DINING AS A ritual – the actions involved in a meal – is worth examining as a whole in its social, cultural and sensory aspects. To do so, we consider two dining experiences. The differences between these cases highlight the elements of dining in its Japanese form. None of these meals was particularly unusual; in one form or other they are easily accessible to anyone. No special or exotic ingredients were involved, no great expense, and anyone could have access to the public meal. These are neither the elaborate dinners of the rich, nor the simple dinners of the poor, but fit somewhere, comfortably, in the vast midst of the “average.” The differences and similarities between them illuminate the personal and the public elements of Japanese food culture. We start with dinner at the house of one informant:
There were seven diners at the house in a middle-income area of a large city. The hostess had laid the table with a place setting for each diner which included a hand-painted menu on Japanese paper, a hashioke (chopstick holder or rest) in the shape of a vegetable, and a pair of disposable chopsticks. For each course, the hosts added a flat plate – ceramic, glass, or lacquer as necessary – on which to place the food. These were not distinguishably “Japanese”: they were examples of contemporary, well-made tableware such as can be found in any middle-class modern household, virtually anywhere on the globe. In the middle of the table was a large lazy-susan, and the courses were brought to the table in bowls or plates, and were distributed from there.
The meal started with a round of beer served in small coloured glass goblets. With these came two sauce bowls slightly larger than tea-bowl size, one a deep pink, with cottage cheese and mustard seed; the other blue-grey, containing cream cheese with anchovy paste. A large flat oblong plate contained sliced fat green asparagus. Each diner helped him or herself from the bowls, onto a flat individual plate.
The following course was crisp-fried duck. The duck had been marinated, then fried until crisp in a large wok. This was eaten with ihaopin (the hostess used the Chinese word for these thin wheat pancakes), sliced Japanese leeks, and hoisin sauce somewhat like Peking duck, each guest assembling his own duck roll from the condiments on the table. The dish, as with its kin, Peking duck, is one of the marvels of the kitchen: a marriage of flavours and textures where the whole that emerges is really greater than the sum of its discrete parts. Any unctuousness of the duck is cut by the sharp bite of the fresh leek, and the warm, soft pancake holds all the rich flavours in, ready to be released undiluted into the diner’s mouth with each bite.
Next came a large plain cedar tub full of chirashi-zushi (mixed sushi). This is often the way Japanese households make sushi, since it is less fussy than the rolled or shaped varieties. It is essentially a rice salad. Here, thinly sliced seafood, raw and cooked, red carrots and brown shiitake mushrooms, chopped green trefoil stems and leaves, fine-sliced omelette, and green and black nori made it very colourful. The rice was delicious, hearty and slightly saltier than it would be at a commercial sushi shop. To accompany it were tempura-fried scallop (hotate) chunks, much like kaki-age, the mixed “fritter” finale of a tempura course at a restaurant.
The hotate were followed by a dish of two fried tai (sea bream). Bream are adored by the Japanese both for their delicate flavour, and because the name of the fish “to;” is homonymous with the Japanese word for congratulations. The fish had been prepared Chinese style (our hostess had worked for some time in China) the flesh sliced in fillets, leaving the bone, head and tail in one piece, and all fried separately. The entire fish is re-assembled before serving on a big flat plate, then sweet/sour onions and carrots in thickened katsuo-based stock poured on top.
One of the guests was a potter, and her strong fingers and shoulders (developed from kneading clay) were called upon to help in the making of buckwheat (soba) noodles from scratch. Buckwheat dough is much stiffer and thus harder to work with than an equivalent measure of wheat dough. Even (he addition of about ten percent wheat flour did little to make the kneading easier. The dough was kneaded for ten minutes in one batch, then divided and kneaded again in two batches. This process enhances the flavour.
The dough was then rolled thinly, and folded over after it had been lightly floured, then cut with a large knife. The noodles were boiled in water. They were placed in a large tub, after cooling, and each diner was supplied with a small cup filled with dark, salty, slightly sweetish dip (tsuyu). In the centre of the table the hostess placed a wide shallow basket with tempura of small Japanese aubergines, sliced sweet-potatoes, and piman (small Japanese green peppers). The colours of the vegetables – purple, bright orange, bright green – peeped from the golden tempura batter to complement the sombre brownish grey of the noodles. Slices of green onion and wasabi on a plate were for flavouring the tsuyu.
Finally, the last course was slices of watermelon and melon, coffee or tea (green or Western).
Our hostess and her husband were both well-travelled, slightly more, perhaps, than the average Japanese. They lived in a newly built semi-detached house in a Tokyo ward with their one child. The couple both worked, and fitted comfortably within that broad classification of “middle class” to which about 80% of Japanese society belong. The dinner, though elaborate, was not extravagant, and it contained a mixture of standard foods, foods that represented or reflected the family’s particular interests, and a desire to put oneself out for a guest: we had discussed the making of soba noodles some weeks before.
Suzuya was a serendipitous find. We had gone to see an exhibition of ceramics and pottery, and on the way back, stopped to look for a place to eat in a large office and shop complex. We were not looking for any specific style of food in particular so we looked at all the restaurants in the building. It was not difficult to make up our minds. We chose a bright and cheerful tonkatsu-ya (pork cutlet restaurant) which looked out onto the inner and outer gardens of the complex.
The walls had been decorated with pottery from various kilns in blue-grey and red glazes (the owner’s personal collection, we were later to discover). The kitchen was open to view, bright, polished, the people working in silence but for their occasional obligatory “irasshaimase.” Most tonkatsu-ya have a standard set of condiments on the table: “sōsu” a derivative of “Worcestershire sauce” and mustard. The tables at Suzuya were graced by several different condiments: an in-house sōsu, mustard, several kinds of pickles. Calling tonkatsu pork cutlet does not do it justice. It is really a thick moist lean pork steak, with no fatty bits at all anywhere. It is usually served as a teishoku or set meal, with rice and tonjiru (miso soup with pork). Suzuya’s offering was unique in three ways. First, the menu includes a large exhortation not to indiscriminately use the sauce or any other condiment. “The taste of our tonkatsu should be enjoyed for itself. It is the best pork, fried in fresh oil. Why cover its taste with a sauce?” The second is the restaurant’s speciality, tonkatsu ochazuke (pork cutlet tea soup), whose history, qualities, and methods of preparation are narrated in an explanatory sheet at each table. Third, the restaurant made its own pickles and six varieties came in a compartmented tray. The quality of the food – no more expensive than anywhere else was indeed superb, the flavours carefully balanced, and care taken in the cooking. It was also evident that the ingredients used – the meat and vegetables had been very fresh.
It is the conceptual harmony that pervaded Suzuya that we wish to explore here. We have already noted that Japanese food is a multi-dimensional experience, in which the dimensions are balanced in ways that make the food and the act of eating it unique. This argument can now be extended to the entire dining experience. The good host, the aesthete Rōsanjin indicates, does his best to ensure that the entire experience of dining presents a uniform quality: that is what making good food means. Suzuya is a successful chain of restaurants headquartered in Shinjuku. We were unaware of this fact prior to reading the shop’s “literature” which explained the owner’s philosophy about the ingredients used throughout the business. The atmosphere of the Suzuya branch at which we ate did not seem at all to be part of a restaurant chain. It had none of the overslick standardisation that occurs when several places have to conform to a set of requirements. In fact it appeared to be a medium-sized pleasant restaurant, with a museum-like ambience from the pottery and other folkeraft displayed on shelves, and the attentive yet unobsequious demeanour of the staff reinforced the feeling that this was the only one of its kind and that the manager was also the proprietor. We were then all the more impressed that the owner of the business has managed, through a concentration of several elements, to ensure that his aesthetic vision of a pleasant dining experience has been strongly expressed throughout, from the setting to the food to the attitude of the staff.
Both the meals described – in a private home and in a restaurant seem to be without a temporal context. Yet, as we shall see, all meals have a place in two domains: that of time at what hour, day, year they take place, and that of ritual: the realm of codified, repetitive and formally elaborated practices. While neither of these show overtly in the two meals discussed, they were present there as well.
9.1Dining and Ritual in Daily Life
RITUAL, IN ANY form of dining, is inescapable. That we, as humans, seek certain foods and disdain certain others, is most often a part of deeply felt ritual activity, which is related to religious feeling, but which, in a far deeper and more fundamental sense of ritual, provides us with order in our lives. By putting up borders of ritual action, ritual exclusions and permissions, we are defining ourselves in one of a myriad of ways as “human.” This definition may intend to juxtapose and contrast ourselves with the holy (as Durkheim would have it), or contrast ourselves with wild and savage nature (as Levi-Strauss has stated), or simply to distinguish ourselves from other tribes of humans (one of Douglas’s main points). Whatever the case, we surround the process of fuelling our bodies with multiple layers and uses of ritual.
As noted earlier, the religious/spiritual life of Japan is a paradox. It is a country in which most people claim not to have a religion, and yet in which the total number of people affiliated to religious organisations exceeds the total population by about fifty percent. It is also a nation that has been surprisingly open to foreign religious ideas, and yet in which one of the most powerful of those Christianity – has, after a century of effort, only a handful of not very intense believers.
Part of the key to this paradox lies in the tremendous interweaving of ritual and daily life. Not only is much of Japanese life highly ritualised, including interpersonal interaction, from speech to letter writing – but rituals that derive from religious experiences carry on into daily life. It has been argued (mainly by Shintō theorists) that Shinto is so highly integrated into Japanese life that it can no longer be viewed as a religion, and must be considered and defined as the essence of Japanese culture, in perhaps much the same way that Judaism, the religion, is very hard to divorce from Jewish culture. Though the claim must be taken with more than a grain of salt, it is nonetheless true that, at least in the realm of food research, there is a high degree of connectivity between religious perceptions (from Shinto and Buddhism alike) and food perceptions.
Japanese religion (in all its elements) is, like many religions, strongly influenced by the agricultural cycle. This has become refined, partly by aristocratic pretensions (a Heian-era lady was convinced peasants were a different species than herself, and yet happily celebrated agricultural events), partly for ideological reasons during modernisation. What has come down to modern life is an intermixture of ritual cycles of several sorts. Very roughly speaking, these can be divided into nation-wide traditional dates, nation-wide national dates, and local dates. The traditional calendar includes dates of both religious and (in this day and age) secular practices.
All the calendrical cycles begin with the most important single holiday of the year: Oshōgatsu, or the New Year. The New Year is itself an amalgam of several ideas: for example, it is now celebrated during the “civil” (Gregorian calendar) new year, on January 1. Traditionally, the Japanese used the Chinese lunar calendar, and the new year would have been celebrated around February. A series of more or less well-marked dates follow. Some of these are of clear religious origin, some of national origin, others mixed. Some are well-known outside Japan, such as Girls Day (March 3rd, originally, third day of the third lunar month) and Boys Day now Children’s Day (5th May), and lesser known ones such as Hatsu Uma (the First Day of the Horse, 15th February),1 or Constitution Day. In parallel to the national cycle, there are local cycles of festivity and ritual: local shrines, communities, temples celebrating particular annual events that are important for them but may not be important, or even marked by their neighbours two streets away.
Most of these events have particular foods associated with them. These may be highly traditional foods such as the “demon’s horns’ served on Children’s Day (glutinous rice steamed in cones – hence the name – of bamboo leaf), which are supposed to evoke terror (of demons) and the ability to overcome it. They may also be “traditional” in the sense that a type of event is expected to be accompanied by it. Festivals and fairs are incomplete without the smells and tastes of street stalls selling hot corn, grilled squid. and corn-dogs in summer, or hot sweet amazake and mochi in winter.
The reasons people eat festival and celebratory foods are complex but fairly self-evident: in traditional societies they provide a break from monotony, they appear in the form of newly harvested foods, and they are items of display and conspicuous consumption. Their appearance in the modern world, however, is a different thing. Here they represent what is not. Corn, squid, grilled chicken, shaved ices are available year round from the shops. But they also represent a Japan-that-was, a nostalgic, sometimes politicised harking back to supposed unity, supposed purity, supposed greater consciousness of who the participants are, which are particularly emphasised in festivals and fairs. Families that nowadays rarely see each other, because they are scattered throughout the country, if not the world, can get together and consume zōni (New Year rich soup), and by doing so, feel that they are participating not only in their immediate family surroundings, but a family surrounding bolstered by history and custom, ancestors and stability. Doing so once a year reaffirms not only these bonds, but also deeply held desires (common to any population) for regularity and recursive order.
9.2Dining Order: The Japanese Course
THE RELATIONSHIP OF meals to annual cycles of order leads inevitably inward: to a discussion of the internal order of Japanese meals. It is useful to start with a contrasting example: the case of the European course, which is probably familiar to most readers. In the European dining tradition which emerged from the French revolution, and evolved after the French restoration, certain rules became evident. Roughly they consisted of a progression, from appetite providers canapes – through a series of courses to a sweet, and finally a savoury course. Each course consisted of a number of dishes, and an entire formal event could take a whole day.
In middle- and lower-class households, this progression of dishes, particularly in the twentieth century, was revised and edited, effectively into anything from one to about four or five courses, taken in strict order. Murcott (1982) notes the importance, in Britain, of the regular constitution and progression of the central meat course, consisting of a cooked meat and starch, normally potatoes and cooked vegetables. There is thus an almost inevitable order about a European dinner, one that demands particular progressions and is scrutinised with great care by the participants.
In contrast to the European meal, of which the French-influenced British meal is a sub-set, Japanese rice-events, even where there is a progression of dishes, retain their orientation towards the rice.
Late one year, two days before the New Year, we were driving slowly from Kyoto back to Tokyo around Lake Biwa. A snowstorm forced us to seek shelter for the night in a small fishing village on the northern shore. The inn was hesitant to admit us at first, because the cook had gone on holiday. We replied that it was mainly shelter that we needed (and a very hot bath) and the innkeeper’s wife apologised in advance for the poor quality of our evening meal. We had been duly warned, so we proceeded to enjoy the only luxury the inn offered, the enormous baths. When we returned to our room, we were so thoroughly refreshed that we did not mind the prospect of dried fish and pickled vegetables that we were certain was our lot.
The serving maid called us to eat, and slid the adjoining doors to the neighbouring room. There were four footed lacquered trays on the tatami floor. No table. Each tray held several containers, most were lidded bowls of lacquer and ceramic, and it was impossible to see immediately what they contained. It was quite clear then that cook or no cook, the inn was not going to let us go to bed hungry.
One shallow black lacquer bowl, bigger and wider than that used for miso or clear soups, revealed cluiwan-mushi. Often defined as a soup, it is more than that, because it consists of two layers, a savoury custard one, and a clear soup. Based on dashi and eggs, this steamed concoction includes vegetables (here, trefoil, shiitake mushrooms, and gingko nuts) and sometimes meat (in this cast-, tiny shrimp and pieces of red bream), which cluster close to the bottom with the rich stock that separates from the custard once it is cooked. The custard was a warm yellow, shot through with the green of the leaves, cream flesh of the fish, the old ivory of the gingko nuts, and the darker brown of shiitake mushroom.
A bowl for sashimi included toro, the fatly tender tuna’s belly, and some shellfish. Toro, the favourite Japanese cut of tuna, is paler and has a softer texture than the rest of the tuna, and the flavour is more delicate. In two bites, neither of which evokes the sensation of a real bite, the slice is finished, and the palate is awake, expecting more. The shellfish, with a stronger flavour and even a slight crunch, made a wonderful complement. A small, grey-glazed bowl held two king-crab legs. They floated on a transparent dip of light rice vinegar. Each red cylinder had been pre-cracked, so that the flaky while, almost translucent flesh could be picked with chopsticks, dipped in the vinegar, and eaten.
In the centre of these dishes, given pride of place, was the piece-de-résistance. A small ceramic charcoal brazier was placed before each diner. On it rested a shallow, wide, covered dish. The cook had sliced the meat off a duck, and placed it, with some young leeks, in a broth of seaweed, slightly flavoured with katsuo-bushi. This had been allowed to simmer gently on the (ire while we ate the rest of the meal. Eaten with small bowls of rice the duck provided a perfect closure; to the meal.
We can only dream of what we might have been given if the cook had not been on holiday.
The order of a meal circles around the provision of rice. Since the meal was a more elaborate one than most (we were the only guests), rice was peripheral. Fish, meat, and what could be termed “starters” were served together. When order comes, it comes as a social comment, even a social command:
After the final practice session, we all went to a kompa (drinking party). We all had to drink a toast in beer, and, as the party progressed, with plates of grilled chicken, snacks, and other food on the table, we became merrier and merrier. The OBs (graduated members of the club) ordered sake, and had each of the junior-most members (including myself) drink a water glass of saké with them. After two hours, most of us (excluding the OBs who had drunk more than the rest of us, but who, in their sixties, presumably had more experience) were tottering dizzily about the room in the ryōtei where the party was being held. Then the deputy manager announced that the party was to end. Immediately the waitresses brought in bowls of rice swimming in a pale green liquid scattered with sesame seeds. I remember peering at it blearily and wondering” why were we being given sesame seeds. The liquid was, I soon discovered, tea: not my favourite drink. I was not, however, too drunk to notice the sudden change that came over my peers and seniors as the ochazuke (the name I only learned many months later, as my Japanese improved) was consumed. Like throwing a light switch, the signs of drunkenness and levity were shaken off, sprawled postures were straightened, and even Sakai, whose face was red, and who had been curled giggling happily in a corner for the past quarter of an hour, was up with the rest of us. We juniors filed downstairs to stand at attention and bow and bid farewell to all the seniors, all signs of drunkenness gone.
Drinking parties are important to Japanese social customs: they allow an important informal channel of communication in a society that formalises practically all aspects of life. One aspect that emerges consistently when examining such events is that Japanese drinking parties follow an almost invariable routine: formal seating; a formal toast; eating and drinking; a round of “drinking visits” when participants leave their seats to talk with and toast others in the party; and a formal, almost sober parting. The drinking and eating are made subservient to the social requirements via a set of known and socially enforced rules. Moreover, the acts of drinking and eating, in themselves presumably pleasurable, are subjugated to the needs of the social event, in which participants make strenuous efforts to create an uninhibited, pleasurable, and “rule-relaxed” atmosphere, paradoxically, within the framework of a rigid rule set. The formal ordering of food events, notably those on the more formal end of the range, that is, peripheral-rice meals, seems to follow the same vein.
For Japanese society this ability to switch from one social sub-set of rules to another is of great importance, and perhaps no less crucial to individual life. Relations between individuals are strongly hierarchical and very rule-bound. The language makes grammatical provision for expressing relative rank and position, as well as “proper” politeness levels. Individuals are virtually forced into confronting these relationships in their daily lives. True, for many individuals in many instances this is comforting: there are preset rules for everything, and one need not project much more than conventional expressions of regard. Everyone’s position is maintained and retained in social intercourse.
On the other hand, being bound into a set of predefined rules of behaviour and of positions from which there is no appeal, is irksome, even perhaps dangerous, as disjunctions between the formal position of an individual and his actual situation become apparent. Given the fact that individuals interact fluidly, and that they are individuals, that is, have wants, desires, preferences and habits, these disjunctions are inevitable. Many authors have commented on the fact that the fluid, liminal stages of drinking parties allow the release of some social tension between formal superiors and formal inferiors. It is while one is drunk that one can tell the boss to his face, that he is an idiot, and suffer few socially acceptable repercussions for it. Management trainers sometimes counsel superiors to play the fool during such interludes, to ignore juniors’ remarks, and to otherwise manipulate these situations to the ultimate benefit of the group, that is, of the manager.
In a larger sense, therefore, and in parallel to whatever foods have been served, there is also an order of behaviours, which dictates the states of communication within the participants at a drinking party. There is a formal stage (no food) in which participants are seated formally, and if they drink, the drinking is ritualised, with toasts and attentive handling of cups and liquor. This is followed by a formal stage (with food) in which food is present, people indulge in eating, but are still seated in the formal position in which they have started. Both formal stages are in a sense pauses between the realities of the group of participant’s external relations (that is, outside the food event) and the social “play” they are about to embark on. An informal stage then follows. At this point people rise and move about, cluster in discussion groups, juniors make sure, if at all possible, that they speak with all seniors present. In terms of food, this is a point at which the diners help themselves and others to titbits (in contrast to emptying their plates or bowls), fill one another’s cups and play drinking games. In other words, this is a stage of relaxation, a stage in which communication is at its most relaxed and fluid, and in which this fluidity is indicated (and perhaps encouraged) by the mixing of foods, drink, and individuals in an incoherent, or at least aggregated manner.
Finally, there is a return to order. In the kompa described above, as in many other parties, whether more raucous and drink-related, or more formal, this is indicated by the presence of that most serious and demanding of foods: rice. It is not therefore surprising to find that many Japanese believe that ochazuke is a sovereign remedy for over-indulgence. In a social sense, it is that indeed: it puts paid to indulgence by signalling an end to the stage of unlimited drinking. And with the seriousness of the appearance of rice, the formal social relationships that had existed before, come back to re-establish themselves.
The “order” of a Japanese meal is thus of a completely different character to that of the European one. It is designed (if one can call the evolution of a human practice “design”) for completely different purposes under completely different circumstances. As many other Japanese behaviours and customs, it is far more concerned with how to circumscribe and deal with human relations, than with the food itself. As individuals, people enjoy food, taste it, appreciate texture and taste and colour. As members of a group indulging in a common activity, the circumstances of the activity are intended to support the activities and aims of the group, whether that group is persisting or ephemeral.
9.3The Epitome of Taste: The Tea Ceremony as a Food Event
BEING A CONFORMIST culture in many ways, Japanese are subject, from early childhood, to instructive media – mothers, teachers, television, and so on – that inculcate the proper and appropriate way to do, to see, to feel, to express oneself. Quite naturally, food is a major focus of these instructions. Much instruction in Japanese society is non-verbal, implied rather than stated. And the school-age child learns much by example of his peers, teachers, parents, and older siblings. This expresses itself in such items as school lunches and food boxes, which, as del Alisal (1999) notes, are expected to be prepared and arranged in appropriate fashion, with proper regard to colour and placement.
The apex of aesthetic appreciation of food is in kaiseki ryōri, the cooking that is part of the full Tea ceremony. The importance of the Tea ceremony reaches into the interstice of tradition and consumerism. Both of these terms are multivalued, no less in the Japanese case. “Tradition” is a human construct: a socially engendered reconstructed memory of how things ‘ought to have been’ rather than what they really were. Tradition is manipulable, allowing individuals and groups to justify their actions on the basis of what “has been before.” In the broad swathe of Confucian2 cultures, from Japan through Korea, China, and Vietnam, including the Chinese diasporas, tradition plays a more conscious role than it does in the West. Also relevant is the issue of “consumerism” which has been attracting more attention as a field of study for East Asian specialists. Offered a wide range of goods, consumers in Japan can use style templates engendered and formalised through centuries of tradition, at least at the level of the exterior appearance of those goods and perhaps the service that accompanies transactions in those goods.
The Tea ceremony is a locus of both these features – tradition and consumerism – because it encompasses within itself the essence of style and tradition, and because it is, at an important fundamental level, about consuming valuable goods.
The chashitsu (tea room) is one of the rooms of the elegant new house of Mrs. Sato in a quiet suburb. The room, about eight tatami, looks out onto a small garden with raked sand and a few rocks. Through one sliding door one enters the living room where we were received. Another door leads to the corridor to the rest of the house. We sit in a row, the tokonoma with a scroll and a flower arrangement to our right, the window at our backs. Mrs. Sato enters the chashitsu from the corridor entrance, and bows. We respond, and she rises to her feet, pads over to the irori, and switches it on. The electric fire glows under the iron nambu-ware pot. From a wooden frame which holds the Tea implements she procures a water dipper, ladling it into the iron pot in the irori. It boils quickly, and she then prepares a tea bowl, rinsing, drying, putting in the green powder, pouring in water, finally frothing the tea with unhurried movements. Her movements are very hieratic, like Noh or a Shinto priest’s rituals: every movement is deliberate, nothing is left to chance, every movement is completed in full, with a minute, almost unnoticeable pause as punctuation before the next action commences.
While making the tea she instructs her daughter to serve us the kaiseki, the food that comes with the tea. Because this is only a light tea, the repast consists of cubes of yōkan (stiffly jellied sweet bean paste). The daughter approaches the first guest, lowers herself to the tatami, sets the plate of sweets in front of the guest, and bows. The guest bows in turn. Then, taking a folded paper napkin (which we were each given, with a wooden toothpick, upon arrival, but which most Tea guests supply themselves upon receiving an invitation to Tea) and placing it on the talcum floor immediately in front of his knees to use as a receiving plate, the first guest takes a sweet with a wooden toothpick and places it on the napkin. The first guest then passes the sweet plate to the next guest and bows. Each subsequent guest bows in turn, and serves him or herself from the sweet plate. When all have been served, the first guest receives a signal from the hostess and we all begin to eat. The yōkan is extremely sweet, so the astringent, slightly bitter, frothy thick tea that follows is a welcome change.
The offering and bowing that occurred with the sweets is replicated for the tea bowl. Each of us in turn first examines the filled tea bowl as it is offered to admire it. The bowl is turned in the hand three times, so that one does not drink from the decorative “front” which was initially presented for our examination. Then each imbibes the contents in three sips. The first is a short one, the second slightly longer, the last longest, and the head is allowed to tilt back elegantly (as each action has been) to drain the tea bowl and to show one’s full savouring of the green fluid.
There are a great number of dimensions that come into play in a Tea ceremony on the material and consumption side. To fully participate, one must be conscious of, and have some familiarity with pottery, painting, fabrics, architecture, and food, though it is not about flaunting one’s connoisseurship in a glaring manner. The Tea ceremony, which has developed from an aristocratic pastime into a mass-practised one (many women take a course on Tea before marriage, either on their own or sponsored by local civic culture halls or their employers), has also, inter-alia, introduced many people to the most “refined” aspects of Japanese culture. This is reflected in consumer attitudes, as for instance, in the use of images from the Tea ceremony to promote elegant goods on television. This would be akin to using classical opera in a Western advertising context: it conveys an image of traditional, “high” culture.
The Tea ceremony itself has an economic and historical dimension that is worth exploring here. Disregarding aesthetics for the moment, participation in the Tea ceremony requires an artistic sensibility, that is, the participant must be able to respond appropriately, in public, to a number of different stimuli: a knowledge of classical Japanese gardening and architecture, proper personal deportment, an ability to comment on and publicly appreciate painting (every Tea room has a tokonoma niche with a scroll hanging in it) and flower arrangement, which in turn means some understanding of the implications of seasonality in Japanese culture. A participant might be expected to comment on, or respond to, classical allusions, fabrics, metal-work, and most certainly the pottery used. Now, all of these items, beyond their aesthetic or artistic value, are also economic items. Pottery and fabrics must be bought, not just made.
The Tea ceremony in Japan is thus also, whatever else it is, a major economic segment. The average cost of setting up as a Tea practitioner runs into several hundred thousand yen, not counting the cost of building a chashitsu or chaseki, even a modern one that is part of a house. The commercial proposition implies that the channels by which taste is learned include commercial ones. Thus, the influence of the Tea ceremony, whose participants must become knowledgeable in a large number of aesthetic fields, is one that permeates, to a certain degree, the whole fabric of Japan’s soeio-economy. The heads of the various lea schools have the potential of setting new canons of taste, and putting their imprimatur on products in categories such as food, where they otherwise do no! have a direct influence. There is a danger in that Sen-no-Rikyu, codifier of the Tea ceremony in the sixteenth century, and founder of one of the major Tea schools. Ura Senke, was executed for, among other things, rigging the value of Tea utensils. The danger is not so much to the current head of the school there is no longer a ruler who will demand execution as to the public who will suffer from attributed worth.
The Tea ceremony is not the only arbiter of quality, but it represents, in its most pure form, the ways in which the aestheticism of Japanese cuisine permeates throughout Japanese society. A Tea aficionado or practitioner is more likely to use traditional aesthetic standards based on previous knowledge to judge foods, than would someone not trained in that fashion. Several million people in Japan participate in tea ceremonies one way or another, as regular or irregular practitioners, and, inasmuch as most of these are women, the permeation of aesthetic standards is very great.
TO THE OUTSIDE observer (that is, the foreigner) sushi is perhaps the eponymous Japanese food. It evokes raw fish, and epitomises the strangeness of Japanese food. Conceptually and historically this is a mistake. Sushi is, above all things, pickled (or preserved) rice. Sushi originated as a food of scarcity and travel. It was originally one of the methods for preparing cooked food for travellers. Its real place in the Japanese cuisine is therefore with the large spectrum of fermented products: one of the major means (drying and smoking being the other two) by which the human civilisation has, throughout its history in different cultures, preserved foods in times of plenty for later consumption, or for periods of dearth.
Sushi is traced to several origins. One is narezushi, which consisted of fresh fish gutted but kept whole and stuffed with rice until it fermented. Only the fish was eaten; the fermented rice was disposed of. This style of sushi is still around, examples are kaburazushi and funazushi. It is also thought that the process of preserving rice by fermentation may have been brought along with the process of rice cultivation from Southeast Asia. This process was applied to preserve fish. The sour taste imparted by fermentation to preserve fish, gradually developed into a desirable taste. By the 18th or 19th century, the long-pickled fermented ancient process had developed into the instant-pickled dish much closer to the sushi we know today – of cooked rice mixed with a natural vinegar or mild acid, in which was embedded some form of pickled vegetable matter, presumably to act as both a sponge, and, apparently in the case of umeboshi (pickled plum), further help in preserving the rice.
For ease of carrying, the preserved rice was made into either compact balls, or stored in wooden boxes, usually cedar, which has a preservative effect in that it is known popularly to deter insects. The addition of other substances, presumably largely for flavouring, came about as a natural development. The need for a way of preserving rice was combined, probably some time in the late Japanese Middle Ages, with the grow ing demand for sea fish in the Japanese interior. Here too, the demand for food, supplemented by food chemistry, helped in the creation of a new taste. Given the slow modes of transport of the time, limited almost completely to animal and human backs, it is not surprising to find that inland communities could not avail themselves of sea fish. Goody (1982) has commented on the fact that food scarcity tends to increase its value in any society, and therefore, with the growing merchant and aristocratic wealth in that period, demand for luxuries such as sea food grew. The demand for fish was so great that the good burghers of Osaka, as well known for their business acumen as for their love of good food, developed a food in which lightly pickled fish and lightly vinegared rice were combined in a wooden form to create blocks of rice-and-fish sandwiches, which were called hakozushi or oshizushi (boxed or pressed sushi). This allowed both fish and rice to be preserved for several days, for the benefit of inland dwellers and thrifty housewives. This sushi was an extension of the preserved rice balls (onigiri) which were eaten throughout Japan for centuries. Sushi soon became popular in the capital Edo. There, however, the population was led by bushi (warrior) households, aristocrats who demanded the best of everything, and for whom one-day old fish were not a desirable commodity. In Edo the rarity of a food stuff, in this case perfectly fresh fish something fishermen, but few others have daily access to – led to the creation of a more refined version of sushi. Fresh fish were substituted for pickled, and because this sushi was to be consumed on the spot, it was not pressed into a box mould, but shaped by hand. Thus its name today, nigirizushi (“grasped” sushi). And, in distinction to Osaka-style box-moulded sushi called battera (from the Portuguese word “little boat” which the mould resembled), hand-shaped sushi arc also referred to as Edomaezushi.
This more luxurious variety of sushi is what most non-Japanese recognise as sushi. The principle of pickled rice is maintained, but the topping shows luxury not by pickling the fish, but, on the contrary, by often presenting it raw. More than anything else, the difference between Osakamaezushi and Edomaezushi exemplifies the historical antecedents of modern Japan: austere merchants preserving their fish and extravagant rulers demanding theirs fresh in a delightful paradox: the merchants had the money and were, in private, extremely lavish while preserving public rectitude. The samurai were often penurious, but needed to keep up a front.
Besides the preparation of the rice base, the modern art of sushi consists primarily of choosing the fish and cutting it. Cut properly, of the right size and freshness, it constitutes the most famously unique of Japan’s dishes. Preparing sushi of any kind is a skilled and exacting job. Though sushi is made and eaten at home, it is a quintessentia public food, one that is consumed most “naturally” in a specialist sushi bar setting:
Jeanne sits down at her favourite sushi bar in Tokyo. The counterman, after the obligatory “lrasshaimase!” waits for her order. In the meantime he prepares the setting: wide green bamboo leaf, a small mound of pink sliced sweetish pickled ginger. A large mug of hot tea. A warm shibori towel. All of these are placed on the slightly inclined broad wooden slab of the bar.
“Saa, mazu, kohada.” [Let’s see ... kohada for starters]. Jeanne is following an Edokko tradition.
The counterman, all ready for the decision, flashes his hand to the lightly pickled shad. He cuts off a slice with one quick motion. Left hand into the rice bin to emerge with a patty of rice. There is an audible pop as he shapes the rice. Tiny smear of wasabi horseradish. Place the fish precisely on the rice handful. Repeat. Lean down and place two pieces on bamboo leaf plate, pieces slightly off alignment for a pleasing asymmetry. First bite. First sip of scalding tea from a giant handle-less mug.
“Kyō-wa, nani ga ii kanaa [What’s good today]?” And today’s best bet might be maguro (tuna), himeji (yellowtail) or the all time favourites, uni (sea urchin) or amaebi (raw sweet shrimp).
There are, as any even casual diner at a sushi bar knows, different shapes of sushi. Open-faced (nigiri), cone-shaped (te-maki), and roll slices (maki). The selection of shapes is determined largely by the nature of the fish or other topping, and a diner can choose by flavour, by colour, by texture, in any preferred order. The Edokko preference is to begin with kohada and end with sweet omelette or, again, kohada.
A sushi meal is in effect a peripheral-rice meal. It is the taste of the fish, the underlying flavour of the rice, the skill of the presentation, the act of presentation, that is the locus of the meal event. So “pure” is the meal supposed to be, that specialist shops strip the experience of all distractions. In one case we experienced, to the point of excluding all liquor “so that the customers will come to taste the sushi, not to get drunk, and so that their taste buds will be fresh for the taste of the food,” the proud sushi chef explained.
Sushi exemplifies, perhaps more than any other Japanese dish, the cultural ability to find the essence of an activity, or object, and to employ only slight handling to produce an effect. The minimalism of some Japanese arts dance, ink-brush painting, calligraphy, flower arrangement became known in the West in the nineteenth century, and influenced such artistic greats there as Van Gogh. No less is true of Japanese cooking in which, in many of the cooking forms, minimalism of expression is the height of art. This is more true of sushi than any other preparation, because sushi allows the artist very few materials to work with. There are no sauces, no variation in the carbohydrate, and little possibility of even changing presentation and materials, new fish (e.g. from Antarctic waters) and California roll notwithstanding. “Avocado?” sniffed one sushi chef. “What is that? And why put it on sushi?” California roll is now just as popular as squid-mayonnaise roll in Tokyo, especially in lunchbox stands near railroad stations. Moreover, while many chefs do experiment with new sushi substances, there is a large pool of conservative demand and supply, in which the basic minimalist principles are maintained, even enshrined.
The basic elements of sushi are rice, fish including seafood), condiments (wasabi and shorn), and vegetables (nori. cucumber, ginger). To the sushi bar, one needs to add the counterman, as an element in the experience. Within each of these categories, as we have seen when we discussed the schematic meal, things can be expanded, contracted, and changed.
The rice used for sushi is. generally speaking, the best the place can afford, though we have not encountered cases in which shinmai (new rice) is used. This is for a simple reason: rice for sushi falls into the flavoured rice category, like sekihan eaten at weddings. Elaborating on the exquisite flavour of new rice, which has no need of it, would be sacrilege. Each sushi bar makes rice to its own closely-guarded recipe, flavouring the steamed rice with rice vinegar (milder than standard Western vinegar at about 3% acidity), sugar, and salt. The water used for cooking the rice may have been flavoured during cooking with konbu (kelp) stock (dashi). More luxurious (and expensive) bars will use dashi they make themselves, others buy it ready made. Mirin (sweet rice liquor) or sake may even be added. Sugar has an additional function, other than seasoning. It keeps the sushi rice from getting hard too soon, especially when the rice is kept for the following day. In general, Osaka sushi rice is flavoured sweeter than Edo sushi rice. Rice for raw toppings will also be flavoured with a lighter touch than that intended to accompany more highly flavoured toppings, such as pickled fish and grilled eel.
“Rice is the soul of sushi,” said one counterman. A well-made rice base can go far to spread the reputation of a sushi bar. The actual preparation of sushi rice is a closely guarded secret by most respectable sushi bars. Once cooked, it is turned out of the cooking pan into a shallow tub, made of light wood. The rice is piled high, seasoning vinegar poured over, and then rapidly mixed throughout while gradually levelling the pile and cutting through the rice with a flat wooden spoon. When cooled rapidly with a fan or breeze, it develops its characteristic lustre. For chirashi zushi (“rice salad”), the ingredients are added to hot rice to blend the flavours. The rice needs to be fairly warm to be hand moulded for Edo sushi. For box-pressed Osaka sushi, cold rice is used.
Most sushi bar owners select their own fish from fish wholesalers, and, particularly in smaller fishing ports, will buy them during the morning auctions straight off the fishing boats. In one such auction we witnessed, the sushi bar owners in a small town were given the first pick of the catch. This was accompanied by a structure of ritual and personal exchanges, as all such arrangements in Japanese society. Obviously, for larger fish, such as tuna, and a giant two-meter grouper we saw displayed in the food department of a major Tokyo department store, a single shop cannot possibly buy all. In such a case there might be co-operation between shops, or a middle-man will sell desirable portions (toro: belly, or maguro usually, fillet) to the shops. Tsukiji market, in Tokyo, and its retail “satellites” fill much of the demand.
The fish need to be prepared on the premises. Most, of course, are eaten raw, and the art consists of cutting the fish in precisely the right way to enhance flavour, not an easy thing to do. Some fish must be prepared before presentation, and the preparation varies from fish to fish. Plain prawns and mantis shrimp are cooked, beheaded, peeled, and de-veined. This is not true of ama ebi (sweet shrimp) which are cleaned but not cooked, preserving their delicate sweet flavour. All shellfish must be shucked and cleaned. Kohada, which tastes somewhat like a delicate version of Michael’s Lithuanian-born grandmother’s pickled herring, is pickled in vinegar and brine. Here too, the precise means of preparing the fish are a secret, and no sushi chef was prepared to vouchsafe the precise recipe. Octopus is pickled and cooked.
Freshness is obviously an issue, no less today than when sushi was invented and perfected. Refrigeration, as well as clever ways of freezing and thawing make a difference, and create the possibility of “layers” of quality among sushi bars, the top reserved for those who serve freshly caught sea fish, cut open before the diner’s eyes, then those who raise their fish in saltwater tanks and do the same, those who buy directly at the port, those who buy cooled or refrigerated fish, those who use flash frozen and thawed. Prices obviously do reflect this hierarchy (or should, rather, modern commerce being what it is, and “in” places being as common in Japan as elsewhere).
The condiments used in sushi preparation and consumption are also minimalist. Two essentials are wasabi (Japanese horseradish) and soy sauce (shoyu). Wasabi is rarely used as a freshly grated root in sushi bars. It is made from the powdered form, which includes Chinese mustard powder, mixed with water to a green paste. Soy sauce, of course, comes in a wide variety of flavours and types. Tamari, a more robust-flavoured soy sauce than regular soy, is ideal with sushi, as it does not take too kindly to heating. In sushi jargon, soy sauce is called murasaki (purple). While wasabi3 is an essential element, its bite enhancing the flavour of the raw fish, and is, consequently put on by the chef or counterman as he makes the food, how much one uses of shoyu is a matter of personal taste. Open sushi are reversed by the diner and the fish dipped into the sauce plate, so that the rice ball with not disintegrate or be further seasoned.
Except in Buddhist vegetarian sushi, vegetables play a minor part in Edo and Osaka sushi, with one exception nori – which is both a garnish for sweet omelette and a casing in all rolled sushi. Its flavour is very evocative of the sea and its texture – which should be crisp provides a contrast to the tender fish. Its greenish-black colour likewise gives a striking contrast to the white of the rice and the various hues of the fish. Fresh cucumber, stewed dried gourd, stewed shiitake mushrooms, and, more recently, avocado and radish sprouts (kaiware daikon) are most commonly used in rolls. And as seasonings or garnishes – green perilla (shisō) leaves and flower buds, the roots and young shoots of fresh ginger, myōga (ginger relative), pickled plums (umeboshi), and green onions. As well, there is pickled ginger (rarely made on the premises, usually bought from specialists) which serves as a taste-bud refresher, to prepare the palate for the next serving.
The progression in eating sushi is flexible, unlike in ichijū sansai.
“There is no set order for eating sushi. While Edokko (people of long ancestry in Edo, or Tokyo), are known to favour kohada to start and end with, there are those who usually leave it up to the chef to decide, depending on the day’s freshest items. Those who have a sweet tooth prefer to end with something sweet: omelette or sweet shrimp. The essence of eating sushi (at the counter) is the ability of the diner to choose her or his own menu, depending on the freshness, the season, personal preference.
Aji (horse mackerel) are now at their peak, as are other dry-fleshed fish. Older people like fish such as tai, hirame, bun, which are at their peak in the winter since they are fattier fish.”
It is up to the counterman, within the limits imposed by the sushi canon, to improvise, to tease the diner into new experiences.
“I make this kaiware-daikon (daikon sprout) sushi, because the astringent flavour pleases the mouth, particularly in summer, and the crispness provides a new sensation.”
Others have introduced different variants, though, as one of our informants stiffly said, “I would never try things like two-fish sushi (in which two different kinds of fish are combined on one rice base).” Indeed, the very adherence to commonly accepted, or at least perceived canons of “proper” sushi creation are what can make an establishment.
Most reputable sushi chefs learn their profession through a long period of apprenticeship and practice. It takes at least five years to master the basics of the craft, though modern sushi academies promise to provide these skills in far less time. Most sushi chefs have also to learn another skill of major importance to their profession – the art of observing customers:
“I don’t cater to customers’ whims, but knowing what the customer wants, perhaps even before the customer does, is the second most important skill. I practically provide food directly to the customer’s mouth, what could be more intimate? The customer has to trust me implicitly, and therefore I have to have complete confidence in myself. There are things I won’t do, like using cheap fish, or mixing two types of fish in a serving, but within the rigid limits of preparing good food, good sushi, it is important that the customer knows that he has been properly served. That can only be learned through practice and observation, over a long time of intimate interaction within a sushi bar. That is why all these new-fangled sushi academies are no good: their graduates come out technically proficient, but lacking in the ability to handle human relationships which are at the base of good sushi.
Most sushi bars – sushi-ya – are long, narrow areas with a wooden counter about thirty centimetres wide fronting the customer. In modern Japan the eating area is lopped by an arched glass barrier about twenty centimetres high behind which are ranged the foodstuffs,.
The working area allows access to the various sushi ingredients: a low refrigerated glass case holds raw fish, seafood, garnishes from which the customer chooses the toppings. It also serves as a see-through divider between customer and chef, through which the customer can observe the chef’s skills. A large rice steamer usually stands beside the wide wooden counter used for sushi preparation and cutting. Below the counter are shelves for plates, tea cups, and various paraphernalia.
We started with kohada, a semi-sweet, slightly vinegared shad. Each shop makes its kohada slightly differently. This one was very mildly vinegared, and on the sweet side. After the kohada we had tako, the chewiness of the octopus contrasting nicely with the texture of the rice. This was followed by ama-ebi (sweet shrimp). The shrimp is raw. a reddish-pink in colour and remarkably sweet. The texture is yielding, and there is a slight astringency (almost unnoticed in truly fresh ama-ebi, but there nonetheless) to balance the sweetness. Pink-and-red slices of hamachi (yellowtail) followed, their flavour almost smoky, the flesh soft and yielding. After the hamachi we had kaiware-daikon (radish sprouts) which taste like mustard cress, crisp and slightly peppery. This is an innovation of the past ten years and used as a mouth refresher (kuchinaoshi). The green and white sprouts arc in a bundle, bound to a rice ball scattered with katsuo-bushi (lakes by a strip of nori. Then we had torn (tuna belly), pinker than the red maguro cut. and preferred by many Japanese it was soft as butter. To follow we had akagai (red shellfish) whose chewiness contrasted with the tenderness of the torn. We ended with a favourite: rich sea urchin roe (uni). whose yellow creaminess is an acquired taste, but once acquired, difficult to ignore.
Sushi represents one end in the continuum of “Japanese food.” It relies, essentially, on simplicity in terms of the elements used and their preparation, absolute freshness (in theory at least), on a visual and sensory display, and on an interplay of textures as well as tastes. It is also remarkably attractive to non-Japanese diners, even those who do not eat much fish if they are introduced to it unknowingly, as we have found out by experiment. The order in which the sushi are consumed is unimportant: the ambience, setting, and quality are. Certainly sushi perhaps more than any other Japanese food, exemplifies the issue of the use of other senses than taste. And. as well, more than in any other area of food, shun the two weeks at which a particular food is at its peak is important.
A customer entering a sushi bar is greeted by “‘irasshaimase”. This greeting assures the customer that the establishment is open for business, and the connoisseur, of the quality of the establishment: the more vigorous and enthusiastic the greeting, the better the care taken with customers.
A good sushi chef is also an artist, and is likely to suggest, or advise not to try a particular fish to valued customers simply because it is not at the height of its season. Preferences for sushi are extremely varied (Gaishoku kenkyū sentā 1997). Some people have sushi for breakfast (though there is no indication whether the respondents meant Edomaezushi, Osakazushi or chirashi zushi (in Western terms, a rice salad). About 20% of the population have sushi at least once a week. Favourite fish include low (tuna belly flesh); uni (sea-urchin roe), ebi (prawns), maguro (tuna), anago (conger eel), arnaebi (sweet shrimp), ika (squid), shellfish, hirame (flounder), and ikura (salmon eggs). This choice reflects a change in Japanese dietary and trading patterns, as well as social demographics. In the Edo period, tuna was considered a low-class fish (much as oysters had once been in England), and the samurai class was ashamed to be seen eating it. Salmon, including its roe, was a hardship and winter food: some of our informants in northern Japan could recall when salmon came to spawn in local rivers and most people would be out harvesting. Today, torn, the pinkish, fatty belly of the tuna is considered one of the most desirable sushi toppings. The same has become true of a variety of “new” fishes, which the Japanese have been importing from distant places such as the Antarctic fisheries, and which fish merchants have been promoting as alternatives to traditional ones.
A sushi bar is as much a performance as a food locus. On view to his audience at all times, the chef at the counter displays his expertise, all the while attending to his audience’s preference and stomachs. His actions arc so studied as to appear natural, the highest and most diffcult-to-attain level of performance. The intimacy between clients and chef that is established by this performance, artificial though it may be, is one replicated in many small eating and drinking establishments that offer this intimate home-like atmosphere. Making the sushi fish selected and sliced, hand into the rice pot, rice moulded, wasabi smeared, fish placed, nori selected and wrapped is an entrancing show when performed by an expert. There is also a clear correlation between performing in public and price: in cheaper sushi places one is less intimate with the cook, one does not see the full preparation, only the end result, and the prices are accordingly lower. This smooth expertise, perhaps more than any other quality, defines the good professional cook in Japan. Moreover, as in most other cases of clear expertise, it is there to be seen and to be evaluated, because it also defines the quality of everything being served. In Itami Juzo’s film, Tampopo, two noodle shops are compared: an inexpert one, in which the stall are lackadaisical about their performance (they call out their “irasshai” without energy, they execute movements clumsily), and the expert one, in which two cooks make a ballet of the simple action of moving a pot of water. The message is clear: shape and form, perfect action, are what define not only good service and thus good food, but perhaps Japanese perceptions of selfhood and appropriateness as well. This is not to say that everyone achieves that. We commented to one sushi chef on the unusually large size of his helpings.
“Of course,” he said. “This is a quality establishment, as you can see from the queues. In those places where they have a sort of endless chain going around, and you help yourself, the servings are much smaller. They are gakusei ryōri (student cooking) places, where quantity in terms of numbers and lower price are more important than quality.
And are they proper sushi places?”
“Look, they are there to make a living, and, incidentally, supply a need for people who like sushi but can’t afford it. Later, when they are established in life, these same students will come to enjoy my sushi, so those places are important too.”
The price continuum of sushi bars throughout the industry is important, because it socialises people into sushi culture, in a broader sense, into Japanese food culture, and in an even broader sense, into being Japanese. The positioning of sushi and other food establishments up and down the entire price range, assists in this process because it makes even the most elaborate of cuisines accessible to those at the lower rungs of the consumption ladder.
The price range is also affected by the degree the master chef is willing to divide his attention between supervision and actual preparation. Thus, most good places are relatively small, so that the customer will be sure of being served, insofar as possible, by the master himself. In the example above, the shop goes through twenty to thirty kilograms of fish a day. About ten kilograms of that are of tuna, six are of shellfish of various kinds. With three assistants and the daily need to go and shop at the wholesale market in Tsukiji, the master figures he can keep his own on the all-important (to him, as well as to his customers) quality front. This means that up to ten people can be served at a time. Working at a comfortable speed, a counter chef alternates between orders so that as one customer is partaking of his current order, the other customer’s choice is being made. Customers may state their choice of topping one at a time or several at once. Or, may choose a set, which is then made up and served all at once on a small footed wooden tray.
The importance of the relationship with the customer raises a related question: what role does the customer play in the nature and structuring of a food such as sushi? The high-class sushi chefs cited here, as well as other chefs, are dealing with an ‘“ideal” customer. On the purely financial side, of course, one wants a customer who spends well. But from the point of view of one’s art, one’s performance as a chef, one needs a partner or at least a complement: a connoisseur. What, then, is the nature of connoisseurship? How does connoisseurship in the limited area of food relate to the broader issues of the nature of Japanese culture?
The connoisseur is after all a critic, someone with an informed knowledge of the process, value, and relative place of the art in question, but one who is primarily indulging the self. A connoisseur is also someone whose pleasure depends on knowing the rules that are part of the act. Finally, the connoisseur is also privy to secrets unrevealed to non-connoisseurs. Sushi jargon – words and phrases used in sushi bars by staff, such as special counting terms and denotative words for particular foods (ote “The Hand”, for octopus! – becomes an inner language the connoisseur can communicate in. The multi-dimensional response of the connoisseur to the total environment complements the chef’s efforts and helps spur along his art.
“It is not just the flavour,” said one man at a sushi bar. “It is the smell. Hmmm, draw breath as you enter. You sense the faint hint of the freshly cooked rice and fresh fish. Then the silky feel of the counter and the sound ambience as orders are accepted and presented “Omachidosama” as a bamboo leaf or dish is laid before you. Then there is the quick flick-flick of the chef preparing the rice ball, the sure but fast flash of the knife. You catch that unconsciously, until and if a chef makes a mistake. But in your favourite bar, he does not make mistakes, at least ones you can detect, else it would not be your favourite sushi bar. Then it is placed before you, still quivering. Glistening with freshness. Then the texture, which in many cases, say ika (squid) and toro (tuna belly) hit you before the taste. Then of course the mixture of tastes to flood your taste buds, and before you can be satiated by the taste, another, different one.”
One can see a similar expression of sentiment in the opening scenes of Itami’s Tampopo where the idea of perfect Learned enjoyment is taken to ridiculous, but not at all inaccurate extremes by the old Professor of Noodles. And, as Itami seems to be saying, this connoisseurship permeates the whole of Japanese society, taking in not only the rich, but also truck drivers whose noodles must be chewy and soup hot, to beggars, who complain about the deteriorating quality of the restaurants whose bins they scavenge. This is not self-indulgence, or a criticism of hedonism: it is an honest expression of a cultural imperative.
The connoisseurship of sushi relates directly to the sushi chef who transforms the fish from foodstuff to food. It is this relationship that is critical, and is critically mediated by a sharp blade. The essence of sushi preparation is a sharp bladed knife, and this popular conception is reinforced both by interviews with chefs and individuals, and by the almost mystical relationship between Japanese and blades.
In the modern era, one tends to forget how important a piece of sharpened steel can be for survival. Having” proceeded to computers, we have forgotten our more traditional, and far longer lasting implements. Some of this reverence for the blade is still retained in Japanese society. In public scenes that have been seen or at least noted around the world, an ultra-rightist assassin kills a political victim by slabbing him with a sword. Yukio Mishima, writer, mystic, and reactionary nationalist, makes much of swords, posing with, and eventually dying by one. Nowadays such things are the province of political extremes, but the mystical idea is still there, live, under the surface. Michael’s sword teacher emphasised that sword cuts were ‘“to cut out the wielder’s bad heart.” Jeanne’s flower teacher emphasised the need to spend as much time as necessary choosing the right flower cutters, for otherwise the arrangement would fail. And one of our informants, a veteran sushi chef, spent thirty minutes demonstrating and emphasising the importance of a properly honed blade.
“The cut,” said Takeda-san, who has been a sushi master chef for over forty years, “must be absolutely precise. First, the chef must know his tools, and the first years of apprenticeship are simply devoted to that – knowing one’s tools, and one’s fish. You have to learn to sharpen your own knives, how they are made, and what the personal characteristics of your hand are. If you balance a blade on your thumb, you can see that a properly sharpened blade will cut into your fingernail, even when you hold the fingernail at a slope, and even if the only weight is that of the blade. A knife that merely looks sharp, will slide off.
The cut itself is something that takes a great time to master. The piece of fish must have a smooth surface, and as much surface as possible, to enhance the taste. An amateur merely cuts straight through the piece, a professional will cut creating facets.
There is no ‘mystery’ to sushi. Those chefs who make a mystery of it are probably merely intent on their reputations and pockets. But it does have to do with a great deal of skill and an expertise that cannot be hurried, but must be learned through patient application. Of course, nowadays, people are less ready to work hard for that sort of thing. I do not know if all these new “sushi academies” produce good sushi chefs. If they do not, it is probably because these young men (and some women) go out into the world thinking they know how to do it, but without the experience.”
The use of the knife (hōchō) is so important in Japanese cooking that it deserves, and has received, a number of treatments of its own, both technical (e.g. Tanaka 1976 Hōchō nyumon [An introduction to the cooking knife], and popular (the comic book Hōchō Mushuku, roughly “Restless knife”). Kitchen knives come in four named classes: usuba (thin blade), deba (carver), sashimi (fish), and tokushu (special) knives. All of these knives were traditionally made by the welding and folding process which characterised Japanese swords. In this process, alternating bars of tough carbon steel and soft iron are welded together then folded over a number of times. Eventually, one such hardened bar would be welded to a softer bar to provide resiliency combined with toughness and edge (Joly and Inaba 1964). In kitchen knives, a wider steel bar is welded finally to a narrower soft-iron bar. The result is a single-edged blade with an offside cross-section.
Within each class are numerous knife sizes and forms, according to preference of smith and cook. Unsurprisingly, a great deal of attention is paid to maintaining and preparing the knives, as well as to the elegant product they form. Two are significant here: the cutting of fish for sushi and for sashimi, and cutting vegetable and other material shapes.
All this attention to traditional manufacture is not a dreamy wish to turn the historical clock back. But it allows most Japanese to connect almost directly, with what they conceive of as the simple virtues of the past: as if Alexander’s solution to the Gordian knot were possible today. And this of course expresses itself in the popular press too: Hōchō mushuku the comic book is, as its title suggests, about knives. Knives, moreover, that relate to aesthetics (in quite a few episodes the hero must compete in cutting the fish to best convey its intrinsic taste) as well as to history (they are made in the same fashion as pre-modern Japanese swords.)4
Another element must also be considered: knives are boys’ toys. This expresses itself in many ways, and may help explain why so few women are sushi chefs. The popular belief is that women’s basal temperature is slightly higher, thus affecting the degree of freshness. The probable real reason is, as usual, the fact that men have arrogated to themselves the better paying and higher status occupations in society. Mediating between these explanations is the fact that the whole cult of the blade is historically more a male occupation and preoccupation than a female one.
To return to the issue of connoisseurship in Japanese culture, one can find it at all levels of society precisely because it is closely associated with nationalism and nihonjin-ron. The delicate cut of the knife that embodies and delineates the flavour of raw, freshly caught (and sometimes live) fish does not need any garnish. Notwithstanding the currently high price of sushi and sashimi, it is also the kind of elegance that anyone, whatever his station in life, can enjoy and can be an expert in. Moreover, because the act of preparing sushi is a public act, spectatorship is definitely part of the food process, and thus of connossieurship. There is no delicate blending of spices or meticulous sauce-making involved. The only secrets are those of the okusan (lit. “the one behind [the scenes]”, also in standard language, “wife”), responsible for all the preparations, or those of the performance itself, i.e., the art of the knife, cutting at the right angle, doing it with the swift economy of the protagonist in Hōchō mushuku, or of your neighbourhood sushi chef. The larger-than-life greetings, boisterous talk and macho atmosphere of an Edomae sushi bar relates closely to other blade-related male pursuits. It is perhaps not coincidental that a recurrent theme in some manga is that of self-harm with a blade: echoes of Yukio Mishima and yakuza fingers. As Moeran (1986) has indicated, in Japanese culture, mixing pleasure with some elegantly executed violence adds spice to both.
WHAT TENDS TO differentiate “dining” from “eating” is that the former is characterised by greater ritualisation. All of the meals we have described in this chapter share in this quality. The ritualisation they embody, however, is of several kinds. The careful balancing of a kaiseki meal, or a gathering of friends is characterised, each in its own way, by a careful balancing – an elaboration – of decisions about taste, foodstuffs, utensils to be used. Sushi meals are ritualised by the careful exclusion of extraneous effects, as well as by the attention to minutiae. Tonkatsu eaten in a restaurant is carefully embedded in a context of the owner’s aesthetic preferences and his attempts to regulate his clientele’s dining processes. All of these events make what could be a simple process of ingesting foodstuffs into events laden with conscious and unconscious elaborations of rules: the essence of any ritual system.
It is precisely this ritualisation that ensures the continuity and richness of Japanese cuisine. It does so by presenting the participant (essentially, anyone partaking of Japanese food) with a code of elaborate rules. At one extreme is the formality of kaiseki and meals of the same sort such as shōjin ryōri. In such meals the rules are complex, demand great elaboration and high allocation of precious resources – time and materialle – all of which are evident to those who know the rules and background. At the other end are meals, such as the kompa and the social gathering, whose ritualisation is focussed on, and occasioned by, the social relations that have “caused” the event to come into being: people are eating because they arc hungry, but they are dining because they are establishing or maintaining social relations. Commensality is universal in all human societies. In Japanese society it has taken a special localised colouration.
The “semi-rigid” ordering of Japanese meals is the consequence of this desire to rilualise events, combined with the componential nature of much of Japanese culture. The bare bones of the meal structures seen fully-blown in kaiseki and other formal meals can yet exist in other meal forms as the components are adjusted, tinkered with, modified as the social and aesthetic circumstances dictate, and as the cook chooses.
Anderson, Jennifer L. 1987 “Japanese tea ritual: Religion in practice”.
Befu, Harumi 1974 “An ethnography of dinner entertainment in Japan”.
Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.
Cooper, Eugene 1986 “Chinese table manners: You are how you eat”.
Goldstein-Gidoni, Ofra 1996 Packaged Japaneseness: Weddings, Business and Brides.
Ishige, Naomichi 1987 “(Table) manners makyth the man”.
Palmer, Elizabeth 1988 Ikebana: The Art of Japanese Flower Arranging.
Tanaka Tsuneo 1976 Hōchō nyumon [An Introduction to the Cooking Knife].
1The traditional Japanese calendar follows the Chinese pattern of zodiacal animals in a twelve-day, twelve-month, and twelve-year rotation. 1 his is mixed with other cycles such as the live-element and dyadic (yin and yang) Daoist cycles. Hatsu uma is the first flay of the zodiacal sign of the horse in the old calendar, and marked by many Shinto shrines as a day special to Inari. the kami (deity) of rice and trade, and by some Buddhist temples and Shintō shrines as a day special to Battō Kannon (Horse-headed Kannon), patroness of animals, carters and so on.
2Japanese formal ideology, of whatever stripe, usually includes a large component which can be accounted for by the rather wide and varied ideological and socio-political position called “Confucianism.” One element of that position is the view that the present is a poor image of an ideal past: surely the hallmark of a “traditional” view.
3As mentioned before, wasabi is not only treasured for its taste but also for its bactericidal properties, particularly against ptomaine. The same can probably be said for ginger as well.
4Japanese swords were made by a process of folding hard and soft steels and beating them into a layered sandwich. The result was a blade that could hold a very sharp edge, yet was flexible enough to overcome the steel’s tendency to shatter. They are still unequalled in terms of tensile strength, utility (for what they were supposed to do), beauty, and indeed price.