Invention of the Fortune Cookie

You might be surprised to learn that fortune cookies aren't Chinese at all — they trace back to Japanese tsujiura senbei, a sesame-and-miso street food sold near Kyoto shrines in the 19th century. Japanese immigrants brought them to California, where competing inventors still argue over who deserves credit. World War II dramatically shifted production to Chinese-owned bakeries, cementing a lasting mistaken identity. There's a lot more to this story than fits inside a small folded cookie.

Key Takeaways

The fortune cookie traces its origins to a Japanese treat called tsujiura senbei, sold near Kyoto shrines and temples in the 19th century.
Japanese immigrant Makoto Hagiwara is credited with serving fortune cookies at San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden as early as 1907.
Three men claim invention rights: Makoto Hagiwara, Seiichi Kito, and David Jung, with the dispute remaining officially unresolved.
Japanese-American internment during World War II forced bakery closures, allowing Chinese entrepreneurs to fill the supply gap and take over production.
Despite being perceived as a Chinese tradition, fortune cookies are largely rejected in China as "too American" and inauthentic.

Fortune Cookies Are Actually Japanese

Despite being firmly embedded in Chinese-American dining culture, fortune cookies are actually Japanese in origin. Their ancestor, the Japanese sembei known as tsujiura senbei, dates back to at least the 19th century in Kyoto, where vendors sold them as street food near shrines and temples.

The fortune cookie's signature feature—a slip of paper tucked inside—mirrors Japan's omikuji origins, a tradition where people draw random fortune slips from temple boxes. Unlike today's hollow cookie, tsujiura senbei had the paper wedged into its folded bend. The batter also differed, using sesame and miso, which created a darker dough.

Japanese immigrants carried this tradition to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eventually adapting the recipe to suit American tastes. Early popularizers included figures like Makoto Hagiwara in San Francisco and David Jung in Los Angeles, though the shift to Chinese-American dominance came around World War II, largely due to Japanese-American internment.

Researcher Yasuko Nakamachi conducted extensive fieldwork tracing the tsujiura senbei's history, visiting confectionary shop owners across Japan and traveling to San Francisco, where she interviewed members of the Hagiwara family to document the Japanese origin connection.

While fortune cookies may have Japanese roots, their invention's precise origin remains one of food history's most contested debates. You'll find three primary claimants fighting for credit: Makoto Hagiwara, Seiichi Kito, and David Jung.

Hagiwara evidence points to fortune cookies being served at San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden as early as 1907. A 1983 Court of Historical Review, presided over by a real federal judge, ruled in his favor. Most contemporary sources now credit Hagiwara, typically citing 1914 as the invention year.

The Los Angeles claim comes from David Jung, who allegedly distributed Bible-verse cookies to the poor in 1918. Kito, meanwhile, insists Jung simply copied his idea. Despite formal proceedings, the dispute remains officially unresolved, with both cities maintaining their positions. Kito founded his confectionery, Fugetsu-Do, in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo in 1903, and drew his inspiration from slips of paper bearing fortunes found in Japanese temples and shrines. The fortune cookie's layered history reflects its deep ties to both Japanese and Chinese-American communities during the early twentieth century in the United States.

How World War II Handed Fortune Cookies to Chinese Restaurants

The debate over who invented the fortune cookie may never be fully settled, but World War II resolved something else entirely: who'd own it.

When the U.S. government forced over 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps, Japanese-owned bakeries shut down overnight. That internment aftermath created a supply vacuum in California's confectionery market. Chinese entrepreneurs moved quickly, filling the void by producing and distributing cookies to local restaurants. Benkyodo, a Japanese confectionery store, had previously been one of the key suppliers of fortune cookies in San Francisco before the war brought its operations to a halt.

The restaurants' pivot proved decisive. Chinese bakeries mechanized production, renamed the treats "fortune tea cakes," and supplied eateries across the region. Returning soldiers who'd eaten these cookies near Pacific Theater bases demanded them at home, spreading the trend nationwide. Much like Kiribati's 1995 date line shift, which reshaped how an entire nation related to global timekeeping, the fortune cookie's cultural reassignment redrew ownership in ways that proved permanent.

The fortune cookie's rise did not stop at restaurant tables. By 1960, fortune cookies had made their way into two separate presidential campaigns, those of Adlai Stevenson and Stuart Symington, cementing the treat as a fixture of American cultural life.

How Fortune Cookies Became America's Most Unlikely Dessert Tradition

Few foods in American culture carry as much irony as the fortune cookie: it's not Chinese, it's not traditional, and yet you'll find it at the end of nearly every Chinese-American meal across the country.

Its rise from Japanese senbei to American restaurant ritual happened gradually, shaped by Depression-era gimmicks, Hollywood exposure, and mass production breakthroughs.

Billy Wilder's 1960 film gave it mainstream visibility, while automation allowed factories to produce 3 billion cookies yearly by 2008.

Urban legends about its Chinese origins stuck because the cookie filled a real gap — Chinese cuisine traditionally skips dessert.

Vanilla-flavored and machine-made, fortune cookies represent something distinctly American: a borrowed idea, repackaged, scaled up, and fully absorbed into a culture hungry for sweet, simple optimism. One early origin story traces the cookie to David Jung, founder of the Hong Kong Noodle Co., who reportedly created it in 1918 as an encouraging treat for unemployed men gathering on the streets of Los Angeles.

Research by Yasuko Nakamachi uncovered Kyoto bakeries making tsujiura senbei, traditional Japanese cookies that held paper fortunes within their folded arms and were larger and browner than the American versions familiar today. Much like Virginia Woolf's argument that creativity requires specific material conditions for production, the fortune cookie's evolution depended on access to industrial machinery and economic opportunity to become the mass-produced icon it is today.

Why Fortune Cookies Never Caught On in China

Despite its image as a Chinese staple in the West, the fortune cookie is virtually unknown in China — and when companies tried to introduce it there, they failed quickly. You'd think a treat so tied to Chinese identity would thrive in its supposed homeland, but the cultural mismatch is striking. It originated in early 1900s California, inspired by Japanese immigrants, not Chinese tradition. Most people in China have never eaten one, and locals consider it strange and inauthentic.

The market rejection was swift and clear. Wonton Food abandoned its 1992 China expansion almost immediately after locals labeled the cookie "too American." Even Panda Express dropped it from Chinese locations. Chinese diners prefer authentic finishes like sesame balls or orange slices — not a crunchy shell hiding a paper slip. Two names are most often cited as the cookie's true inventor: Makoto Hagiwara of San Francisco and David Jung of Los Angeles.

European Chinese restaurant operators, who mainly originate from Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, have similarly shown mixed enthusiasm for fortune cookies, with many rejecting them outright to preserve a more traditional Chinese dining experience. Much like how magic realism blends the fantastical with the everyday to reflect a deeper cultural truth, the fortune cookie blends invented tradition with perceived authenticity to create a symbol that resonates more outside its supposed culture of origin than within it.

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