ABSTRACT

Dining as a ritual – the actions involved in a meal – is worth examining as a whole in its social, cultural and sensory aspects. To do so, we consider two dining experiences. The differences between these cases highlight the elements of dining in its Japanese form. None of these meals was particularly unusual; in one form or other they are easily accessible to anyone. No special or exotic ingredients were involved, no great expense, and anyone could have access to the public meal. These are neither the elaborate dinners of the rich, nor the simple dinners of the poor, but fit somewhere, comfortably, in the vast midst of the “average.” The differences and similarities between them illuminate the personal and the public elements of Japanese food culture. We start with dinner at the house of one informant:

There were seven diners at the house in a middle-income area of a large city. The hostess had laid the table with a place setting for each diner which included a hand-painted menu on Japanese paper, a hashioke (chopstick holder or rest) in the shape of a vegetable, and a pair of disposable chopsticks. For each course, the hosts added a flat plate – ceramic, glass, or lacquer as necessary – on which to place the food. These were not distinguishably “Japanese”: they were examples of contemporary, well-made tableware such as can be found in any middle-class modern household, virtually anywhere on the globe. In the middle of the table was a large lazy-susan, and the courses were brought to the table in bowls or plates, and were distributed from there.

The meal started with a round of beer served in small coloured glass goblets. With these came two sauce bowls slightly larger than tea-bowl size, one a deep pink, with cottage cheese and mustard seed; the other blue-grey, containing cream cheese with anchovy paste. A large flat oblong plate contained sliced fat green asparagus. Each diner helped him or herself from the bowls, onto a flat individual plate.

The following course was crisp-fried duck. The duck had been marinated, then fried until crisp in a large wok. This was eaten with ihaopin (the hostess used the Chinese word for these thin wheat pancakes), sliced Japanese leeks, and hoisin sauce somewhat like Peking duck, each guest assembling his own duck roll from the condiments on the table. The dish, as with its kin, Peking duck, is one of the marvels of the kitchen: a marriage of flavours and textures where the whole that emerges is really greater than the sum of its discrete parts. Any unctuousness of the duck is cut by the sharp bite of the fresh leek, and the warm, soft pancake holds all the rich flavours in, ready to be released undiluted into the diner’s mouth with each bite.

Next came a large plain cedar tub full of chirashi-zushi (mixed sushi). This is often the way Japanese households make sushi, since it is less fussy than the rolled or shaped varieties. It is essentially a rice salad. Here, thinly sliced seafood, raw and cooked, red carrots and brown shiitake mushrooms, chopped green trefoil stems and leaves, fine-sliced omelette, and green and black nori made it very colourful. The rice was delicious, hearty and slightly saltier than it would be at a commercial sushi shop. To accompany it were tempura-fried scallop (hotate) chunks, much like kaki-age, the mixed “fritter” finale of a tempura course at a restaurant.

The hotate were followed by a dish of two fried tai (sea bream). Bream are adored by the Japanese both for their delicate flavour, and because the name of the fish “to;” is homonymous with the Japanese word for congratulations. The fish had been prepared Chinese style (our hostess had worked for some time in China) the flesh sliced in fillets, leaving the bone, head and tail in one piece, and all fried separately. The entire fish is re-assembled before serving on a big flat plate, then sweet/sour onions and carrots in thickened katsuo-based stock poured on top.

One of the guests was a potter, and her strong fingers and shoulders (developed from kneading clay) were called upon to help in the making of buckwheat (soba) noodles from scratch. Buckwheat dough is much stiffer and thus harder to work with than an equivalent measure of wheat dough. Even (he addition of about ten percent wheat flour did little to make the kneading easier. The dough was kneaded for ten minutes in one batch, then divided and kneaded again in two batches. This process enhances the flavour.

The dough was then rolled thinly, and folded over after it had been lightly floured, then cut with a large knife. The noodles were boiled in water. They were placed in a large tub, after cooling, and each diner was supplied with a small cup filled with dark, salty, slightly sweetish dip (tsuyu). In the centre of the table the hostess placed a wide shallow basket with tempura of small Japanese aubergines, sliced sweet-potatoes, and piman (small Japanese green peppers). The colours of the vegetables – purple, bright orange, bright green – peeped from the golden tempura batter to complement the sombre brownish grey of the noodles. Slices of green onion and wasabi on a plate were for flavouring the tsuyu.

Finally, the last course was slices of watermelon and melon, coffee or tea (green or Western).