Itadakimasu! The Food Culture of Japan

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Becky A. Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367903589
• eBook ISBN: 9781000288407
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Idiomas

Itadakimasu! The Food Culture of Japan is designed as a first- or second-year college course in Japanese culture for students who have little to no background in the Japanese language, culture, literature, or history. Unlike any other culture text, Itadakimasu! offers a unique approach to learning about culture through a country's cuisine. This account takes students on an exciting journey into the world of Japanese food culture, both past and present, exploring themes such as regional specialties, annual festivals, traditional foodways, prominent tea masters, culinary expressions, restaurant menus, dining etiquette, mealtime customs, and culinary aesthetics. Itadakimasu! also addresses current events in the food industry and agribusiness, health and nutrition, dieting trends, fast food, and international and Western influences. Enhancing this wealth of cultural material are autobiographical essays written by guest contributors and varied literary excerpts featuring food themes across different genres in literature spanning many centuries. Each of the readings is supplemented by general comprehension questions followed by more probing queries calling on critical and analytical thinking to methodically guide students from a cursory understanding of a new culture to reflections on their own experiences and other world cultures. Resources also highlight food-centric films so that students can witness what they are learning about in an authentic cultural context. Furthermore, teachers and students alike can enjoy food tasting labs in the classroom, fostering yet another authentic experience for the students.

With the intention of reaching a broad audience of students majoring or minoring in Japanese or Asian Studies, or students learning English as a Foreign Language or English for Specific Purposes, Itadakimasu! could also be useful for composition and conversation courses and the Writing Across the Curriculum series or as a supplement for 'Four Skills' Japanese language courses and introductory Japanese literature offerings. Above all, its multifaceted design with a broad spectrum of self-contained sections welcomes individual teaching styles and preferences.

Itadakimasu! paints an appetizing image of Japan's society with just a dash of culture, a pinch of language, and a taste of literature to tempt the palate of students new to the study of Japan. Meant to enhance the regular curriculum, this innovative approach to learning about Japan suggests that the culinary world can lend an insightful view into a country's culture. Historical and contemporary foodways are universal elements common to all cultures, making the subject matter inherently relatable.

An Instructors Manual containing sample syllabi, learning outcomes, handout templates, study guides, background content and more is available at www.routledge.com/9780367903572.

CHAPTER 1

Sakizuke 先付 appetizer

A dash of culture: Japanese cuisine

In this chapter we hope to whet your appetite for Japanese food culture—that is, everything that concerns the history, traditions, and contemporary foodways of Japan. Sakizuke 先付 is the name of the first course on a formal, or kaiseki 会席, Japanese menu. Westerners might think of sakizuke as formal appetizers served with a before-dinner drink in an elegant restaurant. One might be served, for example, salmon roe (ikura いくら), delicately seasoned fresh seaweed (wakame わかめ), or salted squid (ika no shiokara いかのしおから). Here, our figurative sakizuke aims to open your eyes and appetite, if you will, to the beginning of the notion of Japanese cuisine. What makes it specifically Japanese and not just Asian? This notion is not as obvious as you’d think, especially since many Asian countries embrace the same food items as essential, namely rice and tea. A country’s cuisine is often thought of as an expression of national identity. But it is more than that, and more than the presence of particular foods. We have to appreciate how a culture conceptualizes food and how its members find meaning in food as part of their daily lives. So, like its art, history, religion, and literature, a unique cuisine completes the picture of what it means to be Japanese. How a culture puts all these parts together is what makes it unique. Furthermore, we know that it is recognizable when UNESCO designated Japanese cuisine (washoku わしょく) as an Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The history of Japanese gastronomy reveals particular traits and explains the presence of its singular characteristics. To understand how Japanese cuisine came to be, we need to examine its historical origins in agriculture. About 10,000 BCE, in the Jo-mon period during the Neolithic Age, archeological evidence revealed a society primarily of hunters, fishermen, and gatherers (mainly of acorns and chestnuts). During the Kofun period (3rd–7th century CE) Japan experienced the influence of Chinese culture by way of Korea as it began its transformation into an agrarian society. With this shift around 729 CE, Japan began infusing the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to make tea, already a common practice in China since 2727 BCE. Then during the Heian period (8th–12th century CE), rice cultivation, in particular, became widespread. Rice was equated with wealth, as it was used as currency to pay taxes as well as the salaries of feudal samurai warriors. Its prestige status was affirmed when it was served ceremoniously as offerings to the gods. This prevalence led to the adoption of rice as a staple of the Japanese meal consumed daily. Even the Japanese language encoded its importance, as the word for “rice”—meshi めし—also means “food”. Consequently, as our formulation of Japanese cuisine becomes clearer, we will notice the continued prominence of tea and rice in the national identity of contemporary Japan.

Another way to conceptualize the idea of a Japanese cuisine is to think of the most prominent dish (or dishes) that outsiders associate with that particular culture. For example, take the case of Italy. What dishes automatically spring to your mind? Pizza, pasta, and spaghetti and meatballs would make most shortlists. Now do the same for Japan. In American culture today, the answer would be sushi, sushi, and sushi! So, from a Westerner’s point of view, raw fish is a prominent identifying characteristic of Japanese cuisine. It also happens to be true among other Asian food cultures. Even people who live in the landlocked mountains of central Japan favor the preparation of fish in its unadulterated state. It begs the question, then, why is this so? And how did this come to be?

To understand the first question of why, we should consider the long, narrow topography of Japan. Its land spans the 20th to the 40th latitude. In the United States, this translates to extending from the southern state of Florida to the northern state of Maine; in Europe, we’d start at the North African country of Morocco and continue all the way to Northern Italy. Japan is composed of more than 6,800 islands, of which we name the four most prominent ones by size: Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku. Its diverse climate ranges from subarctic in Hokkaido to subtropical in Okinawa with its mountainous center carved by numerous crisscrossing rivers. But it is Japan’s offshore waters of warm and cold ocean currents that give it one of the richest fishing areas of the world. Honshu provides the world with sardines, bonito, skipjack, and mackerel. Hokkaido harvests herring, seaweed, salmon, and crabs. Kyushu specializes in sea bream and squid, while the waters of Shikoku produce the finest tuna. Not to be overlooked, however, are the rich farmlands of the mountains and prairies, which produce a wide range of fruits and vegetables as well as cattle grazing for the prized marbled waygū beef of international acclaim.

It is not surprising, then, that a country of islands would have fish figure prominently in its food culture. Furthermore, since preserving fish must necessarily be an immediate concern at harvest and often involves complicated logistics, eating it raw became the practical custom. The rationale maintained that if the fish was fresh, eat it raw, but if it was not, then grill it (yakimono) or boil it (nimono). Thus, centuries of eating fishes and meats raw is deeply embedded in Japanese food culture today. As a consequence, over time, farmers, fishermen, vendors, and purveyors alike have developed and perfected sophisticated techniques for food safety. So skilled are they in these methods that they perfected over time that Japan today exemplifies a model for food safety worldwide. The custom of serving fish raw eventually also applied to beef. While examples of eating foods raw do exist in the West—ceviche (raw fish marinated in citrus) in Mexico, steak tartare and befsztyk tatarski (raw ground meat) in France and Poland, respectively, to name a few—the omnipotence of sashimi, a slice of raw fish, or sushi, raw fish accompanied by vinegared sweet rice, as a stand-alone meal in the numerous sushi restaurants throughout Japan remains unparalleled in the world today. So now our picture of Japanese cuisine adds fish to our list, but also includes a food technique: raw preparation, stemming from practical imperatives before the existence of refrigeration. From the individual perspective, this meant that people became more perceptive to the freshness of food. Future industrialization would have to cater to the demand of this heightened taste.

The depiction of Japanese cuisine would not be complete if we didn’t recognize the importance of seasons. The time of the year, whether it’s winter, spring, summer, or fall, is constantly at the forefront of the Japanese daily menu planning. You might be thinking that this characteristic is common to many food cultures of the world. After all, you can only eat what’s available at the grocery store, which mirrors the season. But in Japan, the connection to the season is deeper and more persistent. Historically, before refrigeration, eating seasonally was an imperative, and seasonal festivals marked planting and harvesting. Over time, these events cemented the close connection between nature and produce, greenhouses of year-round fruits and vegetables notwithstanding. Contemporary Japanese society makes sure that the season is always at the forefront of its citizens’ awareness. Even the Emperor creates songs for the seasons, and grocery store displays elaborately recall the colors and images in every department. Consequently, in peoples’ minds, a food item is strongly linked to a season—the food recalls the season and, conversely, the season recalls the food. For example, yellowtail fish (buri ブリ) is in season in the winter when its name is cold yellowtail (kamburi 寒ブリ). It is abundant at this time, and the quality is at its highest. Thus, when people see cold yellowtail at the fish market, they are reminded that winter is coming.

As we continue to explore Japanese food culture and what makes Japanese cuisine unique, keep these characteristics in m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Sakizuke 先付 appetizer
• Chapter 2 Wanmono 椀物 soup
• Chapter 3 Mukōzuke 向付 sashimi
• Chapter 4 Yakimono 焼き物 grilled dish
• Chapter 5 Nimono 煮物 simmered dish
• Chapter 6 Agemono 揚げ物 fried dish
• Chapter 7 Mushimono 蒸し物 steamed dish
• Chapter 8 Sunomono 酢の物 salad
• Chapter 9 Shokuji 食事 rice dish
• Chapter 10 Mizugashi 水菓子 dessert
• Appendices
• Culinary glossary
• List of contributors
• Credits
• Indices of Language, Literature, Names, and Recipes
• Subject Index
• Back Cover