For better or worse, I feel the need to explain myself…
Whenever the topic of this trip came up in the preceding weeks, the response I received was always . . . something along the lines of: “Wow, fantastic! How fun!” And then, when I explained that I was coming to not just sight-see or work on my language but to also study fermented food culture, the reaction gradually shifted from excited to befuddled: “Oh, cool… Wait, you’re doing what?”
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a completely valid question. Sure, fermentation has becomea trendy topic for tattooed chefs and hipster hobbyists, but it hardly seems a worthwhile subject of study for a serious scholar of East Asia. Or is it? As you might have guessed, I would suggest that it is. Not only do fermented foods and their effect on health and well-being represent a growing area of interest for medical researchers, but I have a suspicion they may hold significant cultural meaning as well.
That a common diet and eating customs among a group of people are linked to their cultural identity is fairly obvious. Indeed, this trail of thinking has been well-trodden with respect to the Japanese people – washoku, the “traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese” according to UNESCO’s website, was added to their list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013. This “dietary culture” is centered on the idea of ichiju sansai, “one soup, three dishes,” which indicates a meal built around steamed white japonica rice accompanied by one soup and three side dishes, very often a piece of fish, some pickles, and a vegetable dish. This sort of meal feels analogous to the classic “meat & three,” and is similarly often found in school lunches and teishoku set meals served at shokudo, the Japanese equivalent of a Bob Evans’ or Luby’s. Don’t get me wrong – washoku is delicious, nutritious, aesthetically pleasing, and makes me wonder how we in US came to a point where Oreos and candy bars fall into the category of “deep-fryable” and pizza needs melted cheese on not only 90% of its surface but also stuffed inside the remaining 10%. However, this idea of washoku and ichiju sansai is not only not representative of the way most modern Japanese eat on a day-to-day basis, but its historical provenance has also been called into question by scholars. For example, the emphasis on white rice as THE staple food of all Japanese did not gain traction until after the second World War, and, much like white flour in Europe and the US, was historically consumed primarily by the upper classes and the wealthy, while the diet of common folk was based on other grains like millet and buckwheat. Likewise, much like working-class cuisine in much of the rest of the world, these grains were often prepared and eaten with other grains, legumes, and vegetables (and, occasionally, animal protein) in a sort of “one-pot wonder.” So while washoku may have tremendous value as a cuisine, a cultural practice, and an approach to eating, its status as the definitive culinary marker of Japanese cultural identity is tenuous at best.
So for me, it begs the question: if food is an important part of the cultural identity of the Japanese, but the prevailing narrative around washoku and white rice does not quite hold up under close scrutiny, then what else could it be? While I am certainly in no position to claim that fermented foods like soy sauce, miso, sake, natto, umeboshi, etc, etc, are a better answer, I think it is certainly worth taking a closer look at. So, that’s what I hope to do while I am here and yeah – I guess that’s the point.
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