In conjunction with the “Kanazawa Machi-Haku” (Machi-Haku meaning “town expo”) showcase of Kanazawa for tourism over summer 2009, the Amane Project organized a special dinner a few months back, recreating some of the dishes of the Edo period from the Umeda diaries. So in a break from wandering around the city, I would like to briefly talk about the food that was served, and how it differs – or does not differ – from modern Japanese cuisine.
The inspiration for this evening was in the detailed diaries of Noto-ya Jinsaburo, later known as Umeda Jinsaku, a low-ranking official who lived in Kanazawa at the close of the Edo period, when Japan was on the cusp of one of the greatest transformations in history; when, in the space of a generation, it changed from an isolated feudal nation to one that ranked with the Imperialist powers of the West and humiliated Russia in war. However this is not the main reason why the Umeda Diaries are of such historical interest: their sheer rarity makes them of note. Very few commoner diaries from this period are extant, and the Umeda Diaries thus give us an invaluable glimpse into the lives of ordinary people a hundred and fifty years ago.
Just as an aside, the name “Umeda Diaries” was the one given to the collection by Professor Wakabayashi of Kanazawa University, who was the first to treat them academically. However the surname Umeda itself was not adopted by Jinsaburo until the Meiji period, when commoners were permitted – and required – to have surnames. Prior to that he was known as “Noto-ya Jinsaburo,” “Noto-ya” referring to the name of the shop his family ran. Hence in this entry I will use “Jinsaburo” to refer to the man himself, and “Umeda” when referring to his diaries. Other names ending with “ya” mentioned here are also shop names rather than proper family names; however to all intents and purposes they can be thought of as surnames. A similar example in Europe is the German Geschäftsname. Apparently—I am not an expert on German….
Anyway, following an interesting afternoon retracing some of the old haunts of Jinsaburo, mainly around the Higashiyama area, we convened at the Waraiya restaurant in downtown Kanazawa. Incidentally, if you’re in town, downtown Kanazawa these days is the Korinbo-Katamachi area, on the south side of the castle, but in Jinsaburo’s time Owaricho, on the north, front, side of the castle was where the action was. The centre moved over in and around the 1920s with the development of the Taisho-era café culture catering to the educated middle class from the Fourth Upper High School and the City and Prefectural offices – a change which means that Owari-cho these days preserves quite a decent amount of its pre-war atmosphere.
The meal was organised by a “food coordinator,” Tsuguma Takako – all Japanese names in this blog are given in the Japanese order of “surname, given name.” I think it silly that in English we refer to the Chinese in the correct order but flip it around for Japanese – who gave us a brief talk on it, as did Nagayama Naoharu, a former specialist with the Kanazawa City Administration. The theme, not surprisingly since this was August, was “summer foods,” based on dishes mentioned in the Umeda Diaries.
The dishes offered were taken from diary entries from the year 1864, covering June to August of the old lunar calendar (to convert, very roughly, add a month. Thus June in the lunar calendar is July in the solar Gregorian calendar. This, incidentally, is why the O-Bon festival of the dead is in usually in August rather than July, where it was in the lunar calendar).
There were a total of seven dishes offered, although unfortunately my photos did not all come out that well – to avoid the flat, washed-out look of flash photography, I tried to use the existing light as much as possible. Trouble is, it was not that bright and I did not have a tripod. So there are not as many photos here as I would have liked.
We started off with the four in the photo below.
Click on any image to see a larger version.
From left to right, they are Two Fillets of Tai (Snapper or Sea Bream) Namba-Yaki (Chilli Fry), Grilled Nasu (Eggplant) and Karei (Flounder), a simple Ebi (Prawn) Boiled in Stock, and Sekihan (Red Rice) balls. The next photo shows Kayaku-Soba, Mixed Noodles. The two photos that did not come out are for Tofu and the Amazake (Sweet Sake) dessert.
The snapper dish is made with chilli, which is interesting. Chilli is not, of course, native to Japan. They are in fact American. We can blame Columbus, indirectly, for this. He was one of the first European explorers to encounter them, and brought them back to Europe. It is not certain exactly how chilli got to Asia – it was either via Mexico to the Philippines and then up into East Asian, or via Spain to India (Goa) and East Asia. They make their first appearance in Japanese history in 1552, offered by a Portuguese missionary to one of the powerful daimyo or domain lords of Kyushu. Initially, it seems, they were used for decorative purposes rather than for eating, similar to how the tomato was received in parts of Europe. Now of course the chilli is an essential part of East Asian cuisine, and Korean in particular. And as in India, spicy dishes were thought to stimulate the appetite, dulled by the torpid heat of summer. The restaurant we had this at was thoroughly air-conditioned, of course, which kind of dulled the impact.
So how was this consumed in the Edo period? Umeda’s diary gives us a hint. He mentions this dish on the 21st of June 1864 by the lunar calendar, or the 24th of July 1864 (from here on, I shall give dates in the Gregorian calendar). His diary for that day talks about the food as follows:
“A day to celebrate, as construction began on our house. Today, I served lunch to the two workers, the carpenter Shuzaemon and one day labourer assistant, of rice and side dishes with seaweed miso soup, with Kaga gourds and a piece of yellowtail cut in two, and served on a plate. The evening work wrapped up, and we broke for dinner, having two fillets of snapper ‘shoulder’ done with chilli as one dish, and on another dish, a square of tofu.”
Interestingly, we can tell that the carpenters had a square of tofu from the name, yakko tofu. “Yakko” does not mean anything as prosaic as “square,” however. The word “yakko” was originally written as, literally, “house-boy” or “ya-tsu-ko,” which then became “yakko.” They were the lowest rank of menial serving a samurai household, using coming from peasant or commoner families. The yakko would pack luggage, run errands, and generally be the dogsbody and gofer. They would wear overcoats (hanten) with a large square on them, so they would not be immediately associated with a particular house (when it came time for the biennial march to Edo, for example, a lot of temp yakko were hired as porters). Thus the word “yakko” came to be associated with squares, and square food. Hence the yakko tofu here, or the popular summer dish of hiyayakko (chilled square tofu).
Tofu itself of course, then and now, was a cheap and popular food for the masses. A recipe book published in 1782 listed a hundred ways to prepare tofu, from common or garden dishes that any household might make, such as ganmodoki (a tofu and vegetable loaf or dengaku (tofu coated in miso and fried), to elite dishes. It has even been translated into modern Japanese and published.
The eggplant and flounder dish is another one Jinsaburo prepared for the carpenters, a few days later. Jinsaburo writes:
“I returned from the office [where he worked as an under-assistant to a rural commissioner] to assist the carpenters, and on removing some old nails, I missed and fell back, onto some nails that were still in the holes, on their heads, catching my right index finger, tearing two holes in the back of it, a most unfortunate incident.
Today three carpenters came, and for lunch I served them eggplant and flounder, grilled, but two of the carpenters took their lunch at their own homes, including Suzaemon.
I served an evening meal to the three, yakko tofu and prawns, boiled and served on two dishes.
[29 July 1864]”
Personally I am not a great fan of eggplant, but it is popular in the Kanazawa region, especially in summer as it is thought to cool the body down. Would chilli eggplant thus be the ideal summer food? Anyway, this brings us onto the prawns. Jinsaburo wasn’t specific about what sort of prawns he served, but we were given ama-ebi, “sweet prawns,” the most common type. This was one dish that was not remotely exotic in terms of any sense of “depths of history coming alive,” as it is so common even in the 21st century. We were urged to pretend like we were carpenters in the late Edo period feasting on these dishes, but that was pretty well impossible of course. Not in a modern air-conditioned restaurant sitting at tables.
Red rice is a staple for celebrations and congratulatory occasions in Japan even now. It is made from mochi rice, which is more glutinous and sticky than normal rice, with red beans (azuki: a popular sweet flavour in Japan for reasons passing understanding), though there are regional variations – in the Kanto region around Tokyo, for example, red beans are above as they tend to develop a slit along the belly when steamed, and a slit belly is not an auspicious sign…. Red has long been considered a colour for warding off evil in East Asia – hence its still common use for shrine gateways (torii) and bridges. Red rice (sekihan) is now eaten at New Years and at festivals, as well as other commemorative occasions. However it is also served at more normal times. Jinsaburo had it, for example, on 25 September 1864, as his diary shows:
“After the office, I went to the Tai Tenmangu Shrine, and then dropped in at Etchu-ya Kichibei where I had business, and was offered red rice at that time, which I ate and then left, looking in on Mr Shirogane-ya Yaroku as I had not seen him in some time, before returning home in the evening.”
Soba is another staple of Japan. There was nothing overly strange about this dish, as it is still popular today – though, admittedly, this was a rather nice one. In my experience, soba (and in fact Japanese food as a whole) really shows a major difference in terms of quality between the high and low ends. Maybe this is as it is harder to disguise cheap ingredients and poor food with rich sauces, but if there is some Japanese food you have had and not thought much of, give it another go from a better quality place. Waraiya, where we had this meal, was rather good. In my case, I am not a soba fan, as the cheap stuff is pretty appalling. However good soba has a much richer flavour and firmer, more varied, texture, and I recommend it. Soba itself is always translated as “buckwheat” noodles, but I have no idea what “buckwheat” is, as the only times I ever come across the word are when “soba” is translated. The noodles are usually either served chilled with a thin soy-based sauce for dipping, or hot in a thin soup, as here. While the chilled form (known as “zaru-soba” for the drain tray the noodles are served on), we were given the hot form, to clear our palettes before the dessert.
Jinsaburo had kayaku-soba (mixed soba, referring to the other things in the soup), the day after his red rice, on the 26th of September, as his diary notes:
“In the evening I went with Inami-ya Toshichi to the bathhouse, and on our return we dropped in at a kayaku soba place in Kazue-machi, and there we had a jug of sake, and returned home at the fifth hour [8:00 pm], then with Toshichi’s wife and [my wife] Shina, we went out to that soba place to eat.”
The final item on the menu was amazake, which is a sweet drink made from fermented rice that has been popular in Japan for, oh, about its entire recorded history. Traditionally it was a summer drink, as we find it here in the Umeda Diaries, though now it is very much a winter drink, associated strongly with the first visit to a shrine at the New Year, where it is offered to parishioners (usually for free) to keep them warm on what can be a rather chilly night. Despite the name sake, which is famous as rice wine, there is almost no alcohol in amazake,
Jinsaburo mentioned amazake in passing in his diary a few days later, on 30 September:
“Made some amazake.
Used one and a half slabs of koji [the special mould spores used to ferment sake] to five cups of new rice.”
However our chef for tonight, Nishimura Yutaka, felt that plain old amazake was a little dull, so he got a little creative and came up with an amazing amazake sherbet which, while not remotely historically authentic, was astoundingly good – it was the one dish that all the participants agreed was one we would have liked a second helping of. In fact many suggested it be added as a permanent menu item.
However, while the food was very good, all in all I felt somewhat let down by this “recreated Edo food,” for the simple reason that it is really not significantly different to contemporary Japanese food. Or, in other words, modern Japanese food is remarkably close to its roots – though I should stress that this is something that is dependent on the type of dish, as some of the most famous, such as sukiyaki, did not exist at the time. But most foods eaten in the Edo period would be familiar to people now; if not in the precise details, certainly in the overall outline.
Next post, we are back on the road, taking a look at some of the things out there the casual tourist might not even notice….
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