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Preface

I was ordered to write a book on Japanese food by Dr. Max Lake, the great Australian authority on wine and food. But it wasn’t until Nicholas Ingleton, president of Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Company, invited me to write this dictionary that I had the possibility of obeying the order. It has given me enormous pleasure and stimulation to do so.

Several people have helped me greatly and I wish to give them my sincerest thanks.

Caroline Davidson, my agent, got the project started by introducing me to Nicholas Ingleton and has kept me going with valuable advice ever since. Yokichi and Hiroko Okamoto have constantly helped and stimulated me with their invaluable friendship and their remarkable knowledge of Japanese food. Richard C. Parker produced his delightful, extremely appropriate line drawings at short notice. Richard B. Parker and Patricia have sustained me with their constant encouragement and enthusiasm for the project. Above all, my old friend and mentor, Professor Naomichi Ishige of the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, has kept a watchful eye on this effort and has made many valuable corrections and suggestions, for which I am deeply grateful.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Hiroshima Shudo University, which has employed me for the last twenty-two years. Not only has the university encouraged me by putting me in charge of graduate-school teaching in food anthropology, but also I was given six months’ leave to work on this book at the National Museum of Ethnology. Former dean Masayuki Ishiguro has been especially helpful.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge the immense value of the Chōri yōgo jiten, a most remarkable dictionary of cookery terms, with its eight hundred contributors and 1,275 pages. Published by the Zenkoku Chōrishi Yōsei Shisetsu Kyōkai, it is a mine of useful and interesting information, which the Japanese are indeed fortunate to have. I have not hesitated to seek in it an authoritative source of the information I needed.

Hiroshima