Japanese cuisine is deceptively simple. Its key ingredients are but two: a rather delicate stock made from konbu and flakes of dried bonito, and shoyu, Japanese soy sauce.
—SHIZUO TSUJI, JAPANESE COOKING: A SIMPLE ART
I think the key word here is deceptively for, of course, Japanese cuisine is anything but simple. I never for a moment thought I would discover all there is to know about it during just one journey, no matter how action- and meal-packed it was, but, equally, I never anticipated quite how dazzlingly multifaceted, how regionally diverse, how occasionally befuddling it would turn out to be.
On our last day in Tokyo, in one final, desperate box-ticking binge, we did get to sample both shirako—cod’s sperm, or milt—which I thoroughly recommend, and chicken sashimi, which was also rather lovely once I had surmounted the psychological hurdle. Also, Emil wants it to be known that during a meal later in the day, he ate an entire fish eye and enjoyed it. But there were so many things I didn’t get to eat but wanted to, so many cities I wanted to visit but didn’t have the time for, and, most important, so many seasons of food I wanted to experience. I could spend a lifetime studying just one aspect of Japanese cuisine—as, indeed, my friend Mr. Kobayashi the ramen champion has, or Kikunoi chef Murata-san has with dashi—and still never really find a definitive recipe or perfect my technique. To hope to master it all was, of course, delusional.
I admitted all of this to Toshi on our first meeting after we had arrived back in Paris. I suppose I had hoped for a thawing of temperament, that my conversion to the Japanese cause might temper his argumentativeness slightly. But he merely pouted and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, This is not news to me.
“So maybe you won’t cook fish so long now, eh?”
“No, Toshi, I won’t.”
“No more cream. Better vegetables.”
“Yes, Toshi.”
“One more thing. Say, ‘Gochisoma deshita.’”
I repeated, “Gochisoma deshita. What does it mean? ‘White men can’t cook’?”
“It is from Buddha—a thanks to the cooks who gathered and made the food. Say it every meal.”
These days I drink jasmine tea every morning and take my turmeric supplements, as Dr. Willcox advises. I beguile guests with my inside-out maki rolls—which are much better now—and by splashing ponzu and miso over everything. I eat tofu and miso soup, more fish, less meat, more vegetables, and less dairy, and I feel all the better for it, not least because I have shed a few pounds.
My sons still clamor for tempura and sushi on a weekly basis. The Okinawan snake soup is one of Emil’s favorite travel anecdotes. He still talks fondly of the Japanese health service and the dead turtle he found on the beach on Okinawa. They remember the Japanese word for dragonfly, tombo, too, which they learned back in Sapporo. Asger still talks of the time he felled a sumo and only slightly exaggerates the size of the king crab he was introduced to.
We often look through our photographs, and, of course, over time, memories of Japan will fade, but to have seen it through the eyes of my family was a special experience. And having children in tow opened so many more doors, introduced us to so many more people, and afforded us a far greater latitude for appalling behavior than might otherwise have been the case.
Japan will always be there; we will return, and the food will awe us once more. Perhaps most reassuring of all is that Shizuo Tsuji’s fears of a disappearing culinary tradition seem largely unfounded. Japanese cuisine is changing, of course; I don’t think Tsuji-san would have wanted it otherwise. Though the worrying trend toward a Western diet continues and is bringing with it all the health problems we are facing in the West, with people like Kanae Okada at the Kamebishi soy company, Hattori-san, or Tony Flenley with his pungent miso, Masakatsu Takayasu and his healthy salt, and, of course, Yoshiki Tsuji, I think the traditions and future of Japanese cuisine are in safe, passionate, and capable hands.