Hatoyama Farewell

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Farewell haiku for Hatoyama
by DOLF VAN GRAAS
Sagawa, Kochi Pref.

HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO

QUOTE
©　Japan Times, June 8, 2010


Dear Yukio Hatoyama,

Leaving your office, your staff gave you a taxpayer-funded bouquet of flowers. Your pregnant term did not even last nine months.

I'd like to give you something more personal from my heart, to show my love for my country of choice, Japan. I admit it's somewhat frank and candid, but please see my gift as a token of my responsibility as a permanent resident.

After having written six unanswered open letters to you since December last year, this small bouquet contains minimal reflections, and some of my concerns.


Caged pigeon coos yes
Noisy muscled hawks nest close
Listen silence left


Pigeon chills slowly
Peace twigs whirl from heaven down
Predators land first


Nagata theatre
Spotlighted somnambulists
Pale audience sighs


Morality down
Your money's toilet paper
Pecunia non olet


Money parachute
Handling money is an art
Marrow gets frozen


Sucking state's nipples
New winds do not change old ones
Money is sweet milk


First happy wife shops
Man soaks silk neckties with tears
Servant still flies high


Playing blind with fire
Overpaid compassion deaf
Are you Japanese?


A's croak still loudest
Frogs in my pond cannot fly
Tears keep water high


Unfit bragging eels
Sated with slime nil phrases
Fat winding twisting


You can hear my voice
Nagatacho is sealed up
Phoenix dies in ash


Servants gulp my tax
Perverted indifference
This cancer eats all


First man looks inside
Outside all birds sing their songs
Fate man: made sadness


Decent Prime eats time
Makes believe good intentions
Alas time eats man


Males luxuriate
Guzzling Japan all seasons
We love you white lie


We trust our payments
Perverted morality
Forgot verify


Perfect v. hollow
Cheerful koi swim in soft winds
Politicians smell


Yellow ever bright
Their lacking colorless guts
Our true mimosa


Vultures circle HIM
Phony hypocrites attack
Lax and cheap pays off


Grey's record red debts
Camellia leaves are shining
Why I have to pay


Small perfect beauty
Sweet skillful happy swallow
Leaders make a mess


Delightful springtime
Swallows nest under our roof
Tax sucks us empty


Limp politicians
New season unfolds flowers
Yellow irises


Dead hollow phrases
Collide with sincerity
I hate parasites


Half of bureaucrats
Underneath rhododendrons
All generals too


Simplicity's death
Lax bureaucrat's jobbery
Worsening pays off


Cancerous leaders
Guiding us to an abyss
Fig leaves' smell is gone


Blueberries ripen
Decent intentions worsen
Somnambulist's life


Frogs jump all around
Try catching a friendly one
In government trap


Ignorant first man
Flies governmental airplane
Ehhhhh I did not know


Incompetent jumps
Jack in the box' empty hand
Pay me and follow


Lax first jay walker's
Inalienable right keeps
Japanese deep down


Too many villains
Shamateurist lawmakers
Paracitical


Moneygrubbers come
Razzle-dazzle razzmatazz
For money stupid


Arrogant scions
Leaders fail our litmus test
Trust but verify


Wishy-washy men
Do not feel their empty words
It is our own fault


Our loopy leader
Feels the weight of his own words
I am getting mad


Crying or laughing
Where is your damn dignity?
Nonentities rule


My goodbye kiss to
Mandarins, politicians
Kiss of death of course


The only harvest
Bills of reckless amateurs
Why I have to pay


For incompetence
An average company
Sacks you in disgrace


Why all that jazz . . . zzz
Lax irresponsible you
Insensitive you


Making rock stone walls
Resembles haiku puzzling
Solid no concrete


Doc H fairy-tales
Intention-anesthetics
No operations


A pampered surgeon
Gives a strong anesthetic
Fails to operate


H loves nature much
So he plants young trees upturned
Roots in burning sun


Most Okinawans
Government still detains as
POWs


H drills into nerves
Of healthy teeth and grinders
Shunning rotten ones


Resigned Japanese
Hire costly incapables
Topsy-turvy life


Make people suffer
What is the correct title?
Criminal I think


H's Odyssey
Is no Odyssey
Flying at our cost


Shampooed neat soft hair
Never a cogent approach
Ominous selfish


Government ambush
Plays catch as catch can with us
Jungle all around


DOLF VAN GRAAS
Sagawa, Kochi Pref.


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WASHOKU
Hatoyama Apples

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Food Safety in Japan

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Japanese food-safety label protects business foremost, and not people

By PHILIP BRASOR

QUOTE
©　Japan Times Nov. 1, 2009

It's wise to take any advertisement claim with a grain of salt, and some products invite not just skepticism but downright disbelief. Commercials for hair restoration aids may not actually state they will return your bald pate to a state of hirsute lushness, but they nevertheless get your hopes up toward that end. If any product actually did restore hair, it would be considered a medical breakthrough akin to curing cancer. You wouldn't need an ad to sell it.

Likewise health foods that purport to burn body fat. Common sense says that no "natural" food will do that, but there are plenty of products that imply they do. One of these is the tea beverage called Healthiya. In the TV commercial, actor Teruyuki Kagawa is at his sports club preparing to go for a dip in the pool when he notices the slight paunch on the young man next to him. The young man then notices Kagawa noticing him and quickly sucks in his gut. Kagawa smiles because he has no paunch thanks to the fact that he drinks Healthiya, which, when it arrives in his stomach, sets off a glowing fire that is presumably burning up that oily ramen he had for lunch.

If you automatically doubt the veracity of this implication, at the end of the commercial a symbol depicting a stylized human body with arms stretched toward the sky appears at the bottom of the screen to indicate that Healthiya has been designated by the government as a tokutei hoken-yo shokuhin ("tokuho" for short), or "food for specified health use," so you don't have to worry about whether or not the ad's implication is true or not, because the authorities have already worried for you and concluded that it is.

Actually, they have done no such thing, as evidenced by the scandal surrounding Econa cooking oil, which, like Healthiya, is manufactured by the soapmaker Kao and received the tokuho label back in 1998. Econa's claim, which is right there on the bottle, is similar to Healthiya's: It makes it difficult for fat to accumulate in the body. However, it was recently revealed that one component of Econa can morph into a suspected carcinogen after it is digested. Consequently, in September Kao recalled the entire Econa series, which includes 59 products, including salad dressings and dog food, from Japanese retailers and stores overseas (where it is sold under the name Enova).

The company said Econa is perfectly safe, but it decided to withdraw it from the market until it reduces the amount of the problem substance and "people have no reason to worry any more."

What's troubling about this development is that the company itself seems to be in charge of its own monitoring, and, in fact, once the authorized ministry gives a product the tokuho designation, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with it any more.

Questions about Econa's safety have been asked since 2002, when an entirely different ingredient was brought up for scrutiny. Kao sought a tokuho label for its Econa mayonnaise and one of its components, diacyglycerol (DAG), was suspected of turning into a carcinogen in the body. Kao claimed that the substance was not absorbed, and the health ministry took the company at its word and approved the tokuho label, but it also asked the Food Safety Commission to study the matter.

Usually, all the FSC does is take the data supplied by the company and look at it more closely, but consumer groups asked the health ministry to stop sales of Econa because of the carcinogen suspicions. The ministry replied that "there is not enough evidence" to show that anything in Econa products "promote" the production of carcinogenic substances. According to this logic, you don't need to recall a product until it is proved that consumers are dying from it, but in any case the FSC decided to make its study more thorough. Their results were finally available last February, and were inconclusive.

Then, in March, an unrelated German study into powdered milk using processed vegetable oil found that glycidol fatty acid esters in the oil could be analyzed into carcinogens in the body. Econa contains from 10 to 182 times the amount of glycidol fatty acid esters found in regular cooking oils, so consumer groups asked the health ministry to look into this matter, too.

But due to the vertical nature of Japanese bureaucracy, neither the health ministry nor the FSC nor even the new Consumer Affairs Ministry could do anything about it. They are different government entities with different purposes (and, perhaps more importantly, different budgets), meaning there is no real coordination among them. The CAM is now in charge of tokuho certification, but it can't rescind a label awarded by the health ministry. Neither the health ministry nor the CAM can evaluate food safety, which is the job of the FSC. And the only entity that can prohibit sales of a product is the health ministry, which was still waiting for a conclusive safety evaluation from the FSC.

So, in the end, in order to avoid further media attention, Kao decided to take matters into its own hands and pull Econa from the market, at least until "people stopped worrying." They also unilaterally removed the tokuho label, which, if anyone doubted before, is clearly a meaningless designation, and the new minister for consumer affairs, Mizuho Fukushima, seems to understand that. In the wake of the Econa scandal she has said she plans to review the tokuho system "from the ground up," and has hinted she may scrap it but insists she will not address the matter with that intention.

Fukushima is playing it safe because it may be difficult to get rid of the tokuho system. It's been around since 1991, and products with the tokuho designation now account for ¥680 billion in sales a year. The label benefits makers more than consumers, but that makes sense since the Japanese government has always put business ahead of people.


The Japan Times (C) All rights reserved


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Food Safety in Japan

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Satoyama

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Satoyama

QUOTE
©　Japan Times, August 2009
Winfred Bird

Japan's creeping natural disaster
Age-old farming methods helped to create and support this country's wealth of plant and animal species. But now, as rural areas empty of people, that rich biodiversity is put at risk.

By WINIFRED BIRD

In October 2010, government officials from almost every country in the world will meet in Nagoya for the 10th Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10). The aim of the Convention, which came into effect in 1993, is simple but momentous: To maintain the richness of life on earth.

In Japan, contrary to what may seem logical, much of the richness of its biodiversity flourishes where humans have followed traditional rural lifestyles for thousands of years.

Worldwide, however, biodiversity is anything but flourishing. Though exact extinction rates (and even the total number of species on Earth) are unknown, many scientists suspect that we are now entering a mass-extinction episode. Five such plunges in diversity have occurred in the history of the Earth — but this time it looks like the culprit is us.

How can we avoid causing a catastrophic loss that could take millions of years to recoup? That is the question the 191 parties (counting the European Community members collectively as one) of the Convention on Biodiversity have grappled with at the nine COP meetings since 1993.

Next year's meeting is particularly significant, because 2010 has been set as the target year for "significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss." It is also the United Nations' "International Year of Biodiversity."

The situation in Japan, as globally, is urgent. According to the Environment Ministry, nearly a quarter of Japan's mammals and plants, and more than a third of its freshwater, estuarine and mangrove-dwelling fish are threatened.

The "Third National Biodiversity Strategy," set out by the ministry in November 2007, identifies the usual slew of threats to Japan's wild creatures — including overdevelopment, overexploitation, invasive species and chemicals in the environment. But the document also focuses attention on something more unusual. Biodiversity is threatened, it says, not just by the loss of virgin nature but by changes in its satoyama — the intensely managed forests and fields that make up Japan's traditional rural landscape. Humans have been shaping the natural environment in Japan for a very long time. Starting with the advent of rice cultivation more than 2,000 years ago, virtually every accessible patch of land on these small and crowded islands has had its vegetation cut, cleared, burned, tilled or otherwise transformed. But surprisingly, say those who study the ecology of Japan's traditional rural areas, that may not have been such a bad thing for the archipelago's biological diversity.

Back before humans settled down in villages and learned about agriculture, Japan's wet and mountainous terrain was mostly wooded.

"Japan was a land of trees," says Kazuhiko Maita, director of the Institute for Asian Black Bear Research and Preservation. "But then, when farming communities began to grow rice in paddies they created, they cut the flatland forests."

As population numbers rose, the area of land under cultivation expanded. So began a major ecological transformation. Forest was lost, but in exchange, aquatic and semiaquatic habitats greatly increased, thanks to rice paddies and the networks of reservoirs, springs and waterways that fed them. These provided a rich habitat for a wide variety of amphibians, insects, water plants, crustaceans and fish.

Rice and vegetable cultivation necessitated draft animals such as cows and horses for plowing, and organic matter to enrich the fields — as well as firewood for cooking. These factors set off further transformations of the land surrounding villages.

While natural forest in remote mountain areas was in some cases logged, the most drastic changes took place close to villages, where fuel wood and "green manure" such as weeds, trimmings and fallen leaves were gathered. Sun-tolerant trees such as Red pine, White birch, or Konara oak grew back in the open patches where shade-tolerant climax forest had been cut.

Villagers regularly collected wood and undergrowth from these secondary forests, often coppicing the trees to enable repeated harvesting for firewood or building materials, and by doing so prevented the forests from returning to their original state.

Due to these routine rural practices, over the years concentric rings of sato (village), satoyama (managed woodland) and okuyama (wild forest) came into being.

The brighter, more open type of forest around villages provided habitat for many wildflowers, butterflies, birds and other species not found in the natural climax forests.

Farmers also greatly expanded the area of pasture and seminatural meadow in Japan to provide grass for their livestock and material for thatched roofs. Taken together, this mosaiclike landscape of rice paddies, secondary forest, meadows, ponds and streams is nowadays called satochi-satoyama, or simply satoyama, in Japanese. Although each individual element of satoyama provides important wildlife habitat, Kazuhiko Takeuchi, a professor of landscape ecology and planning at the University of Tokyo, and coauthor of "Satoyama: The Traditional Rural Landscape of Japan" (University of Tokyo Press, 2001), explains that it is the close proximity of so many different habitats that sets traditional farming areas apart from modern megafarms where single crops are planted as far as the eye can see.

"The biodiversity in satoyama is significant because management has created a mosaic of forests, grasslands, fields, irrigation ponds and other elements, resulting in the diversity of ecosystems. These features cannot be found in intensive agricultural landscapes," says Takeuchi.
Natural patina:
Biodiversity flourishes even on the stone wall outside the house of Yasuko Fukuyama in the hamlet of Nigura, where lichens, ferns and succulents make a beautiful living picture. Fukuyama (far right) moved to Nigura more than 60 years ago as a new bride, and is now one of the handful of its remaining residents. WINIFRED BIRD

The idea that such an intensely managed landscape provides key wildlife habitat is hard to swallow for some wilderness-lovers, says the Environment Ministry's Daiji Kawaguchi. He is in charge of the government-sponsored Satoyama Initiative, which has linked Japan and other countries with similar land-use patterns to promote satoyama as a model of sustainable rural living.

"When I talk about the Satoyama Initiative, many people ask, 'Are you trying to say we should change the Amazon into a satoyamalike landscape?'

"That's not the idea. We realize that overexploitation can be a problem. But there are areas that have been touched by people, and since those areas exist, we have to maintain them to preserve their rich biodiversity and continue to receive benefits from them," Kawaguchi explains.

In Japan, the biological importance of such areas is widely accepted. The Environment Ministry estimates that more than half of the plants and animals in Japan's "Red Book" of threatened species live in satoyama areas, among them once-familiar countryside creatures such as medaka (Japanese killfish; Oryzias latipes) and the golden bekko dragonfly (Libellula angelina). Ironically, just as their environmental importance has been realized, traditional farming villages themselves are becoming an endangered species.

The tiny hamlet of Akagura, in the Kumano mountains of southern Mie Prefecture on the Kii Peninsula 100 km southwest of Nagoya, is one such village on the verge of extinction.

Located about 20 minutes by car inland from the coastal city of Kumano, the village is open and sunny compared to the dark forest that surrounds it. Little houses and fields cover the hills, with mossy stone footpaths winding up the slopes between them. Water is everywhere: seeping from the mountainside, rushing along the valley floor, and flowing into cascading stone basins in front of every house.

But most of the houses are empty now, and most of the fields overgrown. Where rice once grew along the river, tall Japanese cedar trees now stand. All but three residents have moved away or died. What remains is a tiny ghost town slowly dissolving back into wilderness.

Fifty years ago, however, Akagura was a different world.

Akiko Karitani, 63, grew up in Akagura, but these days lives in the coastal town of Mihama about 40 minutes away. She says that when she was a child, life still carried on much as it had since the village was founded about 500 years ago, according to local legends.

"We didn't have a bathroom sink, so every morning we'd run down to the river to wash our face. We didn't have electricity till I was in the first grade, and there was no road till I was in junior high school," she says.

Her family would make the three-hour trek on foot to the coast only about once every three years — to see the Kumano fireworks. Cooking was done in a traditional kamado (earth stove), and the family collected firewood together in the woods. They kept a cow for plowing and used the manure to fertilize their rice fields. Her mother and father farmed and did forestry work in the surrounding mountains. Still with 27 households in 1967, the village was a lively place.

"There were a lot of kids then — seven in our family, and at least five in most others. We'd play together a lot," she says.

Despite these fond memories, it was a hard life. Rice yields in the cool mountain valleys were poor, and with virtually no monetary income, villagers subsisted mostly on vegetables and chagayu, a gruel made with tea and rice.

"We got hungry but there was nothing to do about it," says Karitani, who left the village when she was 31 after her husband died in an accident. At that time, too, there was no work, and her daughter was the only pupil left in the school.

Yasuko Fukuyama, 83, also remembers the hard times well.

"Back then everything took a lot of time. My husband and I both did farmwork. There were no machines, so we were always cutting grass and weeds by hand," she says. Fukuyama moved to the hamlet of Nigura, next to Akagura, more than 60 years ago as a new bride and still lives there.

Cutting weeds is a constant refrain in the recollections of old folks in the area, and for good reason: That simple act is what stands between the village and the forest that presses relentlessly in on all sides. It is the cutting, harvesting, coppicing and weeding that have arrested for centuries the satoyama landscape in an intermediate stage of biological succession between open space and mature forest — allowing biodiversity to flourish. As soon as the cutting stops, the fields and woodlands resume their inevitable march back to climax forest.

That process is already under way in Akagura. Standing in the front yard of her unlce's house, Karitani gestured to the places where the forest has started its advance.

"Those trees weren't there," she says. "It was more open, with more rice paddies and fields. The forest is closing in."

One mountain over, in the hamlet of Ikari (now incorporated into the city of Kumano), 93-year-old Chiune Matsuda and his 82-year-old wife, Atsusa, are still holding back the creeping return of the forest.


At ease:
Yasuko Fukuyama, 83, at home in the hamlet of Nigura. Her children want her to join them in Nagano, but she insists she's not lonely, and says, "I like it here — the country and the mountains." WINIFRED BIRD

One blazing afternoon in July, Chiune could be found steadily weed-whacking the terraced fields of the village where he has spent nearly a century.

"I'll stay out until 5, when the sumo comes on television," he says. The Matsudas grow vegetables, gather wood from the hills around their home, and keep the picturesque valley well-trimmed. They stopped growing rice 10 years ago, though Chiune's younger brother and his wife, the only other remaining residents of the valley, still do.

"It looks pretty much like it did when I was a kid, except there's a road now," says Chiune.

Yoshiko Miyamoto of the Kinan Tour Design Center, an organization that offers tours highlighting the culture and nature of the Kumano region, met the Matsudas three years ago. She put together a tour during which visitors can have a look at Chiune's immaculately preserved farming tools, and she often visits on her own.

"I don't think the Matsudas keep farming to preserve the ecosystem or anything like that," says Miyamoto, 45. "This is just what Chiune has done all his life. But his character is what creates the satoyama landscape."

It is a character, and a lifestyle, that has been largely swept away by the tide of modernization that transformed Japan after World War II. Starting in the 1960s, new urban job opportunities drew increasing numbers of people away from rural areas, leaving a shrunken and aged labor force. In 1920, nearly half the population of Japan lived in towns of less than 5,000 people; by 2000 just 1.7 percent did. At the same time, many farming villages on the outskirts of cities were paved over to build suburbs and roads.

Meanwhile, in those rural communities that remained, the way people used the land changed drastically.

After the war, oil and gas replaced wood and charcoal as the primary fuels, so the secondary woodland around villages lost its economic value. What was needed instead was lumber to feed the building boom. Vast stretches of natural forest and satoyama woodland were felled and replanted with the fast-growing Japanese cedar and hinoki cypress trees whose clouds of pollen now spark hay-feverlike symptoms for millions. Meanwhile, other uncared-for secondary forests grew denser and darker.

Changes in agriculture were equally sweeping. With the widespread adoption of chemical fertilizers, it was no longer necessary to collect leaves or cut weeds and grass as "green manure" to enrich the fields. The introduction of tractors meant that meadowland and pasture for draft animals to graze on also became unnecessary. These two changes alone resulted in the near-complete disappearance of seminatural meadows from Japan.

At the same time, agrochemicals made farmland less hospitable for the plants and animals that had once inhabited it. Many small and inefficient fields were abandoned or combined into larger ones, and waterways were lined with concrete. Small reservoirs were replaced by huge dam projects. In short, the entire satoyama ecosystem was radically transformed — often with government support.

"Everything was mechanized and made convenient, but in exchange we lost a lot. Things that had continued for centuries were suddenly gone in the space of 30 or 40 years," says the Kinan Tour Design Center's Miyamoto, a Kumano native herself. Now, as the generation that grew up before that transformation took place fades away, government and nonprofit organizations are scrambling to salvage a piece of the ecosystem that is disappearing along with them.

In 2003, the Biodiversity Center of Japan, part of the Environment Ministry, launched a project to monitor changes in the satoyama ecosystem as part of its larger "Monitoring Sites 1,000" program. The actual monitoring is managed by the Nature Conservation Society of Japan, and is carried out by volunteers who track survey items at 197 sites around the country — including flora, water quality and four "indicator" animals.

"Endangered species are important, but we also need an ecosystem approach to conserve the landscape. That's why we monitor species that indicate the status of the natural environment," explains Biodiversity Center Deputy Director Noriaki Sakaguchi.

For example, three species of akagaeru (Brown frog; Ranidae) have been chosen for monitoring because they indicate continuity between different parts of the environment. The frogs lay eggs in paddies but hunt for insects in the woods, so they can't survive if these areas are not connected.

To monitor the number and diversity of plants in meadows and woods, volunteers count butterflies. That's because during their juvenile phase, caterpillars of different species are specialized to eat different kinds of plants, so the diversity of butterfly species indicates the diversity of plants. In addition, the overall number of butterflies indicates the abundance of those plants.

The surveys only began five years ago, so Sakaguchi says it's still too early to draw conclusions from the results. It's clear, however, that the changes are complex: Some species can adapt; others can't. While some populations are shrinking, others — including deer and wild boar — are expanding their range as people retreat from rural areas.

Some conservation groups maintain that there may be an upside to the changes as well, since the overgrown forest around villages replaces wildlife habitat that was devastated when natural forests were cut down during and after the war.

In addition to the monitoring project, the Environment Ministry, in cooperation with the Tokyo-based United Nations University's Institute of Advanced Studies, is creating a database of management practices in Japan's satoyama and similar rural areas in other countries.

The ministry has designated four model project areas in Japan where nonprofit groups, local governments, academics, landowners and volunteers are cooperating on preservation activities. But, admits the ministry's Kawaguchi, the government initiatives are more about spreading an idea than actually preserving a certain amount of habitat.

"We're not currently focusing on numerical data, like how many species we should have or how diverse the ecosystem is. We're trying to promote a balance between nature and human use. It's more about the principle," he says.

Volunteer groups and nature centers all over the country have been working to maintain that balance since long before the government got involved. Some groups have created land trusts to prevent development or better manage the landscape, and others engage in projects such as removing invasive bamboo, monitoring river fish or fostering a market for sustainably grown farm products. Perhaps projects like these have been so popular because they aim at preserving not just nature, but rural culture as well.

Unfortunately, according to estimates in "Satoyama: The Traditional Rural Landscape of Japan," current volunteer activities cover at best 0.03 percent of satoyama areas. So, while some examples of the traditional satoyama ecosystem may be preserved, it seems likely that on a larger scale rural Japan cannot escape radical change. That's a fact Karitani, born and bred in Akagura village, is keenly aware of.

"Probably with my generation the village will go back to forest. Our kids didn't grow up here, so they don't come back much," she says as she stands in front of the two-room house where she grew up and gazes out over the terraced fields below.

In a strange twist, the paddies that once grew rice have been planted with Japanese anise, a leafy plant sold to be left as an offering at graves.

"It makes me feel lonely," she says. "But I don't want Akagura to turn into a tourist spot with hot springs and hotels. I just want it to stay like it is."

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090823x1.html


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Hirabari Satoyama Ecosystem
Nagoya

Nagoya is in the global spotlight as the city hosts the United Nations conference on biological diversity, starting on October 18, 2010 – in my opinion a much more important topic than how Toyota, with major factories in the city, will deal with its current crisis.

We cannot afford to ignore biological diversity and genetic resources, and the ecosystems involving nature, plants, animals and humans are too complex to rebuild and once they are lost, what will we do about it?

Local mayor Kawamura Takashi is fighting an uphill battle for this precious piece of forest, and has staked his reputation on the battle.

Emergency Statement by activists who are trying to save Hirabara (English). Over 30,000 people have signed the petition, and the campaign also has the support of Oscar-winning anime director Hayao Miyazaki, who is famous for his Totoro Forest campaign just west of Tokyo, that we have covered here at greenz.jp before. Will the activist manage to convince the construction companies to allow Nagoya to be known around the world as a city with the will to protect the Hirabari ecosystem?


source : greenz.jp
by Martin
Mar 4th, 2010




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Mori no Megumi / Food from the Bountiful Woods

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Highway Restaurants

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全国高速道路サービスエリア名物ガイド

QUOTE
©　www.bike-ryoko.com

東北自動車道
★佐野サービスエリア
佐野特製ラーメン　750円
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韃靼（だったん）板そば　980円　
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前沢牛ねぎ串焼　750円

★紫波サービスエリア
じゃじゃ麺　600円
海藻ラーメン　580円
お茶もち　105円

★岩手山サービスエリア
盛岡冷麺　840円
南部かしわ丼　900円
とんかつ定食　1150円
杜仲茶ポークフランク　380円
岩手奥中山高原ジャージーソフトクリーム　350円

★花輪サービスエリア
小岩井ソフトクリーム　280円
比内地鶏からあげ　310円

★津軽サービスエリア
津軽かけそば　350円
りんごカレールー　399円
白神山地の水（1.5リットル）　241円
干し餅　525円


関越自動車道
★高坂サービスエリア
五目焼きそば　1000円
故郷篭膳　1,300円
彩の玉手箱　1350円
岩のりラーメン　600円
特製みそかつ丼　680円

★上里サービスエリア
特撰上里御膳　1200円
豆腐づくし　1200円
獅子麺　600円
のりうどん/そば　450円

★赤木高原サービスエリア
特選元気健康御膳　1080円
赤城特選ロースかつ御膳　1480円
水沢特選天ぷらうど　1180円
舞茸天ぷらそば　530円
カツカレー　680円
赤城高原プティングバーム　1050円

★塩沢サービスエリア
越後もち豚しょうが焼定食　750円
舞茸そ　450円
りゅうと　367円
石打まんじゅう　367円

★越後川口サービスエリア
小千谷そば　900円
魚野川わっぱ飯　1250円



上信越自動車道
★横川サービスエリア
上州煮豚膳　1150円
山のきのこのよくばりセット　998円
横川風ロコモコ　950円
高原バニラソフトクリ－ム　260円
上州おくつろぎ定　750円

★東部湯の丸サービスエリア
信越定食　1050円
湯の丸御膳　1050円
おしぼりうどん　840円
おやき各種(野沢菜・切干し・粒あん)　200円

★妙高サービスエリア
手作り「妙高天心納豆」カップ6個入り　380円
やまもち　577円



磐越自動車道
★磐梯山サービスエリア
喜多方ラーメン定食　820円
磐梯山手打ち天ざるそば定食　1610円
味噌煮込ラーメ　ン710円

★阿賀野川サービスエリア
奥阿賀ふるさと御膳　1500円
海老釜飯　900円
豚ロース生姜焼定食　850円
べこの乳ソフトクリーム　300円



常磐自動車道
★守谷サービスエリア
副将軍　945円
レンコンうどんセット　900円
常陸豚の生姜焼　1000円
ムラサキイモアイス　157円
水戸納豆　735円

★友部サービスエリア
水戸めぐり　980円
水戸そば　850円
友部黒醤油ラーメン　580円
常陸牛まん・常陸ポークまん各3個入り　840円

★中郷サービスエリア
いわきメヒカリ定食　600円
茨城スィートプリンケーキ　630～1050円
だるま食品 納豆わらっと入り　735円
水戸の梅 630円～1575円



東名高速道路


★海老名サービスエリア
相模原のダチョウ　ダ・超・ヘルシーハンブルグ1000円
相模高座豚の生姜焼き定食　1080円
海老名御膳　1340円
メロンパン　147円
ミッシュフランセ　315円
海老のトマトクリーム　714円

★足柄サービスエリア
ペチャカツ定食　990円
金太郎角煮ラーメン　900円
FUJIYAMAラーメン　680円
金太郎のおやつ　840円
金太郎ラーメン　680円
金時力まんじゅう　630円～

★富士川サービスエリア
由比の浜っこ丼セット1050円
つみれ汁の鯵わって定食　900円
焼津港のマグロ丼　1155円
駿河茶漬風膳　800円
かぐや姫丼1200円
宿場のごはん（桜えびづくし）1600円

★牧ノ原サービスエリア
名物まぐろの牧之原ラーメン　880円
緑茶セットいっぷく　480円
静岡メロンソフト　320円
うわさのかめまんじゅう　各155円

★浜名湖サービスエリア
特選うな茶セット　1950円
銘柄豚の特選とんかつ　1400円
やらまいか丼　980円
うな重　2400円
うなぎドック　368円

★上郷サービスエリア
若女将手習い弁当「つぼみ」1680円
名古屋コーチンつくし2500円
名古屋コーチン煮込みカレーうどん950円
金鯱丼1100円
皿ダカレー900円
ジャンボカレーパン300円



中央自動車道

★談合坂サービスエリア
勘助うどん　945円
生姜焼御膳　1260円
カレーセット　800円
勘助いも　200円

★双葉サービスエリア
ビーフシチュー　1680円
コク黒ラーメン　600円
甲州名物かぼちゃほうとう　680円
甲州ころ柿　760円
甲府富士屋ホテルブランデーケーキ　1050円

★諏訪湖サービスエリア
チーズアントルメ5号　1800円
縄文おやき　200円
しじみの深川丼　680円
磯あげかま各種　290円
りんごソフト　300円
ソースカツ丼まん　390円
さくら丼　1030円

★駒ヶ崎サービスエリア
エイジアンセット　1150円
高遠饅頭10個入り　1050円
フルーツ巣ごもり6個入り　840円
ソースカツ丼　1050円
定食新信濃　1100円
ローメンセット　780円
駒ヶ岳ラーメン　580円
五平餅　300円



北陸自動車道
★賤ヶ岳サービスエリア
鮎そば　650円
メロンパン各　150円
菊水飴　735円
よもぎソフトクリーム　300円

★南条サービスエリア
へしことろろ丼　892円
日野山御膳　1239円
福井ポークカツ膳　1300円
越前おろしそば海老天　600円
夕張キングメロンパン　147円

★尼御前サービスエリア
甘えび天丼セット　945円
弁慶そば　892円
北陸路御膳　1260円
和風ラーメン　550円
金時ソフトクリーム　300円
能登牛コロッケ　150円
加賀こがねいも10個入り　1050円

★小矢部川サービスエリア
百万石御膳　1300円
富山味紀行　1000円
越中天丼　750円
ますの寿し　1300円
うおづりんごソフトクリーム　300円

★有磯海サービスエリア
ノーベル夢御膳　999円
うまし海有磯のどんぶり　850円
甘えび丼とミニうどんセット　860円
ネギトロ丼そば定食　750円
しんきろうソフト　300円



名神高速道路


★大津サービスエリア
鹿児島産黒豚カツ丼定食　1200円
みたらし団子　150円
Ｏ２定食（大津定食）　1200円
アップルクインテット　450円

★吹田サービスエリア
デミグラスハンバーグ定食 980円
豚の生姜焼き定食　850円
ひょうたん弁当　1200円
カレーうどん　560円
揚げパン　130円



第二名神自動車道
★明石サービスエリア
天茶ひつまぶし　980円
明石のり麺セット　1080円より
明石ダコの唐揚定食　780円
子午線うどん定食　750円
たこ焼　8個入　400円



西名阪自動車道
★香芝サービスエリア
香芝スタミナラーメン　680円
大和肉鶏炭火焼丼　950円
吉野うどん　500円
じゃこ天　150円



中国自動車道

★西宮名塩サービスエリア
もち麦麺定食　1,480円
自家製和牛カレーセット　980円
自家製ハヤシライスセット　980円
サイフォンコーヒー　300円
神戸豚まん　210円

★加西サービスエリア
ロースかつ膳　1,029円
ヘレかつ膳　1,134円
七種（なぐさ）シリーズ　1,470円
からあげ定食　680円
かきあげうどん　500円

★勝央サービスエリア
岡山地鶏親子丼　880円
鴨ねぎラーメン　800円
ぶっかけ穴子かきあげうどん　850円
黒豆ソフト　300円
スティック金時　400円

★大佐サービスエリア
千屋牛カツカレー　850円
山里むぎとろ膳　860円
チキンカツ膳　830円
豚ジャン膳　840円

★七塚原サービスエリア
旨コクとん太麺　800円
豚プルコギ定食　800円
激旨餃子　5個入　300円
ピオーネ風ジェラートソフト　280円

★安佐サービスエリア
海鮮皿うどん膳　930円
タンシチューセット　1100円
わらじ豚カツ　900円
尾道ラーメンセット　700円

★美東サービスエリア
海鮮チャンポン　950円
とんこつラーメン　500円
美東豚汁定食　700円
ごぼう麺　600円
ふぐ唐揚定食　800円



山陽自動車道
★三木サービスエリア
和牛ステーキと海老クリームコロッケ　1,680円
ビーフシチューセット 　1,480円
かつめし　780円

★龍野西サービスエリア
播州手延べ素麺「揖保の糸」　950円
揖保川トマトラーメン　800円
鉄板焼きスタミナ定食　1,160円
赤穂の塩菜ラーメン　600円

★吉備サービスエリア
岡山寿司　1220円
吉備かつ丼　950円
岡山丼　900円
チャーシュー麺　560円
黄ニラ味噌ラーメン　600円
マスカットソフトクリーム　250円

★福山サービスエリア
チーズ＆タルトケーキ　1,300円
たこ三昧　1,000円
福山ラーメン　750円
尾道ラーメン　500円
ニラモヤシラーメン　630円
肉味噌おにぎり　150円
南高梅おにぎり　150円
エビ天おにぎり180円

★小谷サービスエリア
広島産豚ヒレカツセット　1,155円
広島産豚ヒレカツカレー　1,000円
小いわし海老天うどん 500円
ホットドッグ　315円

★宮島サービスエリア
宮島かきカツ　1300円
貝汁定食　750円
穴子天丼　1100円
尾道セット　750円
博多セット　750円
揚げまんもみじ　100円

★下松サービスエリア
海鮮丼　1,430円
復刻版中華そば　800円
皿うどん　640円
ピザット　300円
チーズフォンデュ　150円

★佐波川サービスエリア
特上寿司セット　1,240円
ビーフペッパーライス　640円
目玉焼き付きビーフハンバーグライス付　750円
あさり貝汁定食　680円
えび天うどん 550円
ふく唐揚　500円



九州自動車道

★古賀サービスエリア
佐賀牛ステーキ御膳　1880円
料理長お勧め御膳　1000円
長崎角煮定食　1030円
とんこつラーメン　500円

★広川サービスエリア
八女茶　1050～3675円
柳川うなぎセイロ蒸　1420円
八女茶セット　350円
ごろし定食　630円
南関あげごまみそパン　120円

★北熊本サービスエリア
太平燕セット　980円
特撰ビーフカレー/サラダバー付　1000円
うまか丼　980円
熊本ラーメン　500円
ジャンボいなり　200円

★宮原サービスエリア
宮原ラーメン　880円
健康美人セット　980円
四季菜の膳　980円
熊本ラーメン　500円

★山江サービスエリア
山江ラーメン・ミニカレーセット　780円
かき揚げうどん・おにぎりセット 580円
生姜焼定食　680円
カキフライ定食　750円
びっ栗団子　100円

★桜島サービスエリア
黒豚とんかつ膳　1365円
黒豚丼　997円
黒豚コロッケ　120円
揚げたてさつま揚げ　120円～1000円


http://www.bike-ryoko.com/sa.html


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WASHOKU
Roadside stations (michi no eki)

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Miso Paste and Soup

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miso sommelier

QUOTE
©　Modern Nippon Project com

"Miso no Kyutei", Miyoko Toyonaga,
miso sommelier

The popular female owner of "Miso no Kyutei" founded in 1955.
She is called miso sommelier. There are lots of customers often coming to the shop just because they are attracted by the sommelier's character, who runs the shop wearing a "nejirihachimaki", a twisted towel tied around her head and a "hanten", a traditional Japanese outfit worn by merchants

"Will you make misosoup for me forever?" was at a time the standard phrase among men when proposing. The fact that the word "miso" was used as the beginning of a couple's most important event only shows how deeply rooted it is in Japanese everyday life. Recently miso is getting more and more famous overseas as healthy food from Japan. I find myself is the interview that took place at "Miso no Kyutei", Kameido in Tokyo, a shop which has been selling miso, a major Japanese food culture, for more than 50 years.

"Even if it's just once, I would like people to taste genuine miso"

In Kameido, Tokyo, an area with a unique flavor of "shitamachi" (traditional town area), you can see the signboard of "Miso no Kyutei" as soon as you enter the shopping street. Maybe it's because I'm Japanese that the sweet scent of miso coming from the shop reminds me of the good old days.

"But you know, I heard that miso recently is having a boom overseas, and the other day a person from Ukraine coming to the shop suggested such things as "miso in borsch or together with yogurt on whipped cream", "oh, how interesting!" I thought.

Miyoko Toyonaga said that she wanted people to enjoy miso in their own way, because each country has their own food culture. However, when it comes to Japanese young people, they don't have "their own fashion of eating miso". They don't seem to be too particular about miso itself, not even when eating food flavored with it. Shouldn't they be aware of the attractiveness of miso, which is traditional food handed down from ancient times in Japan?

"Basically, it's strange to be saying, "be aware of it" in the first place. Well, I guess in a way it can't be helped. Shops like ours, specializing in miso, are getting less and less, and if you go to the supermarket you can easily buy instant miso. I'm not saying that it's wrong to eat it. It's just that I don't want people to think that it's all there is to miso.

Due to a slow-food and health boom last year you could say that miso has had a comeback, but still there are not many people visiting the specialty stores. However, enjoying the flavor, tastiness, quality of the ingredients, and talking with a miso sommelier like Miyoko Toyanaga may become a means of giving a revival to Japanese culture.

"There's no other food as deeply rooted in Japanese people's hearts as miso."

Looking back on the history of miso, it is said that it was brought to Japan from China during the Asuka period (end of 6th till mid 7th century) and was for a while a luxury food enjoyed at temples and among the noble class. In the Muromachi period (1392-1573), little by little natural brewing was started among common people, and in the Edo period (1600-1867) it came to be produced commercially.

By steaming and boiling soy beans, rice, wheat, salt and water, then adding yeast and fermenting it, leaving it to ripe in a wooden bucket, miso is made. As it is cultivated by nature, miso has various characters depending on the climate, environment, food culture and taste in the surroundings.

"You see, from old times there have been lots of proverbs and sayings with the word miso, such as "temae miso" (there's nothing like leather), "misokasu" (a child who is excluded), and "soko ga miso nan da yo" (that's the point). This shows how deeply rooted it is in people's everyday life.

Miyoko Toyonaga makes an original blend for each and every person by getting to know the customer's taste, his or her hometown and food lifestyle. She makes the miso that the customer wants, based on the taste of each and every customer visiting the shop and making an order. When a customer makes the next order she keeps in mind their favorite blend. She is really just what we could call a "miso sommelier".

"Really, that's just too flattering. But recently I have become able to see a person's favorite miso just upon looking at his or hers face. Whether it is students or business men coming home from work, I'm always here, so it would be nice if they just stop by once in a while.

Lastly, I asked her thoughts on miso, as a food that has transcended centuries and still is a basis in Japanese food culture today.

"To me, really, the customers are not only buying just miso, but in a way also a part of myself. Thanks to them "Kyutei"'s fans are increasing all over Japan. But I also want people all over the world to know its attractiveness. I can assure you, there is no food as tasty, inexpensive and healthy as miso.

I have found the most wonderful place, where you can enjoy a traditional shop's taste of miso, a Japanese culture inherited from ancient days.

Miso no Kyutei
Tokyo Koto-ku, Kameido 3-60-18 Tel. 03-3682-5437
Text: Kenji Tsutsui Photo: Katsumi Hirabayashi


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quote
source : 　Japan Times, January 9, 2009

Tokyo's miso soup: quality, variety and style
By ROBBIE SWINNERTON

Traditionally in Japan, miso shiru soup represented the taste of home cooking. Each family would have its own recipes, prepared using local or homemade miso but served up with favorite combinations of ingredients. Vegetables, seafood, mushrooms, tofu, seaweed and even small quantities of meat all find their place in miso soup, according to taste and seasonal availability.

Countless cookbooks have been published catering to this deep-seated love of miso shiru. But we prefer to gain our inspiration from the menus of specialist restaurants. Whenever we are in Ikebukuro, we make a point of dropping by the food section of Tobu department store — not just because it is one of the largest in the city (with an excellent sake section) but also to visit Misogen.

This is a small counter run by a miso retailer that serves freshly prepared miso shiru, either on its own or along with simple rice dishes. There are four or five styles of soup to choose from; our favorite is prepared with fresh yuba (soy-milk skin), mushrooms, spinach greens and sliced okra. Simple, warming, revivifying and with no artificial additives, it calms and satisfies the parts that Starbucks can never reach.

Thanks to the depth of savory flavor components — in Japanese the word umami is often used — hot miso shiru is sometimes offered as an appetizer at restaurants and even drinking establishments. At the chic, upmarket Bar 1chido (pronounced "Ichido") near Hiroo, miso shiru is an essential item on the menu alongside the aged rums and single-malt whiskies.

It's also become a selling point in and of itself at an izakaya (Japanese-style pub) called Misoshiruya (literally, Miso Soup House), which recently opened a branch among the ritzy boutiques of Ginza. Clearly a trend is brewing, so we had to check it out.

Like so many bars in this high-color district, Misoshiruya is tucked away in the basement of a building. But any anxiety that it might be exclusive and expensive was allayed by the sidewalk signboard at the entrance and the stream of young (and casually dressed) people making their way down the narrow stairs.

Sliding open the heavy door, we found ourselves in a compact dining room that is modern, cheerful and idiosyncratic. The furniture is simple and the only decor is the display of colorful labels on the magnums of sake, shochu and umeshu along the counter that runs the length of the narrow, semi-open kitchen.

Miso features prominently throughout the menu. We started with a selection of vegetable sticks with dips of light-orange miso and of basil in olive oil. We followed this with a carpaccio of thinly sliced scallops in a savory sauce that was richly flavored with uni (sea urchin) and miso, and garnished with gleaming-fresh ikura (salmon roe) like jewels.

There are plenty of other izakaya staples, from agedashi-dofu, deep-fried tofu squares topped with a rich sauce of buckwheat grain and ground meat, to yaki-onigiri, triangular rice balls smeared with miso and grilled crisp.

And then there is the miso soup. There are 45 varieties to choose from, ranging from simple and classic (featuring tofu and wakame seaweed in a broth seasoned with yellow Shinshu miso) to nouveau style (avocado and shrimp with Hatcho miso) to the luxurious ("Wild Tiger" prawns in a blend of miso).

The miso theme even extends to the drinks list. We had to try the microbrewed beer from Aichi Prefecture that incorporates Hatcho miso. Although the flavor was not especially distinctive, it certainly scored big in terms of novelty value.

A similar quirkiness inhabits the sake selection. If the name Mohikan Musume (Mohican Girl) were not enough to pique the interest, the graphics — a woman in kimono sporting a punk hairdo against a rising-sun background — demanded our attention. In fact this sake, produced in Aomori Prefecture, turned out to be an orthodox and enjoyable junmaishu sake. But the idiosyncratic label (in summer the same brewery produces a sake called Bikini Musume) is an indication of the informal, easy-going style of the friendly staff at Misoshiruya.

© The Japan Times

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WASHOKU : MISO

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History of Food Culture

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History of Japanese Food
articles


The Japanese Mind and Culture

Things Japanese - "A history of Japanese cuisine"

Japanische Küche (Wikipedia)

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The Japanese Mind and Culture

QUOTE
©　Translated Jocelyne Allen
Japanese Restaurant Association


Index

1)Our definition of Japanese cooking
2)Special features of Japanese cooking
3)General overview of the history of
Japanese dietary culture
4)The future of Japanese cooking


1) Our definition of Japanese cooking
Before we discuss Japanese cooking or "washoku," we need to define what we mean by washoku. This definition differs considerably with the time and the place, the people and the classes they belong to. For example, recently (autumn 2006), when the government of Japan was considering ways to promote a superior level of Japanese cooking, they were not able to come up with a consistent definition. But we in this era do not need this kind of government-made definition.

We would like you to understand Japanese cooking as a form of cooking that has developed since ancient times in Japan through a Japanese culinary style and the use of basic Japanese seasonings such as soy sauce, salt, vinegar and sake, a form which has taken root in Japanese manners, customs and culture, even when the original dish was from abroad, due to the characteristic Japanese seasoning and cooking styles.

Thus, we define the area of Japanese cooking more broadly including such foods as sukiyaki, which even has its own song, and ramen, which has now become a Japanese national dish. Naturally, those involved in the preparation of traditional dishes may voice a different opinion, but once you have read the historical overview of Japanese dietary culture in part 3) below, we believe you will clearly see that it is a mistake to view Japan as a country with a single, unified people, or as an island country isolated from the world. In particular, we believe that our 21st century society is borderless, that this is a world where nothing can be accomplished unless we accept the influence we have on each other.

By taking what we have learned from foreign countries and digesting it, by making these things our own while constantly responding to the needs of the times, we have built the backbone of a rich tradition. And as we learn to use materials and techniques we had not thought of, we see new elements in our environment. For instance, by asking how the traditional Japanese dishes that they prepared would change and develop if those chefs we call the "old masters" were alive today, we feel that we would inherit the hearts and minds of these ancestors, that we would inherit their healthy traditions, and it is this that we work tirelessly towards each day.


2) Special features of Japanese cooking
Stretching 3000 km from north to south and surrounded by the ocean,Japan is a country rich in variation, from the subarctic zone in the north down to the subtropics in the south, but the majority of these regions enjoy a warm ocean climate with distinct seasons. The country is about 70% mountains, allowing residents to enjoy the natural scenic beauty of the changing seasons, and of course, blessing them with the bounty of the mountains and the seas. A Japanese meal consists mainly of rice, with the seasonal blessings of the mountain and the sea as side dishes. You might say that the main feature is a cooking full of ingenuity, which takes advantage of seasonal elements and simply draws out their essential natures and textures.

One typical meal is "sashimi." It is likely that some people are completely unacquainted with the dish and think that sashimi is just cut fish. But even with something so seemingly simple as sashimi, a number of ingenuities are at work. Of course, it goes without saying that, above all else, the life of sashimi (also called "o-tsukuri") is freshness, but texture and taste change a surprising amount with where and how the fish is cut.

In line with the aim of tasting the essential nature of the raw materials, with the many ways to prepare sashimi
kaku-zukuri (cube cut), usu-zukuri (thin slices), hira-zukuri (rectangular slices), hiki-zukuri (similar to hira-zukuri), ito-zukuri (thread cut), kirikake-zukuri (cutting notches then slicing), sogi-zukuri (very thin slices), hoso-zukuri (finely sliced), segoshi-zukuri (small, fine slices of boned fish), tataki (pounded)comes a number of different sauces
pure soy sauce, soy sauce with bonito stock, tamari soy sauce, ponzu soy and citrus sauce, irizake sauce and bainiku (plum) soy sauce, which naturally means a variety of garnishes.

Rejecting unnecessary ornamentation and thoroughly unassuming, sashimi expresses the grandeur of the natural world we live in as a motif, as well as our feelings of gratitude on a plate. Added to the different types of cuts are the different methods of preparation
arai, exposing fish with white flesh such as flathead or perch to cold water; yakishimo, bonito and other fish seared on the surface and then chilled in cold water; kawashimo, savouring the delight of sea bream or flounder with its own skin (also called "matsukawazukuri"); washing in hot water; chiri-zukuri, extremely thin cuts; kobujime, prepared on a bed of kelp
… this diversity and subtlety is the pride of Japan. These should be paired with junmaishu, a type of sake with no added sugar or alcohol, or ginjoushu, a low-temperature brew sake, which will allow diners to find perfect bliss in the subtle interplay of the flavours.

It is clear that "cutting," the judicious use of the knife, plays an essential role in Japanese cooking.

As proof of this, the variety of knives in Japan is significantly more diverse than in most other countries, with the many different types categorized by how they are used
the deba (pointed carver) and the yanagiba (special sashimi knife) are merely the beginning of a long list. Japanese cooking, or washoku, can be said to be about the heart and technique to take full advantage of these knives to create a meal that delights and satisfies both the eyes and appetite of the customer. The word "kappou, kappoo 割烹 ," or cuisine, which gives real meaning to Japanese cooking, is made up of the character "katsu," which means "to cut," and "hoo," which means "to boil."

Therefore, in addition to reflecting on the meal itself, the customer doing the eating lets their mind be drawn to the background for the meal "the heart and traditional culture" and comes to a full understanding of the fact that not just the utensils and the interior design of the room, but even the landscape has been exhaustively considered. Drawing on all of this knowledge and sensitivity, the sincere hope is that customers will relax and enjoy the chef's spirit of hospitality and the blessings of Mother Nature.


3) General overview of the history of
Japanese dietary culture
As noted above, currently, even proposing a clear definition of Washoku that all Japanese people can agree on is a next to impossible task. For now, let's look at where things might head in the future by tracing the history of Japanese dietary culture and considering modern Japanese cooking.

From the start, history has been what is compiled and recorded at the will of the leaders of the time, ideas and stories which have taken root as authentic history and handed down to the present. But even this authentic history is built on emotional values, national identity and behaviours, a complex mixture of all elements of human activity, including the natural environment including the climate and native features of a region, the society and culture created by religion and government, and the level of technology.

Dietary culture in particular has been strongly regulated in each period, acting as a mirror reflecting that particular era. Food is a basic need for human beings, primarily easing hunger and maintaining life. For a long period, human beings were pressed to produce and ensure sufficient food to stave off hunger, but our modern era is one of so-called gluttony, with the customs of mass production and mass consumption firmly established. (Of course, 20% of the world's population still suffers from hunger, but this statement applies to most of us in the northern half of the globe.) Whether it be because consumption is a status symbol and display of power, or simply gourmets pursuing the sensation of taste, a dietary culture of three-dimensional (mental) implications now prospers. So let us examine the flow of each era leading to this point.



Stone Age (prior to 14000 BC)
The main eating habits of this period were gathering the various seasonal food products and eating them raw or after cooking over an open fire.



Jomon Period (14000 - 300 BC)
The main ways of living were hunting, fishing and gathering, but with the first appearance of earthenware (Jomon ware), cooking joined the ranks of the culinary arts.
According to a recent newspaper report (Oct. 17, 2007), a species of soybean was discovered in earthenware from the middle of the Jomon period (about 5000 years ago) unearthed in the city of Hokuto in Yamanashi prefecture. This type of discovery had been made previously in earthenware from the later part of the Jomon period (about 3500 years ago) excavated in regions of Kyushu but the new finding pushes the date back by about 1500 years. Specialists are taking this as suggesting that the dietary culture of the Jomon people was more diverse than previously thought and that these people also cultivated plants in addition to hunting and gathering.



Yayoi Period (300 BC - 200 AD)
In around 300 BC, ancestral rice crops appeared, taking advantage of an abundant water supply. Accompanying the spread of wet-land rice farming through the entire country, the use of metal tools such as copper blades and pikes and bronze bells started and ironware use was seen in the time of Queen Himiko of Yamataikoku.

People also began cultivating grains other than rice, such as foxtail and barnyard millet. The general trend was to use these grains as staple foods and supplement with foods obtained through hunting and gathering. Storehouses with raised floors to store grains also appeared. With the start of salt production using earthenware and people keeping livestock, the archetypal lifestyle of the Japanese people began to take shape.

Chopsticks were already in use, as seen in the line "Chopsticks flow down from that river" in the Kojiki (Japan's oldest historical record). At the end of the period, the story of Iwakamutsukari no Mikoto, the first-ever chef, is related in the Nihon-shoki, the oldest chronicles of Japan. When the 12th emperor, Emperor Keikou, visited Awanomiya to pay his respects to the late imperial prince Yamato Takeru no Mikoto, he was presented with "Umugi no Namasu" (clams, or in some versions, abalone), he gave the cook the surname Kashiwade no Omi and appointed him to Kashiwade no Otomobe to be his chef.
This first chef was enshrined in posterity as the god of cooking.



Tumulus Period (200 - 600 AD)
Kowameshi, rice with red beans now eaten on celebratory occasions, appeared thanks to the rice-steaming pot. In the fourth century, accompanying the formation of an agricultural society, the Yamato Imperial Court unified Japan, actively introduced cultural products from the continent and solidified the foundations of the country. A method of producing vinegar began to be handed down in the fourth century and that of an early soy sauce in the sixth, but especially important was the arrival of Buddhism in 538.



Asuka Period (600 - 710)
Cultural imports from the continent continued unabated, with the dispatch of Japanese envoys to Sui dynasty and Tang China. At the beginning of the seventh century, Buddhism made its way across the country, forming the backbone of the Japanese mentality, thanks to the regent Prince Shotoku. In 645, Prince Naka no Oe (later Emperor Tenji) set Japan on the path to a centralized government with the Taika Reforms, which brought down the Soga clan, a rival power to the throne.

In 672, the Japanese nation under the Ritsuryo Codes (system of government by law) was completed with the reforms of Temmu and Jito (emperor and empress after Tenji) which followed the Jinshin War. This, combined with the traditional belief of Shinto's "uncleaness," led Emperor Temmu in 675 to issue an imperial decree forbidding meat diets because of the Buddhist precept of abstaining from taking life. The eating of horses, cows, dogs, monkeys and birds was prohibited. Beasts such as wild boars, deer and wild birds including pheasant were outside the scope of this edict.

In the Tempyo period, the Japanese envoy to Tang China returned with fried bean curd treats called toogashi and the dairy products raku (a refined milk drink), so (condensed milk) and daigo (type of cheese or butter) began to be enjoyed by the nobility.



Nara Period (710 - 794)
The culture of the most glorious period of Tang China was taken up on a national scale. Classical Japanese forms were created in every area "architecture, sculpture, art, industrial arts" using advanced technological practices, with continental and Buddhist features. This period is seen as a golden age in cultural history, in particular art history, and is also called the "Tempyo period," with the Kojiki (712) and Nihon-shoki (720) compiled at this time.

In the world of food, the celebrated Tang priest Kanjin first brought sugar (brown sugar) to Japan in 753. The Daikyo cooking style was brought over from the continent and developed as a banquet style for the nobility. Guests sat facing large trays, on which soy sauce, vinegar (mainly plum vinegar), salt and sake were arranged for the guest's personal use, in addition to the meal itself. Side dishes for sharing were placed in between pairs of guests, which allowed each guest to flavour their own meal to suit their tastes. Until the Heian period, a spoon was set out in addition to the traditional chopsticks, along with a diverse collection of utensils in such materials as silver, copper and glass.

The staple food of the nobility was kowameshi made with polished rice, while for the common people, the main dish was some other grain such as barnyard millet, foxtail millet or buckwheat. Hoshii 【糒】was developed as a provision that kept well; this was boiled rice that had been dried out and could be eaten by adding water or saliva.



Heian Period (794 - 1192)
The scene was ancient Kyoto. Nobles enjoyed a life full of banquets, with meals composed mainly of single items such as pheasant, sea bream, carp and trout. It was during this period that chefs serving the Imperial Court were establishing key techniques for these dishes. Tea arrived at the beginning of the Heian period, bringing with it the clearest water and air from Tang. It quickly became popular amongst the nobility and began to be cultivated in the country and given as presents. The cooking styles of frying and boiling also appeared.

Descriptions of the court system and year-round ceremonies at the beginning of the Heian period were written in our now-classical literature. Meanwhile, a set of by-laws of the Engi-Shiki statutes stated that taxes could be paid with narezushi (sushi fermented with fish and vegetables) in western Japan as one tax unit.


Kamakura Period (1192 - 1333)
The shogunate in Kamakura begun by Minamoto Yoritomo started a samurai society that lasted 675 years, until the end of the Edo period. The beginning of this era saw an unaffected and vigourous dietary life, with simple meals featuring brown rice as the main dish.

Eisai, a Japanese Buddhist priest, and others returning from Sung China promoted the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism in Japan. Accompanying the dissemination of the seven schools of Zen Buddhism, the Soodoo school of Buddhism and the Buddhism of the Southern and Northern Sung Chinese, the popularity of shojinryori, vegetarian cuisine based on the dietary restrictions of Buddhist monks, increased throughout the country, leading to the development of soy bean products such as natto. Miso was added to the traditional flavours, and citizens also began to enjoy the early morning meal of the Zen monk.
Additionally, the tea welcomed by the country during the Heian period spread to samurai society through the priest Eisai, resulting in tea parties being raised to the level of tea ceremonies in the Muromachi period. This in turn led to kaiseki-ryori, the traditional Japanese meal brought in courses.



Muromachi Period (1392 - 1573)
Arts such as cooking, place setting, and manners were secrets passed down orally from parent to child by those chefs embraced by the nobility and samurai. A variety of schools of cooking such as the Shijoo　四条流 style of the nobility, the Okusa style of the samurai and the Shinji style were established. Based on samurai etiquette, these schools took shape as Shikishoou Ryori 【式正】 (a very formal cooking and manner for banquets), creating the foundation for the Honzen-Ryori 本膳料理】, in which a high-grade meal is served on individual trays with legs, which serve as small tables.

In the style of the sake etiquette of Shikisankon (ceremony of exchanging cups) and followed by Kyo no Zen (banquet style), at every type of celebration such as Kakan and/or Genpuku both male coming-of-age ceremonies, and weddings among others after making a pledge over the cups in shikisankon, the celebrants took their seats and the honzen banquet began.
This banquet was basically composed of a Honzen(the main tray or first course), followed by Ni no Kyou (second) and San no Kyou (third courses). At an especially polite gathering, a further fourth and fifth course might have been presented, and at the most magnificent banquets, it is said that guests enjoyed up to seven courses. However, most of these courses were meals to gaze upon, made to be seen, and were not actually all there to be eaten.

All types of meals were served, ranging from ichijusansai 一汁三菜 (simple course with one soup bowl and three vegetable dishes) to sanjujuissai (elaborate course with many large and small dishes). The basic form was a setting with a main course of seven small dishes, a second course of five small dishes and a third course of three small dishes. Individual trays with legs were used, with the main course in the center, the second course at the guest's right and the third course at the left. If there were still more trays, they were served from the right, in the order of the fourth tray to the inside right of the main tray and the fifth tray to the left of that. Black or vermillion lacquer ware eating utensils were used.

The main feature of the meal etiquette itself was the way it took on meaning as a ritual, but this declined from the Meiji period onwards, and of the many schools, only Hoochoo Shiki (the knife and cutting rituals 包丁式) has survived. Now, just traces of this ritualized etiquette remain, such as the sansankudo (exchange of nuptial cups) of weddings, but the manners of the honzen-ryori, established as samurai etiquette, have been handed down over the generations to the present and are standard today in formal situations.


It was at this time that chefs began to be called Houchou Nin (knife people)" (In contrast, chefs preparing shojin-ryori using grains and vegetables were called Choosai Nin (vegetable preparers) .
With soy sauce taking the stage as flavouring, the art of cooking made remarkable advances, establishing the model for today's Japanese cooking. The custom of eating miso soup also began around this time. Even with the sake of the samurai, it was normal to simply drink unrefined sake with miso as a snack in kawarake (fired pottery).



Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1573 - 1598)
The period after Oda Nobunaga and Toyotom Hideyoshi had sat in the seat of power was short but critical as a transition period from medieval times. In particular, this was a period when magnificent castles, mansions, shrines and temples were built and the style of adorning the partitions on rooms inside these buildings was born. Fuzokuga, a style of painting depicting the lifestyles of the people, was developed, and the progress made in fine arts and crafts such as ceramics, lacquer work, dyeing and weaving cannot be overlooked.

In addition to the conventional influence from the continent, Western European countries such as Portugal and Spain introduced their culture, guns and early Japanese Christianity. From the viewpoint of dietary culture, this influence brought potatoes, squash and chili peppers, as well as the Western European style of cooking with onions and oil. Bread and the Western European treat of sponge cake were also introduced. It was around this time that the steamed kowameshi was replaced by the himeii eaten today, white rice cooked with water in a rice cooker, and the usual two meals a day increased to three.

The tea ceremony (the wabi-cha style) was perfected during this period by Sen no Rikyu, and kaiseki-ryori took shape, the result of compressing the essence of the formal tea parties to the extreme into between one and three simple courses. (To distinguish between the kaiseki-ryori of the tea-house banquets of the Edo period, different characters(instead of 懐 to 会) began to be used when writing the word.)


Edo Period (1598 - 1867)
In the unique environment of national isolation, the characteristic Japanese culture came of age. At the beginning of the Edo period, the most delicious treats for merchants were Nara Chameshi (rice boiled in tea and flavoured with sake and soy) and Takuan (pickled daikon radish), while for the peasants, meals were modest centering around assorted grains.

Accompanying the development of a monetary economy and improved distribution networks came a thriving urban culture with Edo (modern Tokyo) at its heart. Utamaro's ukiyoe paintings depicting the everyday lives of merchants were everywhere a sign of luxury, and dining out gained popularity with the appearance of soba (buckwheat noodles) and nigiri-zushi (sushi balls). Botefuri (sellers carrying their merchandise on poles over their shoulders), food carts and quick lunches popped up and the true Ryori Chaya (highend restaurant) was established, drawing on the traditions of such specialized restaurants as the sushi restaurant, soba restaurant and unagi (eel) restaurant. The banquet-style kaiseki-ryori so enjoyed by wealthy merchants blossomed, eating and drinking games became popular and gourmets with a vast knowledge of cooking began to appear in great numbers. The Edo of this time was an urban center with one of the most advanced food service industries in the world.

At the same time, the strict etiquette of Honzen-ryori gave way to the simpler Fukusa-ryori, a meal which could be enjoyed in and of itself. Fukusa-ryori spread from the samurai class to the merchant class, slowly replacing the organized art of cooking of honzen-ryori. The basic menu consisted of ichiju-sansai (simple course with about three dishes), niju-gosai (more elaborate course with five small dishes), and sanju-nanasai (even more elaborate course with seven small dishes). Samurai are said to have eaten this meal after changing from their formal samurai costumes into everyday clothing.


Since chefs too no longer served only the samurai and the nobility as in the past, but rather worked as professionals at restaurants, the old system of passing down expertise from parent to child shifted to an apprentice system. A true richness was seen in the dietary culture, to the extent that cookbooks for the common people to enjoy reading appeared, outside of the specialized cooking and technical books.



Meiji Period (1867 - 1912)
Ending the long feudal period, the country worked towards establishing the open nation of recent years. The theme of the period was catching up with and overtaking Western European countries.

With the opening up of the country, styles of living gradually became Westernized and Western schools of cooking began to take root. These so-called Japanized Western-style meals spread quickly throughout the nation. An saying of the time goes, "The sound of drumming on bald heads cuting off Chonmage is the drumbeat of the Westernization movement," most likely originating in the many people who cut off their traditional topknots and began to wear Western clothing, eat sukiyaki and cutlets, brew beer and wine, and produce butter, ham and chocolate. Meanwhile, the common people began eating anpan (bread roll filled with anko beans) in one hand while drinking a glass of milk in the other, and the first school lunches began appearing in some schools.



Taisho Period (1912 - 1926)
The country was enveloped in the dark shadow of the rise of radical nationalism with World War I and the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The Taisho democracy worked towards democratizing society and, putting their new educations to use, the general public was reading Western books and enjoying literature, theatre, music and art.
Newspapers, magazines and radio featured many stories on cooking, contributing to the richness of cultural life. The Westernization of cooking continued, leading to such foods as katsudon (rice with pork cutlet and egg), curried rice, hashed meat with rice and ramen (noodles) gaining a strong foothold in the Japanese diet. Nutrition education was started, and Japanese people began the tradition of the family dinner at the table. It was during this period that the domestic production of whiskey and mayonnaise began.


Showa Period (1926 - 1989)
Encompassing the worldwide depression and the occupation by foreign troops after Japan's defeat in World War II, this was a period of upheaval, rebuilding the scorched earth of the country and struggling for prosperity. From the depression at the beginning of the period until after the war, the lives of the people only grew worse as food insecurity increased. Starting with rice, key staples were rationed, but these rations did not reflect the amounts people actually needed, meaning that most had to turn to the black market if they were to stay alive just after the war.

The special procurements for the Korean War in 1950 opened the path to economic recovery, and food regulation was gradually abolished. School lunches began to be served in schools throughout the nation. Taking advantage of the increased popularity of electrical appliances such as rice cookers, refrigerators and washing machines and the launch of instant ramen, all types of packaged and frozen foods were developed. This led to decreasing the burden of household chores on women and promoting social progress.

This course of events, further strengthened by the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, resulted in the Izanagi economic boom and until the first oil shocks in 1973, Japan enjoyed a period of rapid economic growth. The food service industry continued to grow with the appearance of fast food and family restaurants. Later, the growth of temperature-controlled supply chains and other new logistics infrastructure and the progress afforded by other new technologies allowed food to be produced and distributed in abundance. It was now possible to get food and raw materials from around the world almost without effort, which naturally led to the beginning of an era of mass production and mass consumption.

At the end of the Showa period, a bubble economy even larger than the earlier Izanagi economic boom was in place. In the food service industry too, the higher the prices, the more the entertainment industry boomed. Meanwhile, credit slowly but surely undermined the society at large, a number of critical problems erupted simultaneously, and environmental pollution became a serious concern.



Heisei Period (1989 - present)
The bubble economy continued with the change in the era name. Demand for rare items knew no bounds and spicy and ethnic foods, including Italian food, saw a sudden surge in popularity. With the arrival of pizza delivery and foods for easy microwaving, eating ready-made dinners at home came into fashion.

But the bubble burst in 1991, leaving financial institutions saddled with massive amounts of bad debts. The economy stagnated, and the final blow came in 1995 with the sudden high value of the yen, which had pushed itself up to 90 yen for one dollar, dealing a bitter blow to the world of Japanese industry. Many companies saw unprecedented layoffs and were forced to move production sites overseas, raising concern about the resilience of the economy. "Restructuring" and "re-engineering" entered the cultural lexicon and people were insecure and fearful in their new uncertain situations, unable to see what lay ahead. With the population looking to be in good health at the very least, the so-called "red wine boom" was born, and lower middle class people began to buy wine in droves so that they could spend a quiet, frugal Friday at home.

While a number of food safety issues were exploding into the national consciousness, the E-coli O157 food poisoning incident in Osaka, the issue of residual pesticides on vegetables, the use of additives without authorization, BSE.. the "slow food" movement gained momentum, attempting to return to the natural foods of the old days, leading more and more people to re-think the conventional ideology of "more, cheaper, easier."



4) The future of Japanese cooking
Hunger for food is one of our most primitive desires, something absolutely essential in supporting life and the individual. Human desire comes in stages and changes with social and economic progress. At first, the most urgent is for the necessities of life, next is the desire for sex, third is power, fourth play and finally emotional needs. Industries arise corresponding to the targets of each of these desires. In the current Heisei period, our primary desire of food is satisfied and sex, the basic desire to preserve the species, has been transformed into the desire to play. In other words, our desires are becoming distanced from our needs.

Thinking about this kind of thing, if we really take a hard look at the food situation where we live, in Canada and Japan, we see that the internationalization of food has been spurred on by foreign cultural exchange, making this an era of dramatic changes to our eating habits. This internationalization and sharing of dietary culture naturally also has the aspect of stripping away national identity and tradition, but this is simply a case of a surface copying of the form. A step further back, with its abstracted thought and culture, fusion-like hodgepodge cooking could easily degenerate into a muddled style.
As we look at these initial developments, we can conceive of simple imitation cooking running amok and ask ourselves if there has not already been enough sharing. History and tradition are things that are not so easily created. In particular, people involved in food service industries must resolutely fight against the overripeness of this type of fraudulent culture.

With true internationalization and in complex, diverse societies, we need to acknowledge the existence of the other and that world, and humbly accept what they have to offer us. Therefore, for Japanese people as well, this is an era in which we need to stop with the still and mysterious air of the Mona Lisa and honestly and actively communicate our own selves. Through this kind of action, Japanese people should be contributing to creating an active international and multinational culture. The wars and environmental destruction of human society and our myriad of other problems are the result of principles and values believed until now as absolute truth, which have already begun to lose appeal. We are living in an era in which we are pressed by the need to establish new values and principles as replacements as soon as possible.

Now, with this in mind, as a proposal towards putting new principles in place, I believe we have a duty to broadly and truthfully communicate the Japanese spirit and way of thinking that forms the underpinnings of Japanese cooking. The question of exactly what the Japanese spirit is will be examined in the future on this page, but in the meantime, the question of why Japanese cooking places such importance on seasonal elements and drawing out their natural flavours is sufficient to make us see why we must communicate this spirit.

The Buddhist Nirvana sutra states that "all living things bear within themselves the essence of Buddha," meaning that every living creatures living its short life is entirely endowed with the nature of Buddha. The problem is the way human beings perceive the universe. All of nature houses life, and people are one part of the structure of this universe.

Our lives are built on the intimate relationships with each other and with the life around us. The Japanese style of cooking is in harmony with Mother Nature, avoiding the destruction of nature in the name of culture, progress and development, and the overfishing of an abudance of living creatures. Expressing this thinking more concretely, Japanese cooking is, in short, a style that takes advantage of the surrounding raw materials and gives thanks for the blessings of Mother Nature. This of course makes it the most delicious and healthy kind of cooking. In this way, the splendid and simple Washoku, friendly to people and to the environment, just may be the key to saving the earth.

While adapting to an environment in which food is shared, it is the aspiration and responsibility of those of us actually working overseas to help Washoku grow even sturdier, as the backbone of a long and deep tradition.

Man cannot live on bread alone—these were the words of Jesus Christ and managing restaurants with our way of thinking, we eagerly await the arrival of a truly mature society bringing tomorrow's provision of bread. The level of a food culture is of course the level of those preparing the food, but is more heavily dictated by the level of those eating the food.

http://www.jrac.ca/JapaneseMindandCulture.bak


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yamasa institute

Things Japanese - "A history of Japanese cuisine"

Japanese cuisine has developed over the past 2,000 years with strong influences from both China and Korea. But it is only in the last 300-400 years that all the influences have come together to form what nowadays can be described as Japanese cuisine.

One of the major influences was the introduction of rice from Korea around 400 B.C. and within a hundred years it had become the staple food of Japan. Korea's rice growing techniques were passed on to the Japanese during the Yayoi period, as migrating tribes settled in Japan. Rice later came to be used not only for eating, but also to make paper, wine, fuel, building materials and so on. Soy beans and wheat were introduced from China soon after rice and these two ingredients are now an integral part of Japanese cooking. During Japan's development tea, chopsticks and a number of other important food related items were also introduced from China.

Religion has also played a major part in Japan's culinary development. During the 6th century, Buddhism became the official religion of the country and the eating of meat and fish were prohibited. The first recorded decree prohibiting the eating of cattle, horses, dogs, monkeys, and chickens was issued by Emperor Temmu in A.D. 675. Similar decrees, based on the Buddhist prohibition of killing, were issued repeatedly by emperors during the eighth and ninth centuries. The number of regulated meats increased to the point that all mammals were included except whales, which were categorized as fish.

The taboo against the consumption of meat developed further when the Japanese indigenous religion, Shinto, also adopted a philosophy similar to that of the Buddhists. This did not mean, however, that meat eating was totally banned in Japan. Professional hunters in mountain regions ate game (especially deer and wild boar), and it was not uncommon for hunted bird meat to be consumed. However, a lack of animal breeding for meat kept its consumption very low. Indeed, it was only during the fifteenth century and its aftermath that the tradition of eating both the meat and eggs of domestic fowl was revived. Fowls, until then, had been regarded in Shinto as God's sacred messengers and were reared to announce the dawn rather than as a mere food resource.

Milk and other dairy products have failed to enjoy the same popularity in Europe as they do in Japan. The only Japanese dairy product known to history was produced between the eighth and fourteenth centuries. Cattle were often raised only for drawing carts or plowing fields. To utilize them for meat or even for milk was, until relatively recently, a long-forgotten practice.

The lack of meat products also minimized spice utilization. Pepper and cloves were known from the eighth century and were imported either via China or directly from Southeast Asia, and garlic was also grown on a small scale. But these spices were used mainly to make medicines and cosmetics.

In the absence of meat, fish was a significant substitute and as an island nation, this source of food was abundant and has influenced many of todays most famous dishes. However, before the introduction of modern delivery systems, the difficulty of preserving and transporting fresh marine fish minimized consumption in inland areas where freshwater fish were commonly eaten instead.

Preserving fish also became popular and sushi originated as a means of preserving fish by fermenting it in boiled rice. Fish that are salted and placed in rice are preserved by lactic acid fermentation, which prevents proliferation of the bacteria that bring about putrefaction. This older type of sushi is still produced in the areas surrounding Lake Biwa in western Japan, and similar types are also known in Korea, southwestern China, and Southeast Asia. In fact, the technique first originated in a preservation process developed for freshwater fish caught in the Mekong River and is thought to have diffused to Japan along with the rice cultivation.

A unique fifteenth-century development shortened the fermentation period of sushi to one or two weeks and made both the fish and the rice edible. As a result, sushi became a popular snack food, combining fish with the traditional staple food, rice. Sushi without fermentation appeared during the Edo period (1600-1867), and sushi was finally united with sashimi at the end of the eighteenth century, when the hand-rolled type, nigiri-sushi, was devised.

In the sixteenth century the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch, began to introduce foods that were adopted by the Japanese and later became cultural symbols. Fried foods such as tempura might seem to be very un-Japanese as a lack of meat and dairy products in the Japanese diet meant that oil was not commonly used for cooking. However, tempura was enjoyed by many people and has evolved into what it is today. Tobacco, sugar and corn were also brought by the traders.

In 1854 trade was renewed with West and soon a new Japanese ruling order took power. The new Emperor Meiji even went as far as staging a New Year's feast in 1872 designed to embrace the Western world. It had a European emphasis and for the first time in over a thousand years, the people publicly ate meat. The general population started to eat meat again after the Meiji Restoration which occurred in 1867.

Current Day Cuisine

Today, Japanese cuisine is still heavily influenced by the four seasons and geography. Seafood and vegetables are most commonly eaten. Whilst to some westerners, the food may seem almost bland, freshness, presentation and balance of flavours is of paramount importance.

source : www.yamasa.org


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History of Japanese Cuisine

We think of Japan as a single island, but it actually is four large islands and thousands of smaller ones. The volcanic and mountainous terrain boasts lush forests and heavy rainfall, much of it from monsoons, and the scarce farm land is used predominantly for rice. As one would expect, fish plays a major dietary role, both fresh and preserved.

In the third century BC, Korea's already developed rice growing techniques were passed to the Japanese by the Yayoi, a migrating tribe that settled in Japan. Rice came to be used for more than eating, including paper, fuel, wine, building materials and animal feed.

During the development of Japan, the Chinese contributed soy sauce, tea, chopsticks and imperial rule. Other influences arrived in Japan via Korea, including Buddhism, which, despite the pre-existing Shinto and Confucian religions, became the official religion in the sixth century. For the next 1200 years, meat was officially forbidden to the Japanese people,

Then in the sixteenth century the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch, came looking to corner the trade market with Japan. The westerners introduced fried foods, which is why the breaded, fried tempura seem so very un-Japanese; while the Japanese enjoyed this type of cooking, it was not something that evolved naturally. Tobacco, sugar and corn were also brought by the traders.

Around 1600 (and lasting until 1868), Japan's shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (of James Clavell's famous novel, "Shogun") feared the Europeans would spark great wars; so he closed the ports and expunged the foreigners. During this period of isolationism, Japan's culture became even more deeply rooted. The main religions of Buddhism and Shinto emphasize the seasons and this came to be reflected in the foods served. In fact, it is because of Buddhism that meals feature five flavors and colors, respectively being: sweet, spicy, salty, bitter and sour; and yellow, black, white, green, and red.

US Commodore Perry forced the Japanese to renew trade with the West in 1854, and soon a new Japanese ruling order took power. Interestingly, the new Emperor Meiji staged a New Year's feast in 1872 designed to embrace the Western world; it was completely European in detail and for the first time in over a thousand years, the people publicly ate meat.


"What makes Japanese dishes Japanese?"
If we asked you to think of one Japanese food, what comes to your mind?
Sushi, raw fish, tempura, tofu? Good.
With Japanese restaurants and Sushi bars popping all over the world these days,
Japanese food is no longer considered as one of the world's unsolved mysteries it once was
(we hope!).
In fact, more number of people are recognizing Japanese food as one of the world's healthiest cuisines.
With rice and abundant marine products at it's mainstream, the traditional Japanese diet
is impressingly low in cholestrol, fat, and calories, and high in fiber.
No wonder Japanese people have the highest longetivity rate.

Anyway, like all other cuisines, Japanese food is a product of the culture that produced it.
But what exactly does it take for the dish to be genuinely "Japanese"?
Here, we picked out some of the distinct characteristics which makes Japanese cooking Japanese.


Enviroment, Climate & the Diet
From the snow-capped mountains of northern Hokkaido to the sandy shores of Okinawa, there lies some distinctive differences in diet and cooking styles between the regions of Japan. On top of all the high mountains and oceans which divided up the country, the difference of abundant product within each region helped to devolop the contrast as well.

Despite the differences, though, there lies a common ground. As you may already know, Japan is an island country. Where ever you might be, you'll find that there are plenty of fishes and other marine products. With the climate perfect for growing good crops of rice, the Japanese diet consists of rice as the staple food, with fish and veggies forming the nucleus of the side dishes. The main seasoning here is "shoyu" (show-you)or also known as soy sauce (heard of Kikkoman's?) and "miso"(mee-so), both of them made from fermented soybeans and with rice and salt. The meals are carried out 3 times a day, with the basic style including rice, a bowl ofsoup(sui-mono) and two or three side dishes, and the sipping of green tea at the end of the meal.
All in all, when it comes to describing the Japanese diet in a few words, "natural" & "harmony" best fits the description. Whatever dish you make, never kill the natural flavor of the ingredients. The ingredients must be in harmony together to make one dish; the dish in harmony with other dishes to make a meal. Food must be in harmony with nature and the surroundings, including the person who is dining... It is said.
source : asiarecipe.com/

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Japanische Küche

Das Grundnahrungsmittel der japanischen Küche ist der Reis, der das Hauptgericht jeder Mahlzeit ist. Die Beilagen werden mit okazu (お数) bezeichnet. In der japanischen Sprache wird die Reispflanze ine (稲 oder 禾) und der ungekochte Reis kome (米) genannt. Der gekochte Reis heißt han, ii oder meshi (飯), was gleichzeitig auch Mahlzeit bedeutet. (In der Höflichkeitssprache sagt man gohan (ご飯), kleine Kinder sagen mamma (まんま) bzw. ältere Menschen mama (まま)) .

Weil Japan ein Archipel ist, spielen Fisch und Meeresfrüchte eine wichtige Rolle in der Ernährung. Während der Besatzung durch die US-Amerikaner nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wurde Brot als neues westliches Nahrungsmittel eingeführt.

Die japanische Küche hat einige Ähnlichkeit mit der Küche anderer ostasiatischer Länder; der bedeutendste Unterschied ist wohl die sehr viel sparsamere Verwendung von Öl und Gewürzen. Vielmehr soll der Eigengeschmack der frischen Produkte möglichst deutlich erhalten bleiben.

Die in der japanischen Küche verwendeten Lebensmittel und die Weise ihrer Zubereitung werden gerne als zusätzliche Gründe für die auffallend hohe Lebenserwartung der japanischen Bevölkerung angesehen.

Allgemeines
Seit der Edo-Periode (1603-1868) essen die Japaner täglich drei bis fünf Mahlzeiten.
Reis wird in Japan seit etwa 2000 Jahren angebaut, wobei seit jeher die kurzkörnige Form bevorzugt wird. Es ist ein Nahrungsmittel mit hohem Prestige und hat den Status eines nationalen Symbols. Importierter Reis gilt als minderwertig im Vergleich zum einheimischen. Reis ist heute das wichtigste Grundnahrungsmittel für die gesamte Bevölkerung, wurde früher jedoch durch Hirse und Süßkartoffeln ergänzt und war für die einfache Landbevölkerung nicht Bestandteil der Alltagskost, sondern ein Festmahl.

Die meisten Suppen bestehen vor allem aus drei Grundzutaten, aus getrocknetem Thunfisch, aus Kombu (Seetang) und aus Shiitake-Pilzen. Daraus werden klare Suppen mit einer Einlage zubereitet, die suimono heißen. Außerdem gibt es Suppen aus Miso, einer Paste aus Soja, wovon es verschiedene Sorten gibt. Einige sind süß, andere eher salzig. Misosuppen enthalten häufig Gemüse als Einlage oder auch Tofu.

Eine wichtige Rolle spielt auch sauer eingelegtes Gemüse (tsukemono), das früher vor allem während des Winters gegessen wurde. Am häufigsten eingelegt werden Chinakohl, Gurken, Auberginen und Rüben, außerdem grüne unreife Ume-„Pflaumen“, allerdings nicht in Essig, sondern in Salzlake, Miso- oder Reisbrühe. Die grünen Ume gelten eingelegt als Delikatesse und heißen umeboshi. Sie gelten als Appetitanreger und werden oft zum Frühstück gegessen.

Die Basis einer vollwertigen Mahlzeit – also kein Imbiss – ist heute immer Reis. Dazu werden kleinere Gerichte serviert, zum Beispiel gegrillter Fisch oder gebratenes Schweinefleisch. Fisch und Meeresfrüchte werden in Japan sehr häufig gegessen, wobei frischer Fisch am liebsten roh genossen wird. Seit der Edo-Periode wird roher Fisch als Sashimi zubereitet, zu dem eine Sauce und Wasabi gereicht werden. Häufig handelt es sich um einfache Sojasauce, in Restaurants wird sie mit Sake verfeinert. Sushi war ursprünglich eine Konservierungsmethode; roher Fisch wurde gesalzen und in fermentierten Reis gepackt. Seit etwa 1400 unserer Zeitrechnung wird der Reis mitgegessen. Heute werden als Hülle oft essbare Algen verwendet, vor allem Nori. Die heutige Form des Sushi ist seit der Edo-Periode bekannt.

Fleischverzehr
In Japan war der Verzehr von Fleisch seit der Asuka-Zeit weitgehend tabu. Die offiziellen Verbote wurden mit den Vorschriften des Buddhismus begründet, der 552 nach Machtkämpfen verschiedener Familien zur Staatsreligion erklärt wurde. Im Jahr 675 unserer Zeitrechnung erließ der Herrscher Temmu ein Verbot, das explizit den Verzehr von Rindern, Pferden, Hunden, Affen und Hühnern untersagte. Nicht genannt wurden Wild, Fische und Wale, die ebenfalls als Fische angesehen wurden.

Die Fleischverbote wurden in den folgenden Jahrhunderten mehrfach wiederholt, und zwar im Jahr 721 durch Kaiserin Genshō, 725 und 736 durch Shōmu, der ausdrücklich die Schlachtung von Rindern und Pferden untersagte, erneut 752 durch Kōken, weitere dreimal durch Kammu zwischen 781 und 806, dann erneut 1127 durch Sutoku und 1188 durch Gotoba.Die ständig erneuerten Verbote lassen den Schluss zu, dass sie nicht von allen beachtet wurden.

Nach den schriftlichen Quellen aus Japan zu urteilen, führten die Nahrungstabus dazu, dass rund 1000 Jahre lang kaum Fleisch gegessen wurde, abgesehen von Walfleisch und Fisch. Demnach wurden Rinder nur noch als Zugtiere für den Reisanbau genutzt, auch die Milch wurde nicht getrunken. „Lack of meat and dairy products in the Japanese diet produced an aversion to oily tastes, so that even vegetable oil was not commonly used for cooking.“
(dt.: Die Abwesenheit von Fleisch und Milchprodukten in der japanischen Ernährung führten zu einer Aversion gegen den Geschmack von Fett, so dass sogar Pflanzenöl üblicherweise nicht zum Kochen verwendet wurde.)

Die häufig zu lesende Aussage, dass in Japan vor dem 19. Jahrhundert so gut wie kein Fleisch gegessen wurde, wird jedoch unter anderem durch archäologische Funde aus der Edo-Zeit widerlegt. In und außerhalb des heutigen Tokio wurden bei Ausgrabungen Abfallgruben mit einer großen Zahl von Tierknochen aus dieser Periode entdeckt, darunter die von Wildschweinen, Bären, Pferden, Affen und Hunden. Vereinzelt wurden auch Kleintiere wie Füchse und Otter gefunden. Die Tiere stammten aus verschiedenen Regionen Japans und wurden offensichtlich auf Märkten verkauft.

Relativ bekannt ist, dass der Verzehr von einigen Fleischsorten zu „medizinischen Zwecken“ in Japan auch schon vor der Edo-Zeit üblich war; es wurde in speziellen Läden verkauft. Die schärfsten Verbote zur Tiertötung stammen auch erst aus der Zeit nach 1680. Uchiyama Junzo geht davon aus, dass nicht erst in der Edo-Zeit wieder vermehrt Fleisch gegessen wurde, sondern dass die Verbote auch vorher nicht strikt eingehalten wurden.Das belegt unter anderem auch ein Kochbuch aus der Zeit zwischen 1624 und 1644 mit Rezepten für Rotwild, Wildschwein, Bär, Otter und Hase. In dieser Zeit nahm auch der Konsum von Walfleisch zu.

„The aversion to meat-eating may have applied not so much to meat in general as to certain types of meat. (...) The real change in eating habits (...) may have been not so much the introduction of meat-eating in general but beef-eating in particular.“
(dt.: Die Abneigung gegen Fleischverzehr galt wohl weniger Fleisch generell als vielmehr einzelnen Fleischsorten. (...) Der echte Wandel der Essgewohnheiten (im 19. Jahrhundert, erg.) war möglicherweise weniger die Einführung des Fleischverzehrs allgemein, sondern die Einführung des Rindfleischverzehrs.)

Nach 1700 wurde gebackener Fisch (Tempura) ein populäres japanisches Gericht, das auf portugiesischen Einfluss zurückzuführen ist. Mit der zunehmenden Öffnung Japans für westliche Einflüsse ab etwa 1850 änderte sich auch offiziell die Einstellung zum Fleischverzehr, in den 1860er Jahren wurden die ersten Schlachthäuser eingerichtet. 1873 billigte der Kaiser offiziell den Verzehr von Rindfleisch. Daraufhin entstand als neues Gericht Sukiyaki auf der Basis von geschmortem Rind. Schweinefleisch wurde erst in den 1930er Jahren populär.

Walfleisch
Walfleisch spielte in der japanischen Küche lange Zeit eine wichtige Rolle als Proteinlieferant. Der gezielte Walfang begann erst im 16. Jahrhundert, doch schon lange vorher wurden verletzte oder gestrandete Wale eingefangen und als Nahrungsmittel genutzt. Für den aktiven Walfang benutzte man seit dem Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts Harpunen, ab etwa 1675 dann Netze. In der Edo-Zeit wurden zahlreiche Rezepte für Walfleisch veröffentlicht und es erschien ein spezielles Kochbuch, in dem nahezu alle Teile des Wals vorkommen. Nicht nur das Fleisch, sondern auch die Innereien, das Fett und das Öl wurden verwertet. „Das Walfleisch wird als Sashimi zubereitet, gekocht, gebraten, gegrillt, frittiert, als Suppe (gegessen, erg.), geräuchert und getrocknet.“

Seit der Edo-Zeit war Walfleisch ein Alltagsgericht. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg bis Mitte der 1960er Jahre war dieses Fleisch die wichtigste Proteinquelle der Japaner und sicherte die ausreichende Versorgung der Bevölkerung. 1964 betrug der Anteil am Fleischkonsum insgesamt noch 23 Prozent. Bis Mitte der 1970er Jahre war Wal wesentlicher Bestandteil der Schulspeisungen.[3] Walfleisch hat daher eine gewisse Bedeutung als nationales Symbol.

Mittlerweile wollen jedoch nur noch wenige Japaner Walfleisch essen. Seit 1987 wird der Walfang offiziell nur noch aus wissenschaftlichen Gründen betrieben, das Fleisch kommt jedoch in den freien Handel. Auf Grund der stark gesunkenen Nachfrage lagerten 2005 aber bereits etwa 4000 Tonnen tiefgefroren in den Lagerhallen. Statistisch essen Japaner jährlich pro Kopf nur noch 40 Gramm Walfleisch, obwohl die Preise stark gefallen sind. Es gibt bereits Werbekampagnen, um den Konsum zu fördern, zum Beispiel kostenlose Lieferungen an Schulen und Flugblattaktionen. Eine Fast Food-Kette bietet Hamburger mit Walfleisch an, jedoch ohne großen Erfolg. Inzwischen wird es auch zu Hundefutter verarbeitet, um die Lagerbestände zu reduzieren. Als Gründe für die sinkende Beliebtheit des Walfleischs werden sein Geschmack und die eher trockene Konsistenz genannt, außerdem erinnere es ältere Japaner an die Notzeit nach dem Krieg.

Bentō
Der japanische Begriff Bentō bezeichnet eine Mahlzeit aus verschiedenen Komponenten, angerichtet in einer speziellen kleinen Box, meistens aus lackiertem Holz. Üblicherweise werden so Reis, eingelegtes Gemüse, gekochtes Gemüse sowie Fisch oder Fleisch in getrennten Fächern serviert. Dieser Behälter kam in der Edo-Periode (1603-1868) in Gebrauch und sollte das Mitnehmen einer Mahlzeit erleichtern, die dann in der Pause einer Kabuki-Darbietung gegessen wurde. Es war die japanische Form einer Lunchbox. In Osaka wurden die einfachen Boxen dann weiterentwickelt zur heute bekannten kunstvollen Serviermethode, bei der die Mahlzeit nicht zum Mitnehmen gedacht ist. Die Bezeichnung hierfür ist shokado bentō. Eine Art Picknick-Mahlzeit heißt hokaben bentō.

Sehr schlichte Essensbehälter für Reisen mit dem Zug kamen in der Meiji-Zeit (1868-1912) auf; sie heißen eki-ben („Bahnhofs-bentō“). Einfache Mahlzeiten, die auf Bahnhöfen in solchen Boxen verkauft werden, heißen nach wie vor so.

LISTEN mit Details

Getränke
Die wichtigsten Getränke in Japan sind Tee und Sake.
Tee wurde erstmals um 800 unserer Zeitrechnung aus China importiert, und zwar in Form von gepressten Teeziegeln. Das Teetrinken blieb zunächst dem Adel vorbehalten. Größere Popularität gewann es erst ab etwa 1200, als pulverisierter grüner Tee aufkam. Zu dieser Zeit entwickelte sich die Japanische Teezeremonie. Heute wird in Japan vor allem grüner Tee in Form von Blättern getrunken, obwohl in den 1920er Jahren vorübergehend schwarzer Tee in Mode kam.

Sake hat in Japan ebenso wie Reis eine wichtige symbolische Bedeutung. Das Getränk wird den Gottheiten an den Hausaltären und an den öffentlichen Schreinen geopfert, und es besiegelt den Bund der Eheschließung bei einer traditionellen Shinto-Trauungszeremonie. Es gibt spezielle Gläser und Serviergefäße für Sake und eine spezielle Trinketikette. Mittlerweile sind auch Bier und Whisky sehr beliebt.


Arten japanischer Restaurants
LISTE

source : de.wikipedia.org


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WASHOKU


History of Japanese Food


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