Читать книгу Japan from Anime to Zen - David Watts Barton - Страница 11

No matter how interested in the history or culture or religion of Japan you may be when visiting the country, one thing is for sure: You are going to want to eat. You’re going to want to eat a lot.

Along with French and Chinese, Japanese food is one of the world’s most distinctive cuisines. Whether you’re looking forward to a steaming fresh bowl of ramen (or one of the other numerous noodle dishes the Japanese excel at making), or small plates of delicately flavored sushi, sashimi, or takoyaki (octopus balls), or one of Japan’s under-appreciated curries, or its wide array of truly strange specialties (one of which can kill you if your chef prepares it incorrectly), or even some of the best French and Chinese food in the world, you will find it in Japan.

Japanese chefs don’t just excel at Japanese food: The Japanese attention to detail in ingredients, preparation, and presentation—all done with a subtle flair—has led the country, Tokyo in particular, to become home to a staggering variety of restaurants serving international cuisine, from the humble American hamburger to French haute cuisine. Japan certainly ranks with France according to France’s prime standard: In 2020 the Michelin Guides to worldwide dining gave their vaunted three-star rating to twenty-two restaurants in Japan, second only to France (with twenty-eight). The United States is a distant third with fourteen.

And that’s before we address what the Japanese have done with Scotland’s formerly unbeatable gustatory export, Scotch whisky. Let it suffice to say that Japan has no lack of fine dining possibilities. More than that, even the most humble of Japanese eateries, even the fastest of fast food, exists on a level that few other cuisines can hope to aspire to. The Japanese enjoy food, are endlessly creative, and appreciate quality. The combination is nearly unbeatable.

Japan’s food culture is all the more remarkable for the country’s relative dearth of arable land—a mere 12% of the country—much of which is planted with rice. Because land is so scarce, and standards are so high, agriculture is an intense undertaking in Japan, with greenhouses and small farms still growing much of the produce and livestock. Japan’s farmers are “artisanal” by necessity as well as by nature.

These constraints have also forced the Japanese to become creative with what they do have. And what they have, more than anything else, is a whole lot of ocean. The waters surrounding Japan, from inland seas to wide-open ocean, provide Japan with an abundant supply of fish. But not only fish: Seaweed, cultivated all along the country’s coasts, has been turned by the Japanese from what most cultures have considered, well, a “weed” into something integral to Japanese food. Just try having sushi rolls or rice balls or dashi, Japanese cuisine’s crucial broth base, without the crucial ingredient: dried seaweed.

The Japanese are so inventive with their limited resources, and so finely attuned to flavor, that less than a century ago a Japanese scientist came up with a so-called “fifth flavor,” which he dubbed umami. In this section, we explore some basic aspects of the ingredients, techniques, tastes, and even table manners that make eating in Japan a singular experience. Let’s begin where all good journeys begin, at the dining table.