Kintaroame (Kintaro Candy) (金太郎飴)

Kintaroame is a bar of candy that is produced using a special technique. First, sheets of candy in colors that represent the different parts of the face of Kintaro (the main character of a Japanese folk tale) are prepared, such as his eyes (including his eyelashes and pupils), nose, mouth and sakayaki (the shaved part of a samurai's head). After these sheets of colored candy have been arranged so that, once they have been rolled, Kintaro's face will appear on the cut end of the bar of candy when it is sliced crosswise, they are rolled up into a cylinder, stretched until the desired thickness has been achieved, and then cut to an appropriate length. All of the above processes are done while candy is hot and soft.

The subject matter is principally the face of Kintaro but the faces of characters in other stories, comics, etc. and letters may also be used. These too are sometimes referred to as Kintaroame.

Based on the fact that Kintaro's face never changes, a person who is inflexible and lacks individuality in terms of their attitude toward opinions or other people are sometimes described as being 'Kintaroame like'.

[Original Japanese]