Japanese cuisine

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  In 1872, the new ruler of Japan staged a New Year's feast filled with European dishes. For the first time in a thousand years, ordinary people were allowed to eat meat in public. That single banquet broke a taboo rooted in Buddhism, which had become the official religion centuries earlier and had pushed meat and fish off the Japanese table. To understand Japanese cuisine, washoku, you have to understand a culture that built an entire way of eating around what an island could offer without red meat. Rice with miso soup. Fish grilled or sliced raw. Vegetables simmered in broth, and seasons marked by what was ripe. How did a nation that once shunned animal flesh come to embrace tonkatsu and curry? How did a method for preserving fish in fermenting rice become sushi, served on Michelin-starred plates from Tokyo to Singapore? And why does a bowl of rice go on the left and miso soup on the right, every single time?

• 2. The Long Refusal

  ›

  In 675 AD, Emperor Tenmu prohibited the eating of horses, dogs, monkeys, and chickens. Over the 8th and 9th centuries, many emperors widened these bans until nearly all mammals were forbidden, with whale spared only because it was categorized as a fish. The taboo never reached every corner of the country. In Kagoshima, pig farming flourished. In Oumi, there was a culture of eating beef. In the Suwa region, deer were sacrificed for Shinto rituals.

  Wild game slipped through gaps in the rules that domesticated livestock could not. Trapped hare was counted using a measure word normally reserved for birds, a small linguistic trick that recast the animal as something more acceptable. The consumption of whale and terrapin was never forbidden under the definition that governed everything else. One scholar argues the Japanese diet always leaned on grains with vegetables or seaweeds, poultry second, and red meat only in slight amounts, even before Buddhism deepened the taboo.

  Masakazu Tada, an honorary vice-president of the International Vegetarian Union for twenty-five years, once stated that Japan was vegetarian for a thousand years. A British journalist, J. W. Robertson Scott, reported in the 1920s that the society was still ninety percent vegetarian, with half to sixty percent of people eating fish only on festive occasions, likely a matter of poverty more than choice. The lifting of the ban in 1872 did not sit easily with everyone. Ten monks tried to break into the Imperial Palace in protest, arguing that foreign influence and meat-eating were destroying the soul of the Japanese people. Several were killed and the rest arrested.

• 3. Fish As Foundation

  ›

  In the 9th century, grilled fish and sliced raw fish were widely popular across Japan. As an island nation without meat, the country made fish its main protein. Those who could afford it ate fish at every meal. Others went without animal protein for much of their lives. Because meat was scarce, spices stayed scarce too. Sansho and black pepper went into noodle, rice, and fish dishes in minimalist amounts, sometimes doubling as nourishing medicine.

  Preserving fish turned into something close to an obsession, and from it sushi was born. Salted fish packed into boiled rice was preserved by lactic acid fermentation, which held off the bacteria that cause rot. During the 15th century, advances shortened that fermentation to about one to two weeks, and sushi spread as both a meal and a snack. The version most people picture today came much later. During the late Edo period, in the early 19th century, sushi without fermentation appeared, and the hand-rolled and nigiri types were invented in the 19th century.

  Wasabi and Japanese mustard arrived at the table for a reason beyond flavor. Their effect on the mucous membrane paralyzes the sense of smell, dulling fishy odors when eating raw fish. Today Japan consumes about forty-five kilograms of seafood per person each year, more than most developed countries. It takes in eighty percent of the global supply of bluefin tuna, a figure that has raised alarm about overfishing and extinction.

• 4. The Architecture Of A Meal

  ›

  A bowl of rice goes on the diner's left, a bowl of miso soup on the right. Behind them sit three flat plates holding three okazu, one at far back left, one at far back right, one in the center. Pickled vegetables are served on the side and not counted among the three. Chopsticks rest at the front with pointed ends facing left, supported by a hashioki. This is the one soup, three sides formula, and it descends from a frugal style called Ichiju-Issai, one soup one dish, traced to the Five Great Zen Temples of the 12th-century Kamakura period.

  Rice gets its own small bowl, the chawan, and each dish gets its own plate or bowl, even at home. Japanese tradition resists letting differently flavored dishes touch on a single plate, so partitions such as leaves keep them apart. Placing food on top of rice and soiling it is frowned upon by traditional etiquette. The rule originated in classical Chinese dining formalities, especially after Buddhist tea ceremonies took hold, yet present-day Chinese cuisine has abandoned it while Japan keeps it. The donburi, with toppings served directly on rice, is the popular exception.

  The table itself kept changing shape. Before the 19th century, small individual box tables, the hakozen, or flat floor trays were set before each diner. Larger low tables, the chabudai, that seated whole families gained popularity by the start of the 20th century. By that century's end they had given way to Western-style tables and chairs. Tatami mats made of straw damage easily, so footwear comes off before stepping onto them.

• 5. Reading The Seasons

  ›

  Bamboo shoots in spring, chestnuts in autumn. Japanese cuisine designs its dishes to announce the arrival of the four seasons and even the calendar months. Fish carried in by the Kuroshio Current has long been prized, and the first crop or early catch of any item gets its own name, hashiri. When something arrives earlier than usual, that early appearance carries a small thrill.

  Maple leaves float on water to suggest coolness, and sprigs of nandina turn up as decoration. The haran, an Aspidistra, and sasa bamboo leaves were cut into shapes and slipped underneath food or used as separators. Some garnishes are never meant to be eaten at all. Inedible leaves and flowers, native to Japan or long grown there, appear in dishes purely to mark a holiday or season, sometimes as artificial counterparts.

  The care extended to recognition beyond Japan's shores. In February 2012, the Agency for Cultural Affairs recommended that Washoku, Traditional Dietary Cultures of the Japanese, join the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. On the 4th of December 2013, it was added, noted especially for the celebration of New Year. The listing brought the number of Japanese assets on that list to twenty-two.

• 6. Foreign Tastes Made Japanese

  ›

  Yōshoku traces as far back as the late Muromachi period, from 1336 to 1573, during a culinary revolution called namban ryori, meaning Southern barbarian cooking. It was rooted in European cuisine and first appeared in Nagasaki, the point of contact between Europe and Japan at the time. Potatoes, corn, dairy products, and the hard candy kompeito spread during this period. Words like tempura and hiryōzu are said to be of Portuguese origin, and deep-frying itself entered Japan during the Edo period through Western and Chinese influence.

  Ramen carries one of the strongest claims on the modern Japanese palate. In a survey of two thousand Tokyo residents, instant ramen came up again and again as a product they considered an outstanding Japanese invention. Believed to have originated in China, ramen grew popular in Japan after the Second Sino-Japanese War, from 1937 to 1945, when many Chinese students were displaced there. Bread followed a different path. Shokupan, Japanese milk bread, came into broad use after the American response to post-war rice shortages included relief shipments of wheat.

  Curry was brought by Anglo-Indian officers of the Royal Navy, who carried curry powder to Japan in the Meiji era. The Imperial Japanese Navy adopted it to prevent beriberi, and over time it was reshaped into something uniquely Japanese, now treated as a national dish. Katsu-karē pairs a breaded deep-fried cutlet with curry sauce. Chinese influence runs deeper and older. Chopsticks were adopted from China around the latter half of the 7th century, and tea, soy sauce, tofu, and noodles were borrowed in the 8th century during the Nara period.

• 7. Drinks And Specialty Foods

  ›

  Sake is defined by law as just four ingredients: special rice, water, koji, and special yeast. It typically holds fifteen to seventeen percent alcohol and is made by multiple fermentation of rice, a process closer to brewing beer than making wine. As of 2014, Japan had some fifteen hundred registered breweries producing thousands of different sakes, their flavors shifting with region, ingredients, and the styles maintained by brewmaster guilds. At formal meals, sake counts as an equivalent to rice and is not taken alongside other rice-based dishes.

  Beer arrived later and now dominates. Production began in Japan in the 1860s, and the most common beers are pale light lagers around five percent alcohol. Beer-like beverages made with fewer malts, called happoshu, and non-malt happousei have taken a large share because tax on them is much lower. Together, beer and its varieties hold nearly two-thirds of the alcoholic beverage market. Japanese whisky began commercial production in the early 20th century, is made in the Scottish style, and has won top international awards since the 2000s.

  The country's specialty foods can reach extraordinary extremes. Wagyu is the collective name for four principal breeds of beef cattle, shipped under area names such as Matsusaka, Kobe, Yonezawa, Ōmi, and Sanda. Square or cube watermelons, grown into the shape of a cube, are sold mostly as ornaments and can be very expensive. There is even a culture of specialty eggs raised on special feed, a sign of how far the attention to provenance reaches.

• 8. A Cuisine Abroad

  ›

  The California roll was created in North America in the 1970s, rose across the United States through the 1980s, and pushed sushi toward worldwide popularity. Its invention is often credited to a Japanese-born chef working in Los Angeles, with dates assigned to 1973 or even 1964. Purist sushi chefs have snubbed it, and one scholar likened it to the American-born chop suey. Sushi was modified to suit the American palate, then re-entered Japan as American Sushi.

  Teppanyaki took a different route into American life. Rocky Aoki founded his restaurant chain Benihana in 1964, where a personal chef cooked steak, shrimp, and vegetables in front of customers, twirling and juggling knives like batons. Aoki believed Americans enjoyed eating in exotic surroundings but were deeply mistrustful of exotic foods. In Japan this style is thought of as American food, while in the United States it is thought of as Japanese.

  The cuisine bends to each country it enters. In Mexico, sushi Mexicano folds in habanero and serrano chiles, fried and diced and called chiles toreados. In Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country, restaurants adapt recipes to be halal, with no pork or alcohol, and chefs have built fusions like the rendang roll and gulai ramen. In the Philippines, halo-halo is believed to descend from Japanese kakigori, traced to pre-war Japanese migrants. Across these borrowings runs a steady tension, the same one that began with a New Year's feast in 1872: a cuisine prized for its subtle, authentic taste, constantly remade to please someone new.