Japanese Food – What Is It?

I chose this topic because I am impressed with Japanese food. It seems tasty, healthy, and beautiful.  And it is all around me, but I’ve never really thought much about it.  So now I want to explore it.

What comes to mind when I talk about Japanese food is, first of course, rice. Then seasonality; for example you eat nabemono in winter, sanma in fall, cold tofu in summer, bamboo shoots in spring, and I’ve noticed it is not like that in America. And the beautiful presentation like the arrangement on the plate, colors, dishes and utensils that go with it. And that it is said to be healthy.

To see how a food expert thinks about Japanese food, I looked at a cookbook we have in our house, Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art. The author is Shizuo Tsuji who is a chef and owner of a famous cooking school.  He says that Japanese cuisine is simple. It was born of austerity and closeness to nature and a feeling for the seasons. There are only 2 key ingredients: dashi stock (made from kelp and dried bonito) and soy sauce. There are only 2 key requirements: the ingredients must be very fresh, and the food must be presented in a beautiful way. (Well, at least I had guessed the parts about the seasonality and the beautiful presentation.) Tsuji says a typical Japanese meal is 一汁三菜  (“a soup and three main dishes”): sashimi, a grilled dish焼き物, and a simmered dish煮物, followed by rice, pickles, and tea. I never really thought of it that way even though I have lived in Japan all my life.

I searched the web for the history of Japanese food but it seems to be not clear when it started exactly. What we are sure is that rice growing started in the Jomon period. We also know that tea and some special dishes were brought from China along with Buddhism and that this has become what is called shojin ryori, vegetarian cooking which is served in temples and a typical Japanese type of food. Well, that sounds like it is more Chinese than Japanese, doesn’t it?

Actually, even if a dish is not traditional or originally made in Japan, it might be regarded as Japanese food, especially by people in other countries, because it has developed somehow in a Japanese way or with Japanese ingredients.  For example, the word omuraisu is a combination of omelette, a French word, and rice. The most common way of making it is to fry the rice and vegetables with ketchup, wrap it in a thin layer of eggs, then spread ketchup on top. Because rice may be Chinese, and omelets are made in many countries, and ketchup is probably American, Japanese regard omuraisu as a foreign food. But I definitely think that Japan is the only country that commonly eats rice with ketchup. So, omuraisu might not be entirely Japanese, but when a foreigner actually eats one they will regard it as a new food a Japanese food. Come to think of it, my aunt was a little surprised when I started frying the rice with ketchup in America.

So I have found that Japanese food is harder to distinguish from foreign food than I would have thought it was. We have used foods from other cultures, but in a special Japanese way just as we borrow words, and products, and even ideas, but change them to make them right for us.

Lilia Yamakawa