ANYONE WITH AN appreciation of fine cooking can recount memorable meals. Most of ours had been set in Japan, and we started to wonder what it was that set apart these meals from others. What elements contribute to a diner’s enjoyable experience of Japanese food? Are these different for non-Japanese food, and why? Without a clear idea of what a Japanese fine dining experience is like, it is impossible to analyse it. Here is a recreation of one of those meals.
We met Yukiko at the entrance to Shinjuku station, from which it was a short walk to the restaurant she had chosen. Yukiko was an interior coordinator for a major home construction company and her excellent taste naturally extended to food. Several years before she had introduced Jeanne to an innovative restaurant, and the fusion of Mediterranean techniques with Japanese ingredients and condiments served on handcrafted stoneware plates was impressive. Prepared as we were, our expectations fell short of reality.
It was the end of August, and summer’s oppressive humidity had abated somewhat, and even in the confines of Shinjuku’s monstrous forest of buildings, tepid breezes, if not precisely cool, were a relief. Shinjuku -one of Japan’s, if not the world’s, greatest entertainment quarters – is all excitement. Kilometres of fluorescent lights, enough to light a medium-sized city, millions of people, hundreds of smells, shops and bars and entertainment places announcing their wares with pictures, photos, wax models of food, beckoning touts.
We followed Yukiko into the entrance of an inconspicuous five-storey building sandwiched between two others whose glass fronts reflected a garishly lit pachinko parlour on the other side of the street. As the door closed behind us, we also left the raucous atmosphere behind us and entered a completely different setting. From the awesome Teshigahara-style flower arrangement whose size (and spotlights) dominated the marble foyer, through the muted grey and pink kimono of the maitre d’ who welcomed us, all signalled contemporary and vibrant elegance.
The restaurant, Tsunohazu, occupied the entire building, and we were ushered to a lift that whisked us to our floor. Our room, narrow and long, had a long bar of highly polished black wood running the length of one wall. Lining the other wall were low enclosures that framed booths for parties of four. There was a small flower arrangement and a scroll in a tokonoma (decorative niche). Most Japanese restaurants with Western-style chairs rarely feature decorative niches in addition to the main floral arrangement at the entrance. Exclusive gourmet establishments (ryōtei) do. Tsunohazu was far from a traditional tatami-matted ryōtei – its furnishings echoed the latest in chic furniture design from Milan and other European capitals. Shown to our places, still talking among ourselves, we had time to talk and drink while waiting for the luncheon that Yukiko ordered.
The first course, labelled a lemon nabe (pot), exemplified the eclecticism and seasonal fit of Japanese cuisine. A medium-sized lemon had been hollowed out and filled with a slightly tart granité of Japanese pears (nashi mizore ae) which served as a sauce for a colourful melange of shellfish meats, soft seaweed bits, diced cucumber, and red radish.
After this mouth-refreshing sorbet came the appetiser. Each of us received a gleaming black lacquered board, about 20 x 30 cm, on which small objects had been artfully arranged, seemingly haphazardly: small white fish-balls (tsukimi dango) representing the (forthcoming) autumn moon; deep golden fried slices of fish (sanma kenchin-yaki); slices of tiny purple aubergine, sweet and tender, adorned with a chestnut puree (kurumi tofu yaki nasu); small shrimp, parboiled and mounded with roe (seou ebi); and seasoned roasted chestnut meats that had been restuffed into fresh green-spined shells.
The arrangement on the black lacquer suggested the scattering of leaves and fruit as summer melds into autumn, to which of course the chestnuts, seasonal fish, fish-balls, as well as the nabe (stewing pot) of the previous dish also hinted.
Some of the qualities of taste and texture were surprising, as were the numerous allusions to autumn interwoven with those to the season we both thought we were still very definitely in. Our seasonal savvy was out of synch obviously: the occasional comforting breezes signalled the cusp of autumn, which we had ignored. Or rather, we had not been attuned to the subtlety of the season’s turning. Our attention had been directed by the reiteration of autumnal offerings in the menu.
The crisp-looking tsukimi dango were surprisingly quite frothy on the tongue. The chestnuts, far from being mealy as expected, were crunchy. And above all, the visual qualities of the ingredients, the blazing colours of autumn in shiny browns, mellow yellows, and dark reds, set against the background of black lacquer, which itself was on a polished white pine table, heightened our sensory experience.
The next course was labelled o-wan: bowl. A bowl can contain rice, of course, or soup, but in this case, as expected (and greatly appreciated) it contained a steamed soup-custard: matsutake dobin mushi. The chef was being doubly playful. Chowan mushi is a steamed savoury custard, much appreciated in the colder months. It is normally served in a tea bowl hence the name (cha = tea; wan = bowl), but here the custard had been made and steamed in individual small teapots, evoking the original name without actually mentioning it, and, by inserting the highly valued (and priced) autumnal matsutake pine mushrooms, the chef unequivocally set the meal more solidly into its seasonal context (if by chance the previous elements had failed to convince us). One of the great charms of chawan mushi is that the custard hides various treasures, much like raisins in an English custard, to add interest to its fairly bland texture. In this case slices of fragrant brown matsutake were the main attraction. There were chunks of savoury grilled hamo (pike conger, or pike eel), old ivory-coloured gingko nuts and, for visual, textural and taste contrast, mandarin segments, peeled and lightly marinated in rice vinegar.
It being autumn also meant the start of the shun or proper season for katsuo, a small relative of the tuna that swarms through the Black Current that kisses the Pacific coast of Japan at that time. In November, particularly, its flesh is considered at its peak. The next dish – katsuo tataki – featured succulent triangles of flash-seared and then ice-dipped katsuo fillet, the smoky flavour of its charred outer surfaces a foil to the tenderness of the garnet-coloured, glistening rare centre. Accompaniments were chopped green onions and a sauce of mildly sour ponzu (citron) and soy sauce.
This piscean steak tartare was contrasted with a yakimono (“cooked thing”) - a morsel of sea bass wrapped in filo pastry to form a Japanese flavoured Western-style “pie” (suzuki hosho pai tsutsumi), a marvelous blend of Japanese and Western techniques. This was served with two minuscule mounds of lightly cooked vegetables – aromatic gobo (burdock root, a characteristic element in stews and other cold-weather dishes) and juicy-sweet Japanese spinach leaves, stems and pink-tinged root tops.
A stew – nimono – followed. In a rich stock, yuba (dried sheets of tofu, that most versatile of foods) had been gently simmered and now floated like folded scrolls of creamy velum. Some soft, spongy Daitokuji-fu (Daitoku-temple style fried gluten) had been added, as a French chef would croutons. In the broth as well were hand-rolled noodles of newly-harvested soba (buckwheat). These dark-flecked noodles with their robust wholemeal-like colour and taste and al dente texture were ideally partnered with the mountain vegetables (sansai) - lily bulbs and wild greens – in Yoshino-style, that is battered and stewed in kuzu (arrowroot) flour. The stew, perhaps more than anything else, reflected Japanese preferences for a subtle variety of textures – crisp, soft, slick, smooth within the same dish. The mainstays of frugal stews and ascetic diets – dried tofu, gluten, wild vegetables, coarse buckwheat – embody the warmth, flavour, and comfort of the countryside (inaka) and home cooking (haha no aji, “mother’s taste”), and serve as reminders of simpler, albeit harsher, times when wild vegetables and fungi, painstakingly harvested in the mountains throughout the milder seasons, as well as persimmons, sweet potatoes, radishes, pounded rice cakes (mochi), and tofu were dried (the latter, “freeze-dried” in the Snow Country) and stored for the colder months. Here in a sophisticated setting and more refined method of cooking and serving, these simple ingredients merely serve as harbingers of the forthcoming cold.
The contrast of the stew in texture, provenance, and freshness with the next dish could not have been sharper: shun no tempura, a selection of seasonal vegetables and small pieces of fish tempura-style. Small portions of the freshest ingredients dipped in a chilled, light batter, and immediately fried in sesame-scented oil. The result – unsurprising, since Tsunohazu’s origins were in a tempura shop – were golden clouds, crunchy on the outside, preserving the perfect fresh flavour of the seasonal offerings. Miniature aubergines, sweet and soft, a slice of orange-fleshed sweet potato, another of Japanese squash, its malachite-green peel peeking through its crisp batter gilding, were served with a traditional sauce of soy, fish stock, grated ginger and radish. With its broad visual and textural similarity to beignets, fritto misto, camarron rebozado and other Western batter-fried dishes, tempura is one dish which non-Japanese take to with great ease. It is sociolinguistically amusing that while the origin of the word tempura is ascribed by Japanese lexicography to Spanish tempora (“fasting day meals”) or Portuguese tempero (“cooking, preparation”), modern Portuguese or Spanish cookbooks call batter-fried dishes “rebozado” or “frito”.
No Japanese meal would be complete without cooked rice, which for many Asian cultures defines a proper meal. Here the chef teases the customer: the next dish was labelled oshokuji (meal) on the menu. A meal within a meal, as it were, the defining moment of the event and a witticism on gohan – cooked rice – which is the common word for food. In this case rice, in the form of mushroom gruel (kinoko zosui), was simmered till soft but not mushy in light stock and garnished with half-opened parasols of beige-grey shimeji mushrooms, aromatic trefoil leaves (mitsuba) and a minuscule mound of the restaurant’s original salt pickles. Called by the courtly word kono-mono (perfumed things), these homely salt-cured vegetables almost inevitably accompany rice. Steaming hot, glistening white rice, home-cured pickles, and miso soup (miso shim) constitute the most basic yet complete module of a Japanese meal (ichijū issai, “one soup, one vegetable” [rice is tacit]), and are evocative of rurality, home foods, and personal comfort.
Finally, we had mizugashi (“water sweets”), a classic reference to fresh fruits and nuts, and now used for a final sweet course. Doubtless in concession to the old and new waves of culinary imports, we had cream cheesecake with arrowroot sauce (kurīmu chīzu honkatsuyose), a delicate cube of exquisite melting creaminess, lapped with a translucent slightly tart sauce, and teamed with a mini-scoop of freshly made white peach sherbet. The plate was scattered with a few ruby-red grains of pomegranate, and three enormous Kyōhō grapes, each the size of a small plum, the peel half-bared to reveal and contrast with the juicy translucent flesh. Coffee, which by now has become one of the national drinks of Japan, concluded the meal, which, though considerably hastened at our request, still lasted almost three hours.
It was a most exquisite repast, a veritable feast of the senses. It was a multi-layered experience that involved the seasons, manifold textures and tastes, novel combinations of ingredients and cooking techniques, and aroused aesthetic enjoyment in the colours, presentation, and choice eating and serving implements used throughout. Moreover the service was neither obsequious nor lacking in attention. To say that we were euphoric at the end would not seem an exaggeration of how the three of us felt. However, had we not had some knowledge and previous experience of similar feasts, our appreciation would not have been as keen. Looking back on it and trying to objectify the experience highlights several stark issues. How does one translate the personal, intensely individual experience of this meal to another? What is the relationship between what anthropologists call the “emic” – the realm of personal experience, personal evaluation, personal emotional response – and the “etic” – those parts that can be described “objectively” or at least materially?
Clearly we could describe this late summer-early autumn meal in one of several ways. We could simply give the menu, provide a list of recipes, describe what we saw, or, with some difficulty, what we tasted and felt. But it is very clear that none of those would encompass the totality of the experience, nor, perhaps, would it make clear to any reader, how these discrete elements came together to make a memorable meal, nor why. To make sense of this, or any other meal, we therefore decide, in a sense, to start at the beginning: to introduce the reader to Japanese food as we ourselves were introduced, and to unfold, in clear stages inasmuch as is possible, how this meal, as a sort of prototype for any Japanese meal, comes about. In a way, what we are about to embark upon is something like unfolding a complicated origami paper folding: taking a miniaturised whole, and disassembling it, unfolding it to see the marvellous structure it enfolds.
The discovery of any food system starts with the shock of the unknown as it crosses one’s sensory faculties. Until the point at which ‘strangeness’ is recognised by one’s palate or nose or eye, the diner is still in the land of the familiar. Attempting to characterise the strangeness is something that is often hard to do because the experience is totally subjective. “This is salty’ or “that is sweet’ are statements that are, at best, rough approximations of sensations that have, at their base, levels of individual memory and experience tagged on to them. It is when you want to identify a specific “taste point”, as it were, along the continuum of sweetness or saltiness – ‘not salty enough’ or ‘too sweet’ – that you get into the complexity of individually and culturally learned thresholds of acceptable or appropriate taste or balance of tastes. The elaborate devices invented by oenologists to describe the taste of wine are at best poor analogies (what, after all, does ‘flinty’ mean to most of us?) and at worse appear to be a source of disbelief and amusement to the layperson.
All this is to say that trying to interpret a food system to those unfamiliar with it is fraught with some unusual difficulties. To start with, therefore, we look at a plain Japanese meal from the vantage point of the outsider, the newcomer, the novice:
The first Japanese meal I ate was a teishoku (set-menu) of yakiniku, rice, miso shiru, and pickles. It was memorable not because good – on thinking back, it was eaten in a dingy and cheap students’ eatery but because of its strange sensory qualities.
Yakiniku consists of thin slices of meat (usually pork) sautéed with soy sauce and salt and slices of onion. Served on a plate decorated with parsley, it was familiar enough not to invite comment (by my unconscious mind or my taste buds). As with all teishoku, or complete meals, it came with a bowl of white steamed rice (which I expected) and a bowl of unfamiliar soup.
The physical properties of miso shim soup are such that the clear broth (the dashi) is obscured by a cloud of miso bean paste. There are characteristic tiny “whirlpools”: wells of clear stock that penetrate through the tiny clouds so that you can see the lacquered bottom of the bowl. On that occasion, the miso shiru was garnished by pure white cubes of what I was to later learn was tofu bean curd.
In contrast to the meat and rice, this was unknown territory indeed. What were the white cubes, and why were they virtually tasteless? And why did the liquid separate into two layers? Should these be stirred together, or, as in Turkish coffee (which I was familiar with), left to separate? And what was the soup made of in any case? Fortunately there was a group of us present, some more knowledgeable with Japanese food. Someone matter-of-factly picked up the soup bowl, gave it a brisk stir with a pair of chopsticks, and sipped some of the contents straight from the bowl.
The pickles too caused a dilemma of a different sort. They crunched. Loudly. Was that appropriate? Did one accept the domain of noise into polite company? Apparently one did. I crunched loudly.
The utensils provided some difficulty as well. Chopsticks were familiar, but these were waribashi, cheap wooden chopsticks that consisted of a thin slip of wood almost, but not quite, bisected lengthwise by a cut. In separating them, I ended up with two uneven pieces of wood, which did not make the meal any easier.
Now, the meal described here was, on any scale of events, a very simple one. Given the place Michael was eating in (and the state of his student finances), it was far from haute cuisine in any sense of the word. Its very newness was intriguing, fascinating. It evoked new sensations, as well as triggering new ideas about taste, about relationships between foods: things that every individual carries about since childhood. That simple student meal is difficult to forget not because it was great cooking, but because, simple as it was, it cast new light – sensory experiences, taste, sight, texture, handedness – on what he had perceived as food. Michael ate it soon after arriving in Japan as a graduate student, and the questions it has raised came to be answered now, more than twenty years later.
THE DIFFICULTIES WE faced on those early occasions with Japanese meals illustrate some of the issues that are significant for understanding the domain of food and of eating. More perhaps than in other domains, the domain of food involves sets of arrayed rules in many dimensions. Aesthetics of sight and of taste compete with those of social consequence and usage. Different modes of service are determined by place, time, and company. These rules are inherent in the foods one eats, and one ignores them at peril.
Some of the dimensions that played a part in the initial meal can be highlighted. These are objective dimensions of any food act. Taste, utensils and presentation, texture, social circumstances, foodstuffs used are some things that can and ought to be considered when examining this “food event”.
The idea of an “event” is crucial for the discussion throughout this book. There is nothing more personal, and thus more subjective, than eating. And even an understanding of the physical properties involved, what anthropologists call an “etic” description, does little to change the intersubjectivity.
The apparent groping about the subject above is done to good purpose. Not to confuse the reader, but to emphasise the idea that the basis for understanding a food system must be founded on some form of description and analysis that attempts (as much as is possible) to be objective and replicable in clearly defined units, so that the indefinable, unquantifiable elements of the analysis can at least be circumscribed and dealt with. These elements are such that they are not only unquantifiable (and can thus only be explained by allusion and analogy) but they also raise strong feelings, sensory and emotional, as Jeanne remembers:
A round lacquered tray of sushi was set in front of me on a visit to a friend’s house, not long after I’d arrived in Japan. Although I could appreciate the beauty of the arrangement, the colours, and shapes against the shiny lacquer, I couldn’t get over the gagging sensation I felt at the thought of eating fish raw. I had always loved fish and seafood and had been tempted by the colourful display counter of the sushi bar near my school in Fuchu. Why I, who relished raw oysters, couldn’t enjoy sushi or sashimi was beyond me. I couldn’t leave the food untouched obviously. I started with the cooked ones first – prawns, grilled eel, octopus. Then feeling very brave, I progressed to the raw ones, choking them down, the feel of the raw fish barely overcome by the comforting taste of rice. I gulped tea hurriedly to wash down the uncomfortable sensation of raw gobbets. Then I observed a bright yellow-orange piece more closely. It looked familiar, and took me back to childhood summers by the sea with memories of picnics under coconut trees. It was sea-urchin roe, a delicacy that often featured on those feasts, either grilled in their spiny shells over coals or raw, and much loved by my mother. The sweet creaminess of the familiar delicacy was intoxicating. The sensation carried over to the other less familiar pieces, and this time I could chew more slowly, linger over the complex tastes and textures in my mouth, and truly savour what I was eating. Sushi became one of my favourites.
Taste is inherently a matter of both objective factors and the stimulus and contextualisation of memory. The aesthetics of food are dominated by previous experience, perhaps to a greater degree than other senses. Whatever the reason, food changes are difficult to analyse precisely because taste is subject to memory, perhaps greatly to memories of childhood comfort, and because the emitter of the sensation – the food itself – is destroyed in the process of sensory appreciation.
The anecdotes above illustrate some of the principles we are to explore here. First is the interplay between subjective emotion and experience, and objective phenomena that are a part of the food act. Each of these meals evoked individual feelings and emotions based on experience and past history. Second, each of the meals described was a social event bound by rules which, initially at least, may be unknown to the outside observer, and certainly unknown to Jeanne and Michael in their first Japanese meals. These rules determine things we take for granted, unconsciously, about a range of issues: which foods go with which, what sensory feelings are appropriate, who is eating, and so forth. These are rules that each of us, a member of a particular society, “knows” and accepts without thought, much less introspection. Third, there is also a further, objective dimension inherent in, though not exemplified by, the descriptions above: the dimension of social action. Of the three meal descriptions, two occurred in public places. Different observations would have been made under other conditions. The relationship between domestic and public food events, between the different sorts of “public” events, and between foods and behaviours appropriate to each, must be explored as well.
Our view is therefore structured by the attempt to understand what the rules of Japanese cuisine are, and the need to do so without, insofar as it is possible, alienating the reader from the very personal experience that is implicit in any food system. This book is, then, among other things, an attempt to come to grips with the contrast between individually felt experience and objectively viewed reality.
WE AIM IN this book to provide a reasoned overview of the relationship between Japan’s culture and its cuisine, and in particular, to highlight how changes occur in this cuisine. In doing so, we also accomplish two subsidiary objectives. We introduce the reader to the world of Japanese food, which, to most non-Japanese, is a strange and opaque field, known more by its difference from the norms with which the European reader is familiar, than for its own qualities. We also bolster some of the theoretical ideas relating cuisine to culture which have been suggested in relation to Western cultures, and show how they apply to Japan as well.
The book is not aimed solely at a target audience of our fellow Japanese specialists. Much of what we say here about Japanese society has been said elsewhere in greater detail and with greater scope. The reader who is not familiar with Japan will find here a brief introduction to Japanese society, which, if it arouses interest, is best pursued by additional reading. What this book does offer, for both the specialist and the non-specialist, is an overview of the relationship between Japan’s elaborate and complex cultural choices, and the no-less elaborate culinary ones. We focus, not unnaturally, on issues that have relevance to the realm of food culture. It is these that we are interested in highlighting, dealing in passing, as we do, with other cultural and social features. In practice, what we have done is used issues that arise in the realm of food to tie them to other cultural and historical issues that can be seen in Japanese society today.
The method we used to describe the data on which this book is based is a direct result of the sort of goal we were trying to achieve. An understanding of the subjective experience – ours or anyone’s – of food, poses a serious problem of reliability. To put it simply, are our personal observations generalisable to the general public? This is a particular problem given that any individual’s taste and memory change over time, and that the chemistry of the senses is affected by personal health, emotional state, and previous experiences.1 This has meant that the methodological strategy had to answer to sometimes contradictory requirements. On the one hand, it had to deal with individual experience, on the other, the results had to apply to the Japanese population as a whole, or at least, we had to be able to claim, to apply to a significant proportion of it. Thus this book is a quintessentially personal account bolstered by reference to other research. There were two of us involved, so there is some check on flights of fancy and purely individual experience, but given that we are dealing here with the realm of the senses above all, and with a realm that is particularly evanescent, we have intruded more, as persons into the matter of this book, than we would in a drier, more “objectifiable” subject. We agree too, that had others written this book, the results might have been different at the experiential and sensory level, though, we maintain, that the theoretical conclusions would likely have been much the same. Whatever the case, and as a challenge to the reader, we can only suggest one thing: try the cuisine we are about to examine further along. Come to your own conclusions. Happily, they will approximate, in general if not in detail, our own.
In practice, the data derive from a number of sources. Our diaries and letters over a period of some twenty years are one source. In an unsystematic manner, both of us have collected recipes and food anecdotes since our (individual) arrivals in Japan – Jeanne in 1971, Michael in 1975 – and through subsequent years of residence there, as well as occasional visits.
Systematic data were collected initially as part of Michael’s study of matsuri (festivals) and Jeanne’s study of folk craftsmen. Later, a comparative collection of data through interviews and questionnaires was conducted in 1990/91. More data was collected during an extensive field trip in 1996. In addition, we have secured verbal, printed and electronic data from a variety of sources including questioning friends and acquaintances about their experiences, collections of food wrappers, brochures, magazines, flyers, and other food-related items, accessing discussion groups on the Internet, and so on. We spoke to (“interviewed” is too structured a term here, given the circumstances) people in restaurants, bars, shoppers at food shops and supermarkets, vendors, and anyone else who crossed our path.
It has taken many years for anthropologists, among others, to come to the realisation that their attempt to write “science” has a great many flaws. Partly these are attributable to a general problem in the “soft” social and human sciences, as opposed to the “hard” ones: molecules don’t talk back; humans do. Nuclear physicists, faced with Heisenberg’s problem (where the very act of observation corrupts the “purity” of the observed subject), have learned to live with uncertainty. The same is gradually becoming true of social scientists. One consequence of this (gradual) realisation has been to experiment with the end product: the academic monograph. This has taken too many forms to explore here. But we were both dissatisfied with the dry, “objective” tone that has been commonly used. Particularly because, as we argue throughout, food is an inherently intimate and personal experience. As an intentional result, we, the authors, appear far more often, and are present to a much greater degree, than academic readers, at least, may feel appropriate. By and large, we were the only tools we had. Our own impressions of what we saw and heard, and no less importantly, what we tasted and smelled, form the basis of much of what is said here. We recognise that this “subjectivises” many of the issues, and to the best of our ability, we have provided signposts allowing the reader, wherever possible, to experiment on the same subjects, and to experience the same, or, given the nature of food, similar, experiences.
To follow onto the immediacy of the experience, we have also experimented with the ways in which we have referenced this book. Rather than interpolating references throughout the text, we have provided a short list of the main readings for each chapter at the chapter’s end. The references section at the end of the book includes all references we have consulted. Only when we are responding directly to some statement have we made references in the body. Hopefully this will make for smoother reading, and be less intimidating to those readers without academic axes to grind.
EXOTIC THOUGH IT may seem in some ways to an outsider, Japanese cuisine must, as all cuisines do, have a logic of its own. All cultural institutions are a derivative of numerous factors which can roughly be subsumed under social responses to natural phenomena, mechanical solutions to energetic problems, and the effects of historical processes and accidents. That is to say that people arrange their lives in pragmatic ways to deal with their surroundings, and the solutions they come up with are conditioned, but not absolutely determined, by their past individual and mutual histories.
It is perhaps trite, but nonetheless important to reiterate that food has been more closely bound to nature than many other human institutions. The emergence of modernity, from the point of view of cuisine, is the gradual detachment of a cuisine from its natural ecological surroundings, whether from the climatic dictates of certain kinds of crops, the seasonal dictates of the annual cycle, the bondage to ephemerality and rot, or the need to supply local fuels. Where food has been so “modernised” it has both benefited (in the form of greater flexibility and more variety) and suffered (in the form of lowering standards of taste and the creation of low common denominators).
We cannot therefore ignore modernisation factors if we are to speak of any cuisine, not the least of Japan. Japanese society, and its cuisine, have undergone a radical transformation over the past century that has been far more radical than many other cultures, because most Japanese have wholeheartedly embraced these changes, and, in the past thirty years or so, been the initiators of many of them. Changes in Japanese cuisine can only be understood if we also understand the recent historical changes that have overtaken individual and domestic life, technologies ranging from the railway (which turned the Edo period’s taste for mass pilgrimage into the twentieth century’s mass tourism) to refrigeration (which made possible the consumption of Sashimi to all, not just seaside dwellers), and the nation as a whole. So a primary issue here is to ask ourselves about the relationship between Japanese culture as a whole, and its cuisine. Mennel’s (1985) discussion of the relationship between class and culinary movement, and Goody’s (1982) argument that cuisines essentially depend on class point the way here. As Japanese society has mutated from an overtly vertically segmented society into something more fluid, we can and should expect changes in the process of food consumption, the adoption of new and varied foods, and the preferences for particular food forms. And this is only the social aspect of cuisine. So, in broad strokes, we want to understand how Japanese culture and Japanese cuisine are related, how they mutually affect one another, if at all. Superficially, this might seem to be a superfluous question: don’t culture and cuisine affect one another? And yet, in the context of contemporary life, economy, and modern communications, we feel this question has to be made overt.
It is also necessary to address questions about specific items in Japanese cuisine, how they come about, their interrelationship, and how they and not others, are chosen to become a part of the “national cuisine.” Related to that, of course, is the question of what is the national cuisine in Japan? Is there such a thing at all, or has Japan’s constant and consistent preference for foreign and new things brought about an excision of its own nature?
To put these questions in some sort of structured form, so as not to be overwhelmed, we addressed ourselves to several questions. What do the Japanese eat (and we recognise that “the Japanese” in this context, as in any other generalisation, is a crude, perhaps misleading abstract)? Why (as a historical question, and as a question of the interaction of various social and cultural forces) do they eat those things? In other words, what mechanisms of choice are in operation to cause some things, rather than others, to be eaten. And finally, we can ask what sorts of effects these choices have on other aspects of Japanese lives, how does cuisine in its various aspects, affect other areas of Japanese life?
1.4The Organisation of the Book
IN THIS CHAPTER we started by providing several anecdotes illustrating different food events in Japan. Following this, the chapter elaborates on the sorts of problems that the book raises. In Chapter 2 we discuss the theoretical problems that will be dealt with, both in the context of other writings about food in general, and in the specific Japanese context. Chapter 3 introduces the reader to the parallel histories of Japanese culture and society, and its food history and current food sources. We have not attempted a historian’s survey of Japanese history, partly because we are not professional historians, but more importantly, because we are only interested in those aspects of Japanese history which have a bearing on food. Chapter 4 provides an analytical description of a Japanese meal. It shows not only how meals are structured but also why, and discusses the elements that allow (or restrict) internal variation. We also connect the structure of Japanese meals with a Japanese cultural and aesthetic preference for modularity, and show how this is utilised in meals as well as other domestic and social arrangements. Where Chapter 4 deals with how Japanese meals are constructed, Chapter 5 deals with how foodstuffs are dealt with, that is, with methods of food preparation. It is these cooking methods, or “styles” that determine and define food “loci”: places where food is prepared and consumed, which are dealt with in Chapter 6. The different food styles (e.g. sushi and tempura) determine the “positioning” (in a marketing as well as geographical and cultural sense) of Japanese food loci, including the home (where certain foods, but not others are likely to be found), restaurants, bars, and other places. We also discuss how these different places affect one another, and are interrelated through the media, marketing networks, and the different types of meals. In Chapter 7 we start our discussion of the mutual effects of Japanese aesthetics and food. We examine the aesthetic principles of Japanese food and its presentation, as well as showing where these originate from. Chapter 8 tackles the issue from a different viewpoint, as we look at Japanese food culture as a system of rules that is learned by members of the culture. We see how these rules are formed, and how they contribute to retention of practices, as well as to changes in Japanese culture. In Chapter 9 we discuss the art of dining by returning once again to the “meal” as a focus of discussion. We show how various principles discussed earlier can illuminate these food events, by describing and analysing several such events. Here we look at the act of eating as a performative and multi-dimensional act in its own. That is, as a form of artwork in which producers and consumers participate together. We conclude the book by detailing in Chapter 10 some of the lessons that can be learned from the Japanese experience with food, and from our own study of Japanese food culture. We discuss several issues which have broad implications in, as well as, outside Japanese cuisine.
1.5Technical Note: Words, Pronunciation, and Glosses
INEVITABLY, IN A work such as this, a great many unfamiliar terms are going to creep in. In fact, given the nature of the subject, they are inevitable. We have tried to be parsimonious in their use. However, to clarify things for the reader unfamiliar with the terminology and the conventions of writing Japanese, we have provided a number of aids.
In the text, the first instance of a new term is followed by a brief gloss in brackets, which may suffice for many readers. The Japanese language has a number of double vowels: ō, ū, ē, whose “long” sounds we have indicated by the use of a macron. Japanese terms used in the text are also explained briefly in a glossary at the back of the book. Where possible and necessary we have also included scientific names, such as for the names of fish and plants, in the glossary.
We have also based many of our opinions, and some of our data, on those of others. Particularly influential have been authors such as Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Jack Goody, Mary Douglas, Ishige Naomichi, Marvin Harris, and Stephen Mennel. Japanese names have been written in the Japanese style, that is, surname first. Where we have used someone’s name in a personal context, we have usually added the honorific “-san.”
Goody, Jack 1982 Cooking, Cuisine, and Class.
Harris, Marvin 1988 Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture.
Khare, R.S. 1980 “Food as nutrition and culture: Notes towards an anthropological methodology”.
Mennell, Stephen 1985 All Manners of Food.
1Not to mention the quantities of alcohol consumed, a problem that bedevils all anthropologists, and particularly those working in societies such as Japan in which alcohol is considered a necessary accompaniment to almost all social interactions, especially food. As a general rule of thumb, the higher the alcohol intake, the better and more copious the data, the worse the ability to record it in comprehensible form.