It was devised by Kubo Takeshi, the founder of Tenmonkan Mujaki, in 1947, not long after the war. He had noticed that strawberries with milk poured over them tasted good, and tried condensed milk over shaved ice. Straight from the tin it was too sweet to eat, and he went on adjusting it until it was not.

The name comes from looking down at the finished bowl from directly above, which is not how most people look at food. The cherry, the angelica, and the raisins, arranged as they are, resemble the face of a polar bear. That is the entire explanation.

Inside there is fruit cut into dice and torokusun beans, mixed through the ice rather than sitting on it, so the bowl keeps producing things as you dig down.

On the outside go the angelica, the cherry, and the raisins that give it the face. The dimensions are worth stating plainly: about fifteen centimeters across and seventeen to eighteen centimeters high. The shop itself says in writing that finishing one is difficult even for a grown adult, which is not the usual way to advertise a dessert. A dessert named not for what is in it, or where it comes from, or how it tastes, but for what somebody thought it looked like from above.