FOOD PREPARATION AND consumption take place at a specific place – a locus -in Japan as elsewhere. The loci are divided, in Japan as elsewhere, between domestic and public loci. The distinctions between these go much farther than an assumption of plain/homey and fancy. To understand the loci, one must also understand some of the social background which forms them in modern Japanese society.
Moreover, unusually, the domestic and public spheres (in cuisine) are much more highly segregated, for reasons that will become clear below, than in many other countries. In fact, we can see the operation of the principle of compartmentalisation, so important throughout Japanese culture.
European food history, while it cannot serve as a template or analogy for Japanese cuisine, offers some interesting parallels. The emergence of modern European food styles was a consequence of three factors. The native foods of the post medieval period were largely of local origin. There were few “public” places to eat, with the exception of taverns. The meals of commoners and of aristocracy were different largely in terms of the amounts of foods served and in the relative scarcity of some of the food items. This changed rapidly in the period encompassing the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
First, the growing trade with spice- and exotic-food producing areas radically changed European food. Spices such as pepper and nutmeg filtered down to the lower classes as European colonial ambitions, to a large part fuelled by a hunger for those spices, continued to spread. Non-spice staples such as chocolate, tea, sugar, and coffee created major changes in preference, and the staple foods changed as well.
Second, the singular events of the French revolution, whatever deleterious effects they may have had on parts of the European population, were highly beneficial to European cuisine. French aristocrats, deprived of their estates, migrated to England and the US. Separated from their wealth yet hungering for the comforts of home, they opened restaurants and served as domestic cooks, necessarily modifying the heavy canons of aristocratic cuisine for the lighter, more accessible dishes and meals they were forced to partake of. By doing so, they created the standard of European meals – the course dinner – which still exists today, whether as the British family’s Sunday roast or the French family’s main meal.
Finally, by the nineteenth century, technological and social innovations began to affect the kitchen. Technology brought about better means of preserving (and thus marketing) food, better and smaller kitchen furnishings and utensils. Social innovations brought a rise in the number of literate women, and thus, correspondingly a market for cookery books in Britain. The process of culinary innovations filtering downwards was accelerated by these processes because technically, the domestic food locus could try to emulate the kitchens of great houses, and the products of great chefs. It still takes an entire bullock to provide a potful of “proper” stock, but few restaurants or kitchens, let alone households, will go to those lengths. Chefs also adapted their menus to changing taste, and when they’ entered the burgeoning cookbook market, had to further simplify their recipes.
Norbert Elias argues (1982) that much of the change derived from the philosophical desire that became prevalent in Europe to “tame” the concept of appetite. That is, that part and parcel of the intellectual revolution of the Enlightenment and its Renaissance predecessor, was also the concept that appetites, including those for food, should be refined, controlled, and distanced from the need to stuff oneself. Whatever the merit of this argument in detail, it would seem far more reasonable to assume that the material conditions, largely deriving from technical and social innovations (such as international trade) lay at the source of the intellectual traditions. This argument is peripheral to what we are dealing with here, but it is worth keeping in mind, since the evolution of “civilised” eating in Japan, and particularly its extension in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, differed from that in Europe, and yet can be seen as parallel to it.
Japanese urban households were not suited for entertaining guests, particularly with the mass building of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In contrast the institutions of catering and of dining entertainment were well established in Japan, and gained impetus from the rise of the merchant classes during the time of Tokugawa-enforced peace. A variety of eating establishments were operating in Japan from at least the sixteenth century, encouraged perhaps by the nourishing pilgrimage industry. Many dishes of Japanese cuisine are labour-intensive, and. moreover, require a great deal of learned skill, so that a niche for specialist cooks was a very varied one. Technology, in the form, of specialist pots, pans, and so on. was a relatively minor aspect of cooking, well answered by Japanese technological prowess. Preserved foods were already well incorporated into the Japanese cuisine, and many such as sushi were refined further, but in the context of public, rather than domestic cookery. Finally, the emergence of a middle class, able to mediate between the cuisines of the upper class and that of the lower, was late in coming in Japan. When it finally emerged as a major force after World War II, the segmentation of food loci was already well established.
The interaction of ecological/technological necessity and social/cultural institutions and preferences is always a two-way street. Ecological bases create frameworks, or limits, which structure social institutions such as food distribution. Viewed from the other side, social institutions create ecological and technological conditions, such as the import of new crops, or the creation of new means of preparing familiar foods. Here it is useful to look at this relationship through the technological viewpoint. In other words, we want to see what styles of cooking are available in the Japanese canon of food preparation, and then see how this has structured food loci and contributed to the food compartmentalisation we have discussed earlier.
The food styles the Japanese public enjoys become translated, in the realm of the public consumption of foods, into specialist food-loci. These specialist eating places complement, and must be viewed in complement to the household, where most food is consumed for most people. Each of these loci provides slightly different implications for service, for social grouping, for presentation, and for infra-food issues such as economics. The loci of food consumption, in Japan as elsewhere, tend to cluster around two poles. On the one hand are private, or closed loci: the home, private parties or rituals, groups of people related socially in some way The other pole is that of public consumption which is accessible, or at least visible, to people not of the group. Of course, to some degree there is a mixing of these two poles, with one or another locus belonging to both, or shifting for a given instance, towards the other pole. Public restaurants may close their door for the owner’s private party, or families may join a neighbourhood picnic. Nonetheless, there are significant differences in style and meaning, for different loci.
IN THE MORNING we looked out through the wide panoramic window of the Okuyamas’ house. Far in the distance, past the busy town, the green checks of the rice fields, the wooded slopes of the other side of the Omono river valley, towered the white, almost perfect cone of “Ugo Fuji” – Mount Chōkai – in solitary glory. Directly below the window came the susurrus of the wind passing through a small cedar grove. From the mountain at our backs came the slight scent of pines and cedars, tinged with wood smoke.
Near the house, Shunzō was preparing fuki (sweet coltsfoot) which he had picked that morning. He had built a small fire outside in the yard on which he was boiling a large can of water. Stripping away the broad leaves, he had left the stalks, which after blanching, were peeled and put to one side. In the house, Miyako was preparing breakfast, which we soon went in to eat.
“But, first,” said Shunzō in his usual impish, slightly shy, but definitely inarguable manner, “we need something to drink. Have a beer.” Jeanne could refuse gracefully, but Michael had to sit through a couple of cans of Heineken while breakfast was being served. At each setting were a set of dishes. A flat rectangular plate held two slices of roast beef. A smaller bowl held intensely flavoured tsukudani (vegetables boiled down in soy-sauce), and a grilled fillet of small mackerel with the skin and head (but no tail). In the middle of the table Miyako had placed two bowls, one of the fuki that had been prepared earlier by Shunzō, the other of large soft umeboshi. The pickled plums and the cooked vegetables were salty, awakening, and added flavour to the fresh rice, which Miyako brought along with bowls of miso shiru.
The breakfast we ate that day was exceptional, not because of our friend’s particular preferences in drink (very few households, in our experience, have beer as a morning drink) but because it epitomised a “proper” Japanese breakfast. The elements were all there: the rice staple and miso shim, okazu offish and pickles. In truth however, even in that small scene, there are some additional data that ought to be considered.
Breakfast the following day was different. Miyako admitted that she likes coffee and drinks it every day. For breakfast we had two slices of ham folded over and resting on some sliced cabbage with two slices of cucumber as garnish. With it came rice, and a miso shim with a tofu piece and some radish. Several central plates contained the okazu: soft umeboshi, matsulake (pine mushroom) and radish pickle, and a tsukudani. All of these were in square nested plates with a patterned blue glaze. A large blue bowl in the centre of the table cradled a mound of rice-bran pickled mini aubergines. Beside it stood a Western-style plate of oranges. Each had been quartered, the middle pith cut off, and each slice cut halfway along the peel to release the flesh.
The ladies enjoyed a morning cup of coffee in Western cups of a brownish rough glaze, whereas the men drank beer in glazed Japanese teacups. A large glass plate of morning glory flowers on the vine was in the middle of the table.
The beer here comes into its own as a highlight of the attitude Japanese have for meals in general, and breakfast in particular: it is highly amenable to experimentation. Shunzō is by no means an alcoholic, and is, in fact, one of the most abstemious Japanese we know. The beer was drunk not for its alcoholic-high, but because it served to mark him as “modern” and, more importantly, because it was an experiment in aesthetics and taste: was it, or was it not appropriate for such a meal? This sort of question has been repeated in our acquaintance many times: on other occasions he has tried butter (served in slices, to be eaten with a fork, both standard butter, and that peculiarly Japanese invention, raisin-embedded butter), cheesecake (both reya, that is gelatine, and baked cheesecakes), and more recently, flavoured processed cheeses (natural, smoked, and strawberry). Miyako’s rather shy admission that she loves coffee is of a piece as well. In terms of amount drunk, variety, number of places where one can drink, and quality of the drink, coffee certainly ranks today as Japan’s national drink, far eclipsing tea, and even possibly beer. Certainly the Japanese economy, in its best years, has ensured a steady supply of such gourmet delicacies as Blue Mountain coffee, which is available (notwithstanding its small production area in Jamaica) throughout Japan. Shunzō’s experiments with food, odd as they may be to a prejudiced European eye, are completely orthodox in two senses. First, they exemplify the fascination Japanese culture has with the exotic and the foreign. And, second, because the context of these new and foreign foods (and other items as well) has not necessarily been conveyed along with the item, Japanese feel free to experiment, to break what to an observer from the donating culture concerned, would be a terrible mis-alliance: strawberry flavoured cheese? Well why not?
For the “average” Japanese household the food consumed is a compromise between a number of pressures. Finances obviously play a major part, with the availability of particular foods determined in the first instance by the amount of the household budget, which is determined by the income-generating activities of the household. In the second instance, the income of the household also determines the arrangement, furnishing, and equipping of the food preparation areas. Until the end of the nineteen-eighties, almost all Japanese kitchens were small and, by comparable European standards, poorly equipped. The average size of the kitchen plus the attached dining room was often no larger than two jō. Four was about the norm. This strictly limited the number and sizes of kitchen equipment. Refrigerators were small (. 5 cu. meter). Two burner gas ranges were the norm, and ovens, including microwave ranges, a rarity. The only category of items that was highly varied was serving utensils, with many households keeping ceremonial and special sets of dishes in closets hidden beneath the eaves.
Several factors have brought about a change. First and foremost has been the move of Japanese society into a consumer-oriented economy and society. Secondarily has been a rise in the expectations not only of men, but also of women. This complex phenomenon has been brought about partly by the rise of two-career, or at least, two income-households, which in turn has fed into the consumer economy by making more disposable income available. The prioritisation of women’s needs has been a slow one in Japan. For reasons of economics – higher rate of return on electronic, versus electrical goods, and the difficulties japanese domestic appliance makers had to meet American standards – Japanese appliance makers had lagged behind in the export race. Nonetheless, several kitchen appliances were added with growing frequency to the venerable and successful rice-cooker. Smaller appliances – mixers, toaster ovens – were followed by mid-sized appliances such as ovens and microwaves in the early eighties. Large refrigerators started catching on in the early nineties with 452 litre-capacity not unusual, and more significantly, with a larger freezer section than in 1970 or 1980 models.
All this has meant that the Japanese kitchen has changed fundamentally over the past few decades, in line with changes in other aspects of the culture. With more women at work, the use of convenience foods has increased. This has taken two forms. One has been an extension of traditional services such as demae (delivered foods) and mochikaeri (take-away). These services have been provided by Japanese restaurants and cook shops since the Edo period. Second, there has been a rise in the various forms of convenience foods that require little preparation. Dried soup packets were pioneered by the Imperial Army before and during World War II. These techniques were extended to the civilian market, and became necessities with large numbers of Japanese businessmen, who, travelling abroad, felt the need for some home comfort foods. One business acquaintance of ours never left on a business trip in the seventies without a kilo or so of dried food packets to supplement his diet. Frozen ready-made dinners which required heating in a conventional or microwave oven obviously had to await the emergence of two complementary appliances: large freezers and ovens, which were not to be found in most households before the early nineties.
The availability of pre-packed and ready-made foods was also stimulated by another social factor. Throughout the post war years, Japan has seen a rise in the number of single-person households. This was brought about by the gradual rise in the age of marriage (from about 22 years old for women and 25 for men in the sixties, to about 27 and 29 in the nineties), by the decision of many women not to marry, and, peculiarly, by the requirements of the Japanese work environment. Many middle-aged businessmen, rotated throughout the organisation they were working for, must need relocate to a different part of Japan or overseas. This creates a tension with the education system under which their families live, in which any disruption of a child’s study is likely to make him or her fall behind in the race to enter a prestigious university, which, in turn, is the key to a successful career. As a result, many Japanese families split at this stage, with the wife and (school-bound) children remaining in the family home while the father/ husband/main earner is forced to relocate to another city and establish a single-person household, returning to the main household several times a year, if possible.
A consequence of the availability of individual portions of ready-to-eat and processed foods has been a broadening and greater variation not only of the Japanese diet, but also of the menus of specific households. As we have noted elsewhere in this volume, Japanese tastes have changed, but they have changed most radically for the young. Preferences for foreign foods, for meat over fish, and for the kinds of fish which, in the words of one food wholesaler “do not require them [young people] to make any effort about their food” abound. As a result, in many households certain meals, notably breakfast but also other meals, have become individual affairs, with different generations, and even individuals, eating different things from the choice of frozen individual portions.
The household menu, as we have seen, reflects the evolution of the Japanese household over time. From being a centralised, unitary cell, it is becoming far more varied and heterogeneous, with households having to make adaptations to changes in their composition and environment. This of course is true in many fields other than food as well, and we can see how these changes parallel changes in food loci outside the home.
NUMEROUS STUDIES OF restaurants demonstrate the complexity of the restaurant as a mediation locus between the public and the private. It is where people come to see and be seen, come to learn about their own and foreign culture (however sanitised and domesticated), and where the realms of domestic cooking are contrasted (in flattering or unflattering ways) with the realms of public life. The emergence of public eating places, where cuisine and not only food are served differed in scope and in time of emergence from one society to another. In European restaurants – establishments specialising in serving food on the premises, rather than as a service to travellers (inns), addenda to drinking (wine shops and taverns), or household supplements (roast shops and bake shops) emerged as common phenomena after the French revolution. Both rich and poor generally dined at home (their own and their friends). In East Asia such establishments emerged much earlier. The increasing spread of urban living in China during the T’ang dynasty (617–907 AD) and in Japan during the Edo era (1600 1868) brought about the establishment of restaurants some of which, in the Japanese case, are still extant today.
Restaurants in Europe mediated between the food of the wealthy and the aristocracy, and that of the lesser orders. They were, in short, both communication channels and nurseries for the development of cuisines. This function, unintentional and market driven as it is, and different in the context of modern Japanese society from nineteenth century Europe, continues today, as we shall see when we examine Japanese cooking. French cuisine benefited immeasurably from the emergence of the public restaurant, and the diffusion of aristocratic gastronomy to the general public via restaurants and the media structured the French fascination with, and adherence to, its national gastronomy. A similar process occurred in Japan, though with particular twists that are quintessentially Japanese.
The historical antecedents of public eating houses in Japan, like those in Europe, are in the development of food stalls in the streets, for which there is evidence from the Muromachi period (1338–1573), through the evolution of specialist tea houses (some real tea-houses, some brothels) which also catered food, particularly to travellers, through the evolution of speciality ryōriya or cookshops during the Edo period. Illustrations from the Momoyama and early Edo periods (1573–1600 and 1600–1868) show people eating in public houses. Other illustrations show peddlers selling tea and cakes or other street foods along the bridges in the capital. Another illustration, which may or may not be of a public eating place shows a group of fishermen who have set up a horizontal weir through a waterfall. The weir projects out over the river. Fish falling from the waterfall are caught in this ingenious trap, immediately cooked and served to a group of hungry diners seated further from the waterfall: fish at their absolute freshest.
Many public eating houses emerged with the rise of the urban life-style during the days of closed-country and relative economic peace in the Edo period. Most of these catered to the entertainment trade: brothels and theatres, in both of which patrons enjoyed take-away meals delivered to them while they partook of the main entertainment. Notable among those were “dining” boats, in which young bloods, accompanied by musicians, favourite courtesans, and cooks, floated on the rivers and waterways of Edo and other cities. The less fortunate (and, less wealthy) could still go out to enjoy public fireworks shows, and had their stomachs catered to by enterprising fishermen, greengrocers, and food stalls, all waterborne, which came to the customers as required.
Western-style restaurants emerged during Meiji, whether as fashionable emulation of Western dining places which Japanese experts travelling abroad had experienced, or to cater to the foreign concessions in places such as Yokohama. A small number of places started the trend of bringing foreign food to the masses. Rengatci in the Ginza pioneered hayashi raisu (beef hash and rice) in 1868, the first year of the Meiji period. Manjo Fruit Parlor, by Tokyo University’s main gate, introduced curry rice in 1915 in its most common version, that is, a roux-based very mild sauce simmered, it is claimed, for a minimum of two hours.
Within Japan, as elsewhere in the world, “Japanese” restaurants are a new phenomenon. This may sound odd, but it is a consequence of the evolution of the cooking styles we discussed in the previous chapter: each restaurant should lit itself into one of the food styles we have discussed, and, by doing so, fit into a social and economic framework. Japanese restaurants – wafu ryōriya – started appearing in large numbers in Japan as a consequence of the 1964 Olympics, when certain restaurants wanted to distance themselves from the wave of foreign (usually Western)-style restaurants that the government had encouraged to cater to the Olympic visitors. Restaurants before that time were almost entirely specialised, with the exception of a few “Western” restaurants, featuring French-style menus which catered either to the foreign population, or to Japanese with a hankering for the exotic. Some of these, such as Futabatei. in Shibuya took their cuisine very seriously indeed, and swore by their demi-glace sauce (simmered for a month at least). Another very exclusive restaurant in Tokyo’s Suginami-ward, specialising in roast beef and steak, will only take a couple at lunch or dinner. By reservation only, of course, and a car is sent for pick up at the train station.
A number of different types of establishment exist. Ryōtei are traditional fixed-menu establishments, usually expensive, in which the food served is pure “Japanese” cuisine (in practice, with foreign inclusions), and the cook has focused the menu on the best ingredients of the season. “Resutoraď are, generally speaking, establishments that offer some variation, Japanised or not, of Western, and some Indian and Chinese dishes (e.g. steak, curry, spaghetti, pilaff would be equally likely to be on the menu). Included in this terminology are drinking places, which also indicate, by usage, differences between the types of drinks and service offered, e.g. izakaya (Japanese drinking places, serving Japanese drinks such as sake, and whiskey) and bā (Western drinking place, serving in addition, cocktails and wine). Ryōriya is a generic term for cook shops, but in practice it refers to establishments at the middle of the price range and below. Most places serving Japanese food will be termed according to the cooking style they offer: lempura-ya and soba-ya1 for example.
Unsurprisingly, most public eating places are fairly small. Some are even tiny, barely allowing room for the cook to work. There are three reasons for this. First is the high price of land in Japan, which makes the creation of a large cook shop quite prohibitive. As a result of this size squeeze, one quite often finds entire floors of buildings packed with restaurants. One which we have frequented for years is only reached by a lift that also serves offices and businesses on lower floors. The lift opens onto a widish, twisting corridor. It is lined on either side by restaurant fronts, maintaining an illusion that the corridor is a busy street, not the inside of a building. A tempura-ya, sushi-ya, nabemono-ya (stews and pot-cooked foods), a Chinese (authentic) restaurant and a chūka ryōriya (that is, Japanised Chinese cooking), sit cheek by jowl. Each shop front has a large glass display of wax models of its offerings, labelled as to name and price. Customers – many are regulars, or denizens of local shops or offices crowd the corridors, lingering at the wax displays, waiting for their fancy to be tempted. Shop fronts, complete with pseudo-roofs, are as distinctive as the owners can make them – clean geometric lines of paper and wood for traditional Japanese, or Greek-key pattern borders for Japanese-style Chinese (chūka).
Asecond reason for the small size of most (at least, urban) eating places in Japan is the high cost of labour, which in practice means that many start-up businesses do not want, and cannot afford the extra help they would need for running a larger place.
Finally, however, there is a third issue: the nature of the Japanese service relationship. Japanese marketing is, at least in normative terms, seen as an intimate service. It is often characterised by a close, ritualised dependency. In practice this means that the Japanese customer expects a high intensity of personal service at all levels. Eating is a quintessentially individual process, and Japanese norms fully recognise that. The diner expects, as a guest, to be “a jewel on the cushion of hospitality” as Nero Wolfe so succinctly puts it. The small, intimate feel of many luxury Japanese eating places emphasise all that. Intimacy, in Japanese culture, is recognised as a construct, like many other social features that European society fails to understand and acknowledge. Behind the false, formal intimacy created by place, by the personal attention of the counter-man or the personal waiter, there may or not be real intimacy and empathy. That is not as important, at least in the Japanese context, as providing the appearance – the tatemae – of intimacy. Real intimacy and warmth may or may not flow from its pretence, but in the civilised pretences lie at least the seeds of reality. This also helps explain the reverse: the mass and anonymity of many Japanese cultural settings, ranging from public baths to Shinjuku station. The recognition that intimacy is a social construct means that its reverse – mass participation and anonymity – are constructs as well, something that is not overshadowing, but rather temporary, as ephemeral as Japanese buildings.
Public eating places (bars, restaurants) in Japan have an enormous repertoire of presentations to choose from. They range from the provision of meals in small ryōtei run in their homes by retired chefs, through large beerstübe style jingizu-kan places, where hundreds of caters quaff beer and grill their own meat on iron griddles, and the ends of the hall are barely visible through the tangy smoke. Not all eating places cluster in the sakariba where employees can rush from work to grab a quick bite, or where people can stop on their way back home for a round of convivial eating and drinking. More expensive and exclusive places cater for upper management and the wealthy, others the less affluent. Prices of food vary quite dramatically: one can cat a gyūdon (stir-fried beef and onions over a rice bowl), with pickles and miso shim at a chain for about 300 yen, or one can indulge in several hundred thousand yen per person in an exclusive specialist restaurant. And both these establishments might be side by side.
To characterise all such establishments is therefore extremely difficult, even impossible task. What we set out to do here is to provide a summary account of types rather than of all the possible variations. This categorisation follows roughly an informed “native” schema, that is, we are trying to illustrate what Japanese diners consider when looking at an eating place.
To make the terminology simpler, we refer to all public eating places in which the client sits down on the premises as a restaurant. This of course covers a multitude of types. Here we cover only those typical aspects which help in illuminating some of the general aspects of Japanese cuisine. As elsewhere throughout the world they do not purvey [only] food. They purvey an atmosphere, an idea of who-you-are to the diner as well. Shelton (1990) has noted how different types of restaurant in the US establish moods which tell the customer, essentially what the customer wants to hear: “you are young and in a hurry” at a fast-food chain, “you arc sophisticated” at an up-market Euro-food place. This is of course not surprising: restaurants are places of display par excellence, on a level with the daily evening paseo in every Latin American town, where men and women go to sec and be seen.
The mood setting (in advertisements it is called “ambience”) starts at die entrance to a restaurant, where subtle or not-so-subtle hints tell of what can be expected inside. Here, restaurants in Japan have an advantage over others. In most restaurants, a glass case at the foyer exhibits wax models of the delights to be found inside. These wax models are full-sized and (reasonably) true to life. Painted appropriately they represent a statement of the kind of restaurant, and the value of its foods. Cheaper places have the models alone, more expensive places will place some evocative item to indicate the ambience, from a plastic bream caught in a net before a restaurant specialising in Shikoku cuisine, to a matroushka doll in the front of a Russian restaurant. Truly expensive places – ryōtei, small specialist restaurants – have no wax displays, and often no sign (a commonplace in Kyoto). These establishments are reluctant to provide any evidence of a restaurant behind the facade. Such restaurants tend to be so exclusive that they will rarely accept people walking in from the street: dining is by referral or by reservation only. Clusters of such restaurants can be seen in affluent parts of Japanese cities: in Akasaka in Tokyo (convenient to both government offices and large corporate headquarters) and in the elegant enclaves of Kyoto.
The interior of restaurants reflects the exterior (or, more properly, the reverse). Traditional Japanese ryōriya were constructed according to Japanese native architectural canons. This interior is retained in those places that attempt to convey a traditional air. Seating (particularly in places that do not cater to a lunchtime business crowd) are quite often on tatami with separate cubicles for different groups of diners:
The taxi ride from the station to Ukai Toriyama, the most beautiful restaurant in the world (Michael’s characterisation), takes about ten minutes. For large parties, the restaurant will send their minibus, but we were hungry and impatient. The road wound through clay hills, past a medieval fantasy “love hotel” where couples could come for illicit (and licit) sexual adventure, into a deep pine forest between two hills. The valley is deep and narrow. Pine trees and small groves of bamboo whisper with the wind, and a small clear stream chuckles over rocks. In the valley the owners have assembled an incongruous but peculiarly pleasing assembly of old Meiji and Edo-period houses from all over Japan. There is a mill, several peasant houses, and a number of more prosperous looking buildings. Most are thatched, traditional wattle-and-daub half-timbered structures. The wood is brown, offset by mustard yellow clay walls, and by the pristine white shoji sliding doors. An attendant greets us at the lobby. The usual indistinguishable furnishings. A maneki neko (a small figurine of a white cat one paw raised beckoning to customers) is on one wall, as well as a collage representing the Treasure Ship with its seven lucky gods of good fortune. An attendant conveys us to one of the smaller houses: what might have been a farmer’s storehouse, or even a little yama-goya (mountain hut) where he lived while working in distant mountain groves. The entrance is a small hallway, pebble floored, where one removes shoes and climbs onto a small ledge floored with polished wood. A sliding door opens into a tatami floored room, in the middle of which is a sand-filed irori. There is a tokonoma niche, where a scroll depicting a bamboo grove is hung, and before it a simple flower arrangement: irises in a brown ceramic pot. The attendant opens the sliding door at the other side of the room.
The garden in all its glory becomes a part of the dining room. We are rendered quite breathless by this sight, and sit down in silence regarding the stream which has been crossed by a series of pools and channels. Golden koi swim leisurely about, and we have to restrain the four year-old, who wants to paddle his hands in the water. Beyond the garden the hill rises, dark and green, almost sheer, to a clear blue sky.
Aside from the cushions, the tokonoma with its scroll and flower arrangement, and a telephone, the room is bare, but then, it hardly needs any kind of decoration with the outside pouring in through the open wall. Attendants bring a shovel-full of coals: the speciality of the place is grilled foods, which we order from a menu written in ornate (and difficult to read) “grass script” characters. A small metal bracket is placed in the sand of the irori, and, undisturbed by attendants, we grill the food slowly, washing it down with beer, chatting, stretching on the tatami, and, occasionally, forgetting the food in favour of the outside. Finally the waiter returns with the rice, adding a topping – tororo (grated yam), a gelatinous, slightly salty-sauce – and a pot of miso shim.
Of course, not every restaurant, even in Japanese style, is as luscious as the one described. But restaurants in Japan generally fall into one or another of the ‘Japanese” or “Western” categories. In the former, furnishings are in “Japanese style”: half-timbered walls, low-backed wooden chairs, sometimes tatami rooms, where parties can sit in isolation, “Japanese” bric-a-brac decorating the walls. Other restaurants will start with a Western premise, in which tables, chairs with high backs, and Western style decorations predominate. As a general rule, “pristine” decor – Western or Japanese – correlates positively with high prices and more expensive, perhaps authentic food. As one goes down the style the decor becomes what can be termed pragmatic: whatever will suit, and whatever will attract the customers that are the target audience. Cheaper places will also make greater use of obvious technology, whether it is machines to buy meal tickets (very common in those places that serve a rush crowd at lunch-time), or automatic chopsticks dispensers. Places that cater to the young – usually chains such as McDonalds or Dunkin’ Donuts – are also less likely to have items such as maneki neko or the Seven Lucky Gods. Interestingly enough, and an indication that presentation is the name of the game, is that such places sometimes have such good luck tokens, but these are concealed in staff areas.
WHILE THERE ARE culturally approved bar foods in most drinking cultures (peanuts and pickled eggs in US bars, crisps and scratchings in the UK, a meze in Greece) there is a large array of foods in Japan that are almost exclusively linked to drinking, and, by extension, are or can be considered largely “male foods.” Oden, which we have discussed, is a kind of counter food that may also be sold in more “solid” surroundings than a barrow, but there are cooking styles which are virtually confined to drinking places.
For many Japanese working men (and more women as time goes by) the day is divided into three rather different phases and associated locations. There is work and the workplace, where most of life’s activities are centred during working age (e.g. from about 22 to about 65 years of age), and which occupies most of the day and week. In the evenings, there is the family and home, where one sleeps, sometimes eats, and has responsibilities (no matter how attenuated) as spouse and parent. Both of these locations are similar in that one must exhibit highly controlled and structured behaviours. They are different in their essence: public versus private life, but not necessarily in the degree of tension and control that is expected in each. Between the two areas of life is a third, a “zone of transition” (Linhardt 1986): the sakariba. Sakariba are areas of bars, night-clubs, restaurants, pachinko games parlours, and in some areas, sexual businesses. They are most often to be found in the neighbourhood of major train stations. In Tokyo, Kabukichō in Shinjuku, the Ginza, Dōgenzaka in Shibuya, and many other areas fulfil this function. This is where the sarariman go to relax, have a drink, chat with a hostess, cry on a friend’s shoulder, or merely have a bite to eat without any social obligation, generally unwind. Establishments range from the popular to the exclusive, from the cheap to the hideously expensive. From places that spill out onto the street in garish lights, crying touts and explicit pictures, to places so reclusive that only aficionados know of them. The pace is generally frenetic, with, in some places, crowds of students milling through the streets, while others cater to working classes (both white- and blue-collar).
There is, of course, a vast range of drinking places to be found in any sakariba. And the category “drinking place” is not truly exclusive, since it is often difficult to identify a “drinking” place from any other food place. We estimated that there were about 350 drinking places in a town of 16,000 people. The number in any of the sakariba in Tokyo such as Shinjuku is inestimable, let alone the total number in the city or in Japan as a whole. Some are necessarily tiny, others are far larger with mass appeal. However, even in the smallest of places, what sometimes may distinguish them from others in the same category is the food rather than drink, which can be quite standard: most places will offer a local sake (if there is a brewery in the area) or a selection preferred by the owner, a selection of domestic whiskeys, several beers and some wine. Some other drinks such as shochu may also be available, but bars, generally speaking, and their “Japanese” counterparts, izakaya, are rarely distinctive in terms of drink: it is in food that individual styles have room for expression.
The food served, the atmosphere, the preference of a particular category of customers is what really distinguish drinking places. It is the food that concerns us here. In quite a few cases the food offered may be very restricted. No more than otsumami (drinking snacks, finger foods) – crackers, moromi-miso with vegetables – may be offered. The range of bar foods, as noted is extremely wide, and we do not intend to catalogue them here. However, it is worthwhile examining some aspects of bars, since they illustrate some useful points about Japanese society.
It was rather late at night, and we had had no dinner. The blazing heat of the summer in Tokyo meant that we went out rather late at night, needing a walk. Eventually, after walking for about thirty minutes in a residential area, we found a small nomiya, the Hanaya. The place is small, seating four people at the counter and two parties of up to 4 people at short-legged tables set on a raised platform floored with Miami. Mr. Konno, the owner and chef, asked us to sit at the counter since there were only two of us. The small kitchen (1 × 4 m) runs the width of the shop. As is common in many small places, hand-written vertical signs, tacked to the walls and above the bar, indicate what is available. In addition to the food, Hanaya is unusual in that it offers about twenty kinds of local sake (that is, what might be called a micro-brewery in the beer world: almost unknown outside their area of manufacture), several cocktails including home-made ume-shu (a liqueur made by soaking large Japanese green plums in 60% alcohol, with a modicum of sugar [surprisingly powerful stuff, it improves with age]) and 59 food items. Those marked in red are the specials of the day.
We order beer. With the drink we each get a glass plate on which rests a blue glass cup the size of an egg-cup. On the plate rests a single shisō leaf (perilla, an aromatic plant). Several small clams cooked in lemon juice and a bit of soy sauce rests on the leaf. Beside the leaf is a slice of lemon on which are two pieces (2 × 4 cm) of devil’s tongue root jelly (konnyaku), sliced and arranged just like sashimi. The konnyaku, normally a translucent jelly with black flecks, had been flavoured and coloured by nori seaweed within it. It exuded a faint, refreshing smell of the sea. emphasised by its ice green colour. A dab of mustard yellow sea urchin roe (um), sits jauntily on the konnyaku. In the cup are small cubes of tuna maguro sashimi in tororo sauce, garnished with wasabi and sesame seeds. The tororo. whipped to a froth, is slippery and drips off the chopsticks like a light syrup. Its slight astringency is a counterpoint to the smoothness of the raw tuna, its white foam shows to perfection the pink freshness of the fish.
We then order a summer speciality – salt-grilled sweetfish (ayu). It comes curled into swimming shape on a Ian-shaped plate glazed a pale celadon. The fish head rests on a shisō leaf. Adorning the fish, on its belly, rests a long ginger shoot (not the root) a fleshy pink and white spear – probably grown without sunlight to blanch like white asparagus, cut lengthwise and a slice of lemon. The ginger shoot has been lightly pickled in rice vinergar. The fish, though small, is absolutely fresh, and completely delicious. The delicate sweet taste of its flesh shines through the slightly salty and smokey crispness of the charred skin.
This sharpens our appetite, and we then order some fresh fried octopus. It arrives on a footed pale brown-glazed plate: six pieces of tentacle, fried Spanish style, and slice of lemon. To the side, Konno-san has dabbed some mayonnaise on a shisō leaf. When asked why, he shrugs, “a lot of people like mayonnaise, and it seems to go well with fried octopus.” A decade or even five years ago, mayonnaise on Japanese food (that is, distinct from Japanised Western foods such as salads) outside the home would have been extraordinary.
Since it is a humid night, and since it has been a favourite of Jeanne’s since student days, we have hiyayakko next. A block of creamy silk-like tofu, on which are piled curls of katsiw-bushi, grated dried salted salmon (an unusual garnish to tofu and one we’d never before encountered), chopped shallots, and grated ginger. On the side are chopped aromatic and colourful myōga shoots. Myōga is a relative of ginger and has a similar aromatic tang but less pungent, and its smell is also more floral, less sharp. The pink-tinged shoots, as are most of the vegetables served, have come from the fields of Konno-san’s friend in Yokohama. They are grown organically.
“Much of the seasonal awareness today has been lost,” Konno-san says. “The large shops try to get things that look perfect, but by doing so, they lose much of the flavour. Now you can eat anything in any season. The distance from Kyushu in the south to Hokkaido in the north (about 3,000 km) is tremendous, so the total growing season is very long, and younger people want to satisfy their cravings at all times. As a result, they have lost a sense of the changes of the seasons.”
The only other customers in the diminutive shop (so small you could not swing a cat in it) a party of four (2 couples of thirty-somethings) on the nearby table finish their merrily boisterous drinking and leave. Meanwhile we attend to our next delicacy, Japanese aubergines (nasu). The three aubergines have been flame-roasted till mellingly soft, peeled, and pulled apart, not cut, into sections. They are garnished with a pile of’ katsuo-bushi. Japanese aubergines are tiny, tender, and sweet, requiring no pre-salting before cooking, as with European and Mediterranean aubergines, to drain off bitterness. These, perfectly fresh and picked at the height of summer, are very sweet, with the faint charred tang from its roasting adding piquancy to what may otherwise be considered unrelieved sweetness (perhaps by a non-confirmed nasu fancier).
The serving plates are distinctive, and Jeanne compliments Konno-san on their variety. Konno-san seems pleased and says that he selects all the crockery himself. He would like to do some pottery but lacks the time. “I don’t buy in Kappabashi (a wholesale area in Tokyo for catering supplies) anymore. I opened this place seven years ago, and have found that in Kappabashi, they all offer roughly the same stock, and at prices that are higher than they ought to be for the trade. I now simply buy locally, at Tokyū in Shibuya, or at Takashimaya [two major department stores]. There are much more interesting shapes and glazes to choose from.”
In practice, he does not have many more dishes than the average middle-class housewife would. Nor does he need that much more. Aside from 4 places at the counter, where we are seating, there are two tables seating 4 each, totalling a maximum of 12 customers at one time. Since there is such a great variety in the plates he uses, there is also no great saving to be had from buying from wholesalers: the overall added expense of buying retail is more than offset by the convenience (Kappabashi is that much further) and freedom of choice. (In addition, price reductions at major department stores’ seasonal sales are very substantial.)
Next we try one of Konno-san’s own creations. He has wrapped slices of kamaboko (fish paste) in shisō leaf, and then in nori. The kamaboko has been cut thickly, and in each slice is a dab of roe dotted with sesame seeds. The whole is then grilled over the gas flame on the stove. The mingled aromas of sesame, nori, and shiso spark up the blandness of kamaboko. Shiso is not a usual garnish for kamaboko, and for Jeanne, who likes the herbal piquancy of shiso, it is an astonishing and satisfying combination.
Konno-san is not a stereotypical jolly Edokko-type bar owner who chats you up as soon as you’ve sat down. He is more the quiet type, taking his time to think while he’s busy cutting and cooking behind the counter, before replying. He is far from reserved. “I used to be a sarariman, and after enduring it for ten years, I quit and opened this place. I never learned to cook in a formal school, simply taking over from an acquaintance who owned this place, an old ba-chan (auntie), and going on from there. I like cooking, and cook to please myself. I also like saké, so I have a large variety of drink here.
The choice of which food to put on which plate is not dictated by any rules, but by some intuitive sense. For example, the tako (octopus) you ate is round, and I mounded it up. It would be silly to put it on a triangular plate, and it looks better on a round one. Since it is mounded, it also adds to the effect if I put it on a footed plate, to give somewhat of an impression of height, perhaps, yes, like the mounds of fruit in temples.”
We then try one of his Western-style dishes, partly out of the desire to nibble, partly for academic interest. The baked potato too comes from a friend’s field. It has been peeled, cubed, covered with cheese, bits of bacon, and asparagus, and then baked in the oven. The potato is floury, with the distinct sweetish aftertaste of Iwate Prefecture (Northern Honshu, cold-hardy) potatoes. The cheese is unremarkable but the addition of the bacon bits, and, more importantly, the asparagus, makes an interesting combination.
Finally he offers us some noodles, by wav of filling in any gaps in our stomachs. In small lacquered wooden bowls Konno-san has placed thin (Shikoku-style) udon in a delicate stock. As garnish are green kaiware daikon (giant-radish sprouts), chopped shallots, nori strips, bits of crunchy brown tempura drippings, and thin slices of cucumber. Here too the composition is colourfully summery. The kaiware is slightly bitter, astringent, the cucumber rather neutrally refreshing, the tempura makes a wonderful crunch. The essence of summer.
Eating at bars is of course highly varied, with Japanese bars – izakaya – providing, as Hanaya did, a large variety of food. Two other related issues ought to be commented upon. Japanese society has been known as a conformist, rather group-oriented system. Individuals and their preferences are supposed to be subordinate to the wills and demands of the majority, a will that is often extremely conservative. Such reports – and they do represent the majority – do not however pay sufficient attention to the fact that Japanese society is extremely tolerant of individual aberrations. The owner of Hanaya had been a successful white-collar employee, and yet he had given it all up in order to be his own master, and to run a bar. Other individuals whom we interviewed, or whom we were referred to, had done some variation of the same thing. And within the realm of his domain, Konno-san felt it appropriate and legitimate to educate the tastes of his customers, to indulge himself in what he thought was appropriate and right. There are a great many such places throughout Japan, each representing, in effect, the fact that in these aspects – of individual choice and effort – Japanese society can be very tolerant.
A second, historical feature that Konno-san represents must also not be ignored: the mutual effect of food and utensils. Kitaoji Rōsanjin, artist/potter and gastronome, epitomises this idea. A potter of fiercely independent ideas, he should perhaps be remembered for the fact that most of his pottery was constructed for use: to complement the dishes cooked at the restaurant he ran with a partner. Not being satisfied with the choice of pottery available commercially, he set out to make his own. The dishes on which Japanese food is served are a major component of the dining experience. We have already made reference to different kinds of plates associated with different foods. But this association is far deeper than has been discussed, in the framework of utility and mechanics, in Chapter 3. For, with time, and as Japanese pottery became a major item of aesthetic interest (due partly to the Tea ceremony, of which more subsequently), there developed an inextricable bond between Japanese food and the containers it was served in. Konno-san represents merely one aspect of that: the individual food artist who is concerned with the presentation and not merely with the taste, of his food.
6.4Geographical Choice and “Esunikku” Restaurants
UNDER MANY CIRCUMSTANCES, “Japanese” cuisine in a restaurant approaches what has become fashionable around the Pacific rim, particularly California and Australia, as “fusion” cooking. Attempts are made, with greater or lesser success, to blend Japanese and Western cooking and flavours:
We ate at a new restaurant that had been recently opened. Greeted at the door by a quiet waiter in black suit and bow tie, we were conveyed to a table. The Irasshaimase (“Welcome”) was subdued. The table was laid Western style.
The special of the day was karē-raisu with different variations: seafood, steak, ise-ebi (crayfish) and scallop, and something mysteriously called “special.” Beer was served in German steins, heavy low-relief pottery mugs with pewter lids. With it we had several plates of eda-mame, the boiled and then chilled green pods of soybeans which are a ubiquitous summer beer accompaniment. As a starter we had small river fish, somewhat like an ayu. This had been cooked long in mirin until caramelised, and the flesh was brown and rather hard. We alternated between chewing the flesh (an odd, sweet flavour) and munching on the salty freshness of the eda-mame.
While we waited for the curry, we had a plate of escargot. The snails had been cooked with garlic butter and served with slices of rather limp toast. The utensils were proper for the occasion (chafing dish, tongs, and escargot fork).
The karē-raisu finally arrived. It was served in large, deep, boat shaped bowls as karē-raisu “ought” to be served. These bowls had been divided in half by a low ridge. White rice on one side and a pool of dark brown curry sauce (mildly hot) on the other. Karē-raisu is not complete without a pickle, and these had been brought as well. A plate with three small bowls was placed on the table. One contained a sweet mango chutney, another a Japanese green relish, redolent of shisō buds and greens. A third was full of the inevitable bright red pickled gourd that true karē-raisu eaters always expect with their meal. Utensils were, of course, Western: large old-fashioned soup spoon and fork. With the karē-raisu each diner also received a small salad plate consisting of lettuce leaves, some slices of cucumber, one tomato slice in Italian dressing. We drank a good semi-dry German wine with it all.
The meal we had was not particularly memorable. It is however brought here to show some of the choices that face the diner, and, of course, the restaurant business. To reiterate some of the main points:
The presentation of the restaurant was confused, uncertain. Western ambience and service, but the need for making the Japanese customer feel at home was clear in the irasshaimase and in the ambivalence it created: Do we shout out a greeting (unsuitable in a Western restaurant) or not (make our customers unhappy)? The same was true of the food, where Japanese dishes, arranged in Japanese ways, and requiring Japanese plates, were mixed with German and French utensils and foods. And finally, though an up-market hotel restaurant, they had offered what is one of the most simple, and lower-class of Japanese foods: the common karē-raisu, albeit much tarted up. A perfect demonstration of Mennel’s thesis about cuisine: lower class foods are appropriated by upper class cooks by adding expensive ingredients (in this case, seafood and steak) to the low-class recipe. Thus the experience here was a demonstration of the process in which foods are “classicised” as they move up from the lower rungs of the taste/ cuisine ladder to the higher ones.
As in most modern societies, Japanese cuisine and food choices arc permeated by foreign influences. French and Italian restaurants arc of course commonplace, as are Indian and to a lesser degree, Indonesian, but in recent years, the scenery has become more varied – Malaysian, Vietnamese, even Ethiopian. In many of these cases, a particular “ethnic” food is adopted simply because the owner or chef prefers it. One restaurant, which boasted “homemade curry”, offered a plethora of Vietnamese dishes, all well-made, spicy. heavily imbued with nuoc mam fish sauce. “The owner simply likes Vietnamese food, spent a few months there learning the ropes, and has been cooking it since,” one of the waitresses confided.
Most respondents recognise several distinct geographical cuisines under the category of foreign food. Accepted geographical headings are chūgoku ryōri (Chinese cooking) which is distinct, one should note, from cluīka ryori (Japanese-style Chinese]); fransu ryōri; itaria ryōri; kankoku-ryōri (Korean cooking); indo ryōri; supeìn ryōri. The representative dishes and distinguishing seasonings or characteristics of each cuisine in this category are widely known, and the terminology is used matter-of-factly, that is, without translation. “Paella”, “pilaf”, “risotto”, “ratatouille”, “tantanmen” or “bibinba” are widely used in conversation, journal articles, restaurant advertisements. Beyond this category of mainly Western European and major Asian cuisines, a new category has arisen, that of ethnic and regional cooking. Esunikku ryōri subsumes all other geographical bases, ranging from Afghan through Zambian cooking. And the most popular of all is Thai cooking (lai ryōri,) echoing its success in the US, Europe and elsewhere. This curiosity about lesser-known foreign cuisines has also extended to native cuisine, and compared to the 70s and 80s, when only major regions such as Kansai or Hokkaido were represented, there is now a very conspicuous proliferation of more localised Japanese cuisines: Nagasaki, Iwate and Kanazawa cuisines are among the best known.
The geographical distinctions underlie, or perhaps express, differences between generations and between classes, and attempts by local communities to claw back their identity. Younger people choose and tend to be more knowledgeable about various foreign foods, with particular fads rising and falling precipitously, as with all other fads, in youth culture. Older people may avoid certain “foreign” foods (“Indian [i.e., authentic] curries are too hot for me, I prefer our Japanese bon-karē”) or even regard them with suspicion, but will delight in extolling and experiencing native regional specialities. So pervasive is the need among many people to express their geographical preferences, that localised foods can be acquired through the mail, making a profitable economic sector for local communities, who bind city dwellers to their products and interests, and for mail-order entities, such as food producers and the National Postal Service.
The differences in “locality” preferences are also differences between the generations, and between town and country in Japan. Many Japanese rural communities have suffered large demographic losses as younger people emigrate to the metropolis to find jobs, and, more importantly to them perhaps, to find a more interesting and entertaining life. With growing affluence in the countryside, and far better communications (high-speed bullet trains now reach much of the length of Honshu, cutting down travelling times by as much as three or five hours), local communities are fighting back. One way of doing so (and boosting their marketing to boot) is to create the atmosphere of a gurume (gourmet) paradise. Thus one place will heavily extol its fresh tuna cuisine, another the quality of its speciality: salmon roe on rice. Many of these specialities have been created within the last few years, often designed especially to attract Japanese custom which is becoming more and more demanding, and more and more sophisticated.
The “sophisticate” label, essentially means the ability (and the resources: time and money) to appreciate and try new and different experiences. At that point, the population of Japan differs. People who came into adulthood soon after World War II, are more likely to be interested in, and to pursue, local foods and “regional” expertise. Respondents from our survey who were in their forties and above overwhelmingly preferred regional Japanese delicacies. They were willing to, and indeed do, try regional restaurants, ordered regional food by mail-order, and could sometimes cite the specialities of various regions in Japan, and even the shun (peak season) of those delicacies. Much of that information reaches them by way of travel advertisements (broadcast mailings, hoardings, on buses and trains, in magazines and newspapers) and even from the Japan postal service’s semiannual catalogue of local delicacies. Overall, this category of the population tended to be somewhat disparaging of younger people and their food choices.
Younger respondents – those in their teens and twenties – were far more knowledgeable about foreign foods, and far preferred esunikku foods, a category which includes all foreign foods except major Western and major Asian (Chinese and Indian). They also far preferred to try new restaurants in those categories, and to cook them at home experimentally, using authentic seasonings such as fish sauce or, when making curry, preferring individual spices over commercially mixed curry powder. Several Japanese publications, and numerous articles are dedicated to the “newest” ethnic restaurants, the “best” ethnic places, and so on. This group tended to be far less attracted to the particular taste sensations of traditional Japanese cuisine, and also tended to disparage traditional Japanese restaurants, with their tatami floors and separate dining cubicles. Needless to say, this group has been raised in Western-furnished houses, which means that having been accustomed to sitting on Western chairs, their legs no longer tolerate prolonged traditional sitting on reed-matted floors.
The broad choice of “region” or ethnicity in Japanese restaurants reflects two things. First is the great diversity within Japanese society between its different categories. This reflection is of course only made possible by the combination of affluence and good communication. Second, it reflects the ability of Japanese society to encompass a great number of different, even contrasting viewpoints. That is perhaps owed to the componential nature of Japanese social beliefs and structures. Elements of any individual’s life – membership in work, study, kinship, or play groups; individual activities; food choices – are, to a certain extent, compartmentalised off from one another. An individual is expected and encouraged to “enter into the spirit of the thing” and to behave under certain rules in circumstance or context A, which would be inappropriate, and which he would eschew, under circumstance or context B. Neither blame nor praise accrues to the individual from his actions: they are consequences of circumstances. Individuals can merely choose to be in those circumstances. Or not. If they choose to participate, they are expected to, and encouraged, to behave as circumstances dictate. In fact, they are expected to be enthusiastic participants. A change of circumstances means a change of rules of behaviour, to which the individual is expected to adjust. Praise or blame is allocated based on the individual’s willingness to participate and enthusiasm in doing so. This may seem extremely odd to outsiders, but makes perfect sense to Japanese.
Evidence of this cultural mind set can easily be seen in the “appropriate” arrogant, cruel, brutal – behaviour of Japanese soldiery in World War II, for which many Japanese participants still feel little, if any, guilt. Another expression of this close identification with one’s circumstances or context is the marked difference in the cleanliness of residential areas with that of commercial ones. And by extension, the seeming disregard for litter in public places versus a meticulous attention to neatness and hygiene in one’s home or office. When one is inside the home, or the office, places in which an individual belongs and is strongly and identifiably affiliated to, then one is accountable for one’s behaviour. However, beyond this framework or context of affiliation, as in a public place (unless one is an employee of that place, e.g., a policeman, a street cleaner) – the average individual has no connection and senses no identication with the place, thus making him or her relax the usual rules that apply for general cleanliness. If for the French “autres places, autres mores,” is a social truism, for the Japanese “autres circonstances, autres règles sociales” is the norm.
For the Japanese diner, there is a wide of choice places available when deciding to eat at a restaurant. The choice breaks down into three dimensions: cooking style (since restaurants mainly specialise in one or another of the styles we discussed earlier), cost (often related to class), and region (which may be within Japan, or without, i.e., foreign). The choice of a cooking style reflects the popularity of specific styles of cooking as well as individual choice. But the choice is also related to the industrial realities of the age. Tempura – once a street food -has become largely a restaurant food, whereas at the lower end of the market, hanbāga have become street food. The choice of a region may depend on individual history and origins, but it is also, though more weakly, affected by issues of cost and of style.2 The price range of a chosen restaurant is obviously closely related to class, whether that be one’s own financial resources or those of the organisation one is a member of (since many business firms give their employees generous entertainment allowances).
There is clear statistical evidence that certain social categories correlate with certain eating out habits. There are definite patterns of preference, affected by such factors as the individual’s social circumstances, age, and gender. Lone individuals do eat out, but a male and a female single would not frequent the same type of establishment. A female single would also eat out at a far lower frequency than when part of a couple or in company with others, and different group structures bring about different choices. Younger people choose food categories different from their elders. All of this is neither surprising nor unique to Japan: it is replicated in one form or other throughout the industrial and industrialising world. Two facts arc, however, significant. First, all choices can be accommodated within the Japanese (certainly the metropolitan) environment. A publication devoted to youth life-style (Piamapgurume 1996) lists over 3,000 restaurants in Tokyo in categories ranging from soba and sushi to grills, coffee bars, and sandwich houses. This does not cover minuscule neighbourhood eateries run by a lone ba-chan (“auntie”) or man, usually offering non-fancy home-cooking, and catering to single students or workers who live on their own and have no cooking facilities or do not care to cook. Thus, comparing the listing with actual available places, we found that it covers only about 50–60% of all eating-out food locations (excluding supermarkets and shops), and those only in major Tokyo urban nodes.3
This leads to our second point: the sort of cognitive choice any individual in Japan must make while eating out. The wide variety of choices requires the emergence of a sophisticated clientele, just as it is an expression of such a clientele. The average Japanese diner is aware of the differing styles and geographical types, and is able to select from among them: otherwise the great variety would be unlikely to exist.
6.5Social Correlates of Food Loci
ONE OF THE crucial questions to be asked when dealing with any particular cuisine, suggest Douglas and Gross (1981) is, “Who eats?” This can be broken down into a number of subsidiary questions the general import of which is to ask who on what occasions regularly eats with whom? And where? To illustrate, it is possible to follow the daily routine of a Japanese housewife. In the morning, she will eat breakfast with her husband as he rushes off to catch his commuter train. This necessitates rising about half-an-hour before to prepare the breakfast. Rice has been put to cook the evening before in the rice cooker which has been timed to prepare the rice by 0600. Salted salmon and nori are quickly grilled, and miso shiru and coffee are both prepared from dried base. Half-an-hour later it is time to feed the children. Older children will eat a school lunch, though many high-schoolers today will buy a snack from a neighborhood shop, and some will take a packed lunch. Elementary-school children will have a school lunch. Children in pre-school must also be given a rice box for school lunch. The children eat a breakfast of cereal with toast, butter, milk, and small grilled sausages. At 1000 the housewife might buy a cake from the neighbourhood baker, which she will eat with coffee, and milk for the baby. At 1300 she and the baby will eat again, this time a light lunch of karē-raisu. At 1600 she and the children will have another snack, and in the evening the entire family will sit together for a joint meal, assuming the husband has not been working late.
The day for a married male will be different. He may well have a breakfast only with his wife, depending on commuting time. At his place of work there are few opportunities for snacking, e.g., if he is hosting a visitor (and even then only the visitor may be offered something to eat besides drink), or if a colleague comes back from a business trip, an edible memento (omiyage) in the form of a sweet or savoury snack will be passed around with afternoon tea. Green tea, and sometimes coffee, are drunk in large quantities, beginning with the first cup at 0900, another at 1030, again with lunch, at 1500 and if overtime work continues, a further one or two cups. Lunch time is usually a hurried affair, either alone, or what is more likely, with some office mates of the same rank and seniority, cither in a company cafeteria, in a close-by restaurant offering quick set-menu lunches for office-workers, or at his desk from demae (delivered food) or home-made bentō (lunch box). After work many male workers, and some females, will eat, and largely drink together, either at one place or, if their pockets are deep enough, bar hopping from one favourite bar to another. This after-hours business socialising is an important aspect of Japanese business relations. Nemawashi, (literally digging around roots) as this drink-based networking is called, promotes social cohesion and group focus in the Japanese business environment. Sakariba activities are more concerned with drink than with food, but they contribute to the totality of food events, and have an important effect on the directions of Japanese cuisine, since so many of the populace participate in them at a very high intensity. On weekends the husband may have meals with his family, and, given the prominence of shopping as a leisure pursuit since the 1970s, some at least of these meals are bound to be outside the home.
For children the picture is once again different. After breakfast with the mother, a breakfast that for more and more young Japanese consists of foods of Western origin (yō-shoku) such as toast, milk, cereal, ham and eggs, the child heads for school. At school smaller children will have a snack, provided by the kindergarten, while older children in state schools will have a school lunch. Back at home they will have a snack at around four, and a meal with their mother, and possibly though rarely father, the content of which tends to be balanced between Japanese-, Western-, and other-origin cuisines. Older children studying for their university entrance examinations will probably also have a snack brought in – often soba which is supposed to encourage studiousness – late at night by their mother, and may take a packed lunch to the cram school, if they attend one, which most children do.
The structure of school lunches is particularly interesting, since it points out the degree to which issues relating to food can be politicised in subtle ways. Certainly in the lean years after World War II, school-catered lunches provided a sure source of nutrition for some ol the populace. It has been, at the same time, a political tool, as it allows the authorities to promote a variety of programmes relating to health, life-style, and so on. The Japanese pre-school system has been organised to reflect some of these realities. Private and public yōchien (kindergartens) are monitored by education departments of local authorities. In contrast, hōikuen (day-cares) are monitored by the social services department. Yōchien provide children below school age with a step up in the educational competition. Hōikuen provide working mothers with child care so that they can go to work. Both kindergarten and day-care children are given a daily snack, usually at ten and also sometimes before they go home. Although the kindergarten and day-care provide hot, cooked lunches, the child’s home (i.e.. mother) is expected to provide a box of cooked rice every day, in a container of fixed size.4 The daily okazu supplied by the institution conforms to local and national nutritional standards. A schedule of the monthly menu is sent to parents in advance, with full details of caloric values of individual food items and the daily total intake. By the 80s, the requirement to bring home-cooked rice was dropped in the Tokyo area for secondary school lunches. By then, general prosperity had ensured that the Tokyo government could supply white cooked rice with school meals.
Though circumstances are changing – more and more women are working outside the home even when their children are small – the ideology often remains. Women are expected – both by their husbands and families, and by the Japanese public at large – to provide most domestic work, even if they also work full time. The prevalence of ready-to-eat foods is a reflection of the reality that many women do not have the time to cook “properly.” There is a significant difference here with Western concepts of processed food. Because of the nature of Japanese menus which feature small servings of a variety of dishes, it is time-consuming, labour-intensive, and, often wasteful of ingredients to attempt to provide the standard one soup, three dishes (ichijū sansai) from scratch. Moreover, the high quality of freshly cooked, ready-to-eat dishes and the astounding variety of choices5 available at department store food sections and supermarkets are more than sufficient reasons to convince the busy working person to give up cooking from scratch.
Japanese entertain at home to a far lesser degree than Europeans or Americans. There are a number of reasons for this, but two reasons (which are also consequences) have been the separation of domestic from public, or at least social spheres of life, and the prevalence of alternatives to home entertainment and food. A word of caution is definitely in order. Most of Japan’s population is urban, estimated at about 80% or higher, depending on the definition of “rural”. In smaller towns, as well as in villages and hamlets, entertaining guests – friends, relatives, neighbours – at home is far more common. Even in those cases, however, the food served is likely to be a mixture of home-cooked and procured from the outside. As a general rule, and farming households may be a vanishing exception, the more formal an event, the more likely it is to be sourced from outside, even when taking place at home.
Meals at home arc likely to include parts of the family – a mother and children, particularly younger children – and more rarely the father. Meals in restaurants are more likely to include groups of office-mates, business correspondents, or groups of friends, co-workers, and so on, depending on the economic level of the restaurant. These differences are, in a sense, fundamental to Japanese society and its economy.
Much of Japan’s vaunted managerial success has been based upon two principles: an expanding economy which is export-oriented, but which does cater, albeit at a lesser pace, to domestic demand; and an apparently equitable distribution of the national wealth. This latter does not mean that there are neither rich people, nor income differentials, but that these income differentials are relatively low, relatively flat, with few, or at least circumscribed, areas of deprivation and poverty. This economic success is not bought without a price. Women do participate in the economy as producers and workers, but at lower levels, less intensity, and far lower rewards than men. As a general rule until about ten years ago, and still commonly today, women are expected to remove themselves from the working economy once they marry and have children. They are also paid at far lower rates than men, even when doing the same work.6
There are a number of consequences of the particular managerial and industrial pattern the Japanese have adopted. One is that Japanese workers, men and women, married and unmarried, are expected to spend long hours in the office. A second is the practice of cultivating social ties and deepening emotional closeness in the office – nemawashi – which means a high frequency of social drinking and eating, a practise the Japanese government has encouraged and abetted by allowing much of this entertainment to be recognised as business expense for tax purposes. It has thus become a way for Japanese companies to reward their personnel through non-taxable “income”, and to do so free of tax to themselves.
In food terms, the consequences are less direct, but nonetheless clear. The large number and variety of eating and drinking places is a consequence of this form of business activity, as well as the nature and structure of the Japanese home setting that divorces and compartmentalises it absolutely from work.7 On the days that workers cat at home, they (or their wives or mothers, now occasionally husbands) can choose to cook their meals from scratch, with the aid of labour-saving devices, such as automatic rice cookers with pre-set timer and insulating feature, microwave ovens, or purchase individual portions of frozen, freshly cooked, ready-to-eat, or processed foods. Thus, supermarkets and department stores are flooded with goods, the numbers and sheer variety probably greater, on average, than anywhere else on earth. This staggering choice of goods and foodstuffs – raw, processed, and ready-to-eat (freshly made each day) – is a commonplace in every supermarket and department store, certainly in Tokyo, Osaka, Sendai, Sapporo and other cities, but also in the rural areas.
Allison, Anne 1991 “Japanese mothers and obentos: The luiiehbox as ideological state apparatus”.
Belli, Harumi 1974 “An ethnography of dinner entertainment in Japan”.
Linhart, Sepp 1986 “Sakariba: Zone of’evaporation’ between work and home?”
Moeran, Brian 1981 “Yanagi Muneyoshi and the Japanese folkcraft movement”.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 1997 “McDonald’s in Japan: Changing manners and etiquette”.
1The ya suffix indicates a shop, as in e.g. yao-ya (greens-shop, or greengrocer).
2Some styles of cooking are intimately related to regions in Japan. lints Sapporo rāmen (Sapporo Chinese-style noodles) which is related, artificially, to Hokkaido. This implication is reinforced by the constant iconic use of Ainu imagery: easily recognisable designs from Ainu weave, images of bearded Ainu men in traditional costume, and the display of wooden bears (a “folk” product of Hokkaido).
3This can be compared with the estimate of 6.000 restaurants throughout the UK (The Guardian 10 April 1997).
4We were told that this was to ensure that we knew exactly how much out child had eaten that day, and by extension, the stale of his health.
As well, this ensures that mothers are reminded on a daily basis of their primary function (in the view of elderly male bureaucrats who run the system) to provide nurturing and sustenance to the next generation.
5From regional Japanese to foreign, including ethnic, low-salt, organic, from starters to main dishes to desserts of all kinds – the choices are bewildering and infinite.
6Of course, none of this is prculiar to Japan.
7For instance, a Japanesc employer might show concern (hat a thirty-something employee is still unmarried, hut would never enquire into the quality of any marriage, since marriage and the family belong to another “compartment.”