Asian Miscellany (13)—Food and Drink in Heian Japan

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Asian Miscellany.

[a] Modern food RF

My last few posts in "Asian Miscellany" have been driven by deadline—and many of them will follow in the coming weeks and months, since I have signed contracts to deliver a whole passel of encyclopedic material to various publishers before a self-imposed deadline of January 30th. As I explained in the introduction, this series of posts allows me to try out a few ideas that I plan eventually to include in various encyclopedias or on-line sites that have asked for my input. They are not the same as the pieces that will eventually be published, but constitute more of a "long draft," meant to work through a few ideas as I work on brief essays that often mandate strict "word counts" of 250, 500, 1,000, or 2,000 words. 

For the next dozen or so posts, I have been asked to write about Heian Japan (794-1185). It is one of the most fascinating periods in world history, so I trust that the topics will "connect" for readers of the first ten "Asian Miscellany" posts (almost all of the topics—children, family, urban/rural—are the same). They work well for people interested in a brief introduction to Heian Japan or for people interested in comparative issues. Although an introduction to the Heian period in Japan would require its own introduction, I trust that a reading of these "Heian Japan posts (11-20 in Asian Miscellany) will encourage a few of you to read a bit of the literature of the period.

Click here for other posts in the Heian Japan mini-series:
City-Country    Children         Food-Drink      Entertainment               Sports-Games
Education        Family Life     Work-Labor     Language-Literature     Housing-Shelter

Food and Drink in Heian Japan

Anyone who has studied even a little bit of history from various parts of the world knows that food has value in every society far beyond it caloric and health-sustaining benefits. People think about, argue over, and remain fascinated by the food they eat, and as much time goes into the many layers of preparation of a meal as the eating of it. Even that does not begin to approach the overwhelming cultural significance of food in Japanese history. What people ate and drank is actually quite well documented, even for the Heian era a thousand years ago. As has been the case for centuries, the story begins with the all-consuming importance of rice in East Asian culture.

[b] Mixed modern RF

The Staple Grain

The archaeological evidence about early Japanese society shows a transition from a semi-nomadic, hunter-gatherer culture to one dominated by rice cultivation in increasingly stable village patterns. Introduced from China, rice has come to be more powerfully associated with Japan than any other Asian society, and the grain evokes a wide array of cultural ideas that go far beyond its role as a staple food. The earliest ritual texts in Japanese history are closely associated with the agricultural patterns of rice growing and the implications for livelihood to be found in the ears of the rice stalk. 

Few stories in Japanese history speak as clearly of the relationship between wealth and rice (throughout Japanese history, rice was a standard measure of “salary”) than a folktale from the early Heian period. Called “How a Sparrow Repaid Its Debt of Gratitude,” it tells of a nasty young boy who threw a rock and broke a sparrow’s leg.[1]  A kindly old woman scolded the boy and cared for the bird, which flew away when it had recovered. Weeks later, the bird returned with seeds in its beak for the old woman. She planted them, and at harvest time enormous calabashes filled with never-diminishing supplies of rice continued to pour forth, making her first comfortable and then wealthy. The story goes on to show that only the well intentioned and caring will be rewarded, and not the stingy and calculating. The lasting image, however, is rice. In Heian Japan, no other image of wealth would make as much sense for listeners.

Food Variety in Heian Japan

[c] Shabu RF

It is scarcely possible to speak of Japanese food—in Heian times or today—without mentioning fish. A nation of islands, not even the locations farthest inland are particularly distant from the seas. Even with the slower travel of Heian times, the seas dominated the practical and imaginative dimensions of Japanese cuisine. Moreover, freshwater fish in the region of the capital was plentiful, found in various rivers as well as Japan’s largest lake, only sixty kilometers away, Lake Biwa. In Heian times, however, seafood was balanced with a wide range of game, nuts, and other items found in the dense forests beyond both villages and the capital. Nonetheless, even a thousand years ago the forests and streams were being depleted, to the point where several emperors decreed bans on hunting certain animals. Increasingly, Japan came to be dominated by a cuisine founded on rice, vegetables, a bit of game, and fish. 

At about the same time, and for reasons that had as much to do with borrowings from China as eating preferences at home, chopsticks became the standard utensil, first among aristocrats and later, by the end of Heian times, in the provinces as well. Four kinds of food formed the mainstay of elaborate dining in Heian Japan—dried foods, fresh foods, pickled or fermented foods, and desserts. Within each of these categories, a large array of varieties could be presented at any one festival banquet, and it is possible to see this pattern of cooking and presentation today in the more elaborate meals one might enjoy in various lodgings in Japan.

The drink of choice in Heian times was sake, a fermented beverage that is often referred to as rice wine. This is a slight misnomer, because the brewing techniques more closely resemble the fermenting process used throughout the world to make beers rather than wines. Some of the earliest Japanese texts refer to this beverage in the context of festival entertainment, and its use had been solidified by Heian times as an increasingly common drink among wealthy families. 

[d] Wagashi RF

It would be a mistake, on the other hand, to think of tea (what we often think of in the West as “green tea”) as a common beverage. The first seedlings were brought from China during the great period of borrowing from the Tang dynasty in the sixth through eight centuries. In Heian times, tea was a relatively rare but highly esteemed beverage that was admired as much for its medicinal qualities as its taste. What came to be known as the “tea ceremony” grew out of this relationship between distinctiveness, healthfulness, and taste. Nothing like the tea ceremony that would develop in later centuries was apparent in the Heian, but the first glimmers of it were found in the festival banquet life in the capital city of Heian Kyō. 

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Foods and beverages are cultural. They are also situated historically in sometimes surprising ways. Items we often think about today as “Japanese food and drink” (rice, seafood, sake, and tea) were only in the opening stages of their introduction to Japanese society, and the ways in which we observe them today would likely seem overly “comfortable” to a Heian banquet host. While none of these linchpins of Japanese cuisine would seem “new” to them (except, perhaps, tea) all were in such a process of mixing, matching, and elaborating that it would take many more centuries to create the ways we think today of Japanese cuisine. In Heian times, it was new and ever changing.

Click here for other posts in the Heian Japan mini-series:
City-Country    Children         Food-Drink      Entertainment               Sports-Games
Education        Family Life     Work-Labor     Language-Literature     Housing-Shelter

[e] Modern variety RF

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Note

[1] David Lu, Japan: A Documentary History (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 77-78.

Bibliography

Lu, David. Japan: A Documentary History. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997.