ABSTRACT
What distinguishes a Japanese meal is a set of ordering principles (hat must be understood because they provide analytical insight into Japanese culture, and because they form, for the diner, a structuring of the dining experience. Ordering principles determine how foods are set before a diner, what is meant to be eaten or presented first, how a meal progresses, and what determines this progression. Ordering principles also mean the progression of food choices over the year, which, as in most cultures, includes some knowledge of a ritual calendar and its bases. Inescapably intertwined in this description are two related issues: the degree and form to which diners’ behaviours are determined by the location, the social setting, and the foods eaten, as well as the abstract rules of aesthetic presentation and the degree to which these rules are relative or absolute. These ordering principles are complex and exist on several nested levels. It is also crucial to our understanding that though these ordering principles are overt and firmly connected, they allow, at the same time, a great deal of flexibility and actually encourage, rather than restrict, variation. This variation, however, is channelled along firmly defined lines. To put this latter issue into context, the reader can cany out a simple experiment: set the utensils for your next family meal on the floor of the bedroom, or, alternatively, serve the food in reverse order. That is, in the British household, pudding or dessert, followed by meat, vegetables and carbohydrate, followed by soup (or the reverse of whatever is normal for you). It will quickly become apparent that there are some basic inviolable rules whose disturbance may lead to screams of outrage, if not worse, in all but the most tolerant of households.
