ABSTRACT
THE BRITISH COUNCIL recognized the importance of Japan for their work and generally appointed able representatives. One of these was PETER MARTIN who took over from Francis King in Kyoto and later returned to head the Council in Tokyo. While in Kyoto he and his first wife Joan produced one of the first books in English entitled Japanese Cooking. It was published by André Deutsch in 1970 with a Foreword by Sir John Pilcher, then British Ambassador in Tokyo, who declared:- ‘To write about Japanese cooking is to discourse about Japanese aesthetics, philosophy and way of living… All Japanese cooking needs its setting. A Japanese meal is unthinkable without a quiet, withdrawn room looking on to the garden, which must be a picture to be seen from inside, beautiful at all seasons … Freshness and a certain astringency are the qualities most prized …The feast is for the eye and the mind… It is vulgar to show hunger, which can so easily be assuaged. A Japanese banquet, like a tea ceremony, is food for the spirit. Mere eating can be done elsewhere…’ [I remember that Sir John Pilcher would often say that the greatest pride of a Japanese chef lay in making a salmon look like Nagoya Castle! Ed.]
