanted to find an occupation, wanted to work. But at 24, she had only a junior-high diploma and no work experience other than as a geisha. Finding a job was difficult. She tried a variety of works that she could find through her personal connections.

     In the end, she returned to her home in Kyoto. And then she heard the news that her ex-husband passed away.

    The news jolted her. Realizing her naïveté about getting a career, she returned to Tokyo with a different mindset. She found a job, and started to learn to adjust to the new life. Then, she met her current husband. They got married, and Moe became pregnant. She quit her job and became a fulltime mother and housewife again.

    She wanted to go back to work, but she couldn’t – no daycare services were available, and her health wasn’t back to normal. Staying at home and taking care of the baby around the clock, she felt she was cut off from the outside world. She was in postnatal depression.

    It was during this period when an American YouTuber approached her for his video content. It was about the life of a Japanese mom in Tokyo, and she was asked to appear in a video to share her typical day as a mother and a wife. She agreed to do it, hoping it would break the spell of depression.

    This experience showed Moe that a YouTube content creator can be a profession. It was a discovery for her. It fit her lifestyle; she could do it while taking care of her baby and husband. She could work at her own pace.

    What would her content be, then?

    Moe wanted to leave something meaningful for her daughter. It was her mother and her handmade dishes that supported Moe during hard times. If she creates videos about her own home cooking, her daughter could learn about Moe’s recipes and recreate them in later days. That would remind the daughter how much she was loved, and would support her in hard times.

     So, a Japanese home cooking channel was born, hosted by kimono-clad Moe. “My home cooking videos are my love letter to my daughter,” Moe says. “To learn home cooking is to learn your roots, learn who you are. It’s about a story of how you grew up, eating what kind of food in what cultural background.”

    “I hope that my videos make people think about their roots and stay strong during hard times. That is the message I want to send by spreading Japanese home cooking to the world,” she added.

    As a mother who experienced postnatal depression, Moe also wants to share with mothers everywhere that it could happen to anyone and they are not alone.

    “Wherever you are in the world, we all share our responsibility of raising our children,” she says.

    In addition to home cooking, her channel also deals with her family’s daily life, challenges and responsibilities as a parent, and tips to save time in daily chores. “A lot of viewers look forward to seeing my video every week,” Moe says. “When I share my real feelings as a mother in my videos, I feel I have friends all over the world.”

    She explains she chooses Japanese recipes in her YouTube channel that are easy to prepare outside Japan, so that viewers can try them even if they don’t have easy access to traditional Japanese ingredients.

    She says she receives a lot of comments from her audience about their countries and their home cooking.

    “I hope a community is established where more and more people will connect to each other and talk about their own home cooking with pride,” she said. Her YouTube channel offers subtitles in multiple languages for a wide viewership.

    To provide easy access to Japanese ingredients and kitchen tools outside Japan, Moe recently launched an online store in her website. A plan is also underway to introduce recipes using mentsuyu, an all-in-one sauce to make a variety of Japanese dishes without having to look for hard-to-find ingredients.

    Visit Moe’s website at: https://kimonomom.com/.