The Japalac Cocktail was published in Albert Stevens Crockett’s 1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book where he says “so styled in compliment to a salesman who sold a product of that name.”

Japalac was a quick-drying stain and varnish combined for all furniture and metal things.

Also, in Hilario A. Sanchez 1948 El Art del Cantinero we can read “A seller of essentials frequented one of the old New York bars of the late nineteenth century; He tried that composition, and he liked it so much and celebrated it that, in homage to the enamels sold, the bartender who created it gave it that name.”