How did one dine with a shogun? Or make solid gold soup, sculpt with a fish, or turn seaweed into a symbol of happiness? In this fresh look at Japanese culinary history, Eric C. Rath delves into the writings of medieval and early modern Japanese chefs to answer these and other provocative questions, and to trace the development of Japanese cuisine from 1400 to 1868. Rath shows how medieval "fantasy food" rituals—where food was revered as symbol rather than consumed—were continued by early modern writers. The book offers the first extensive introduction to Japanese cookbooks, recipe collections, and gastronomic writings of the period and traces the origins of dishes like tempura, sushi, and sashimi while documenting Japanese cooking styles and dining customs.

How did one dine with a shogun? Or make solid gold soup, sculpt with a fish, or turn seaweed into a symbol of happiness? In this fresh and fascinating look at Japanese culinary history, Eric C. Rath delves into the writings of medieval and early modern Japanese chefs to answer these and other provocative questions, and to trace the development of Japanese cuisine from 1400 to 1868. Rath shows how medieval "fantasy food" rituals--where food was revered as symbol rather than consumed--were continued by early modern writers, who created whimsical dishes and fanciful banquets and turned dining into a voyeuristic literary pleasure. Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan offers the first extensive introduction to Japanese cookbooks, recipe collections, and gastronomic writings of the period. It traces the origins of familiar dishes like tempura, sushi, and sashimi while documenting Japanese cooking styles and dining customs, and demonstrates that for early modern Japanese cuisine, the central ingredient was the imagination.

This study is an unique approach to social and cultural history of Japan through the scope of food and food ways. In this book-length study of food markets in the early modern Japanese capital of Edo, Akira Shimizu draws a fascinating picture of early modern Japanese society where specialty foods—seasonal, regional, and hard-to-find delicacies that satisfied the palate of nation’s highest political authority, the shogun—served as a powerful nexus that connected different social groups. In the course of their daily lives, peasants, fisherfolks, and merchants, who made specialty food available at the market, were in constant negotiation with powerful wholesalers and government authorities in charge of procuring specialty foods of the highest qualities for the shogun’s Edo Castle. Utilizing a number of previously unused archival materials that reveals the lives of those at the bottom of the society, the book traces the production, supply, and handling of specialty foods and shows how ordinary people were empowered to assume control over the distribution of specialty food, eventually affecting their procurement for the shogunal kitchen. In doing so, they disrupted the existing market order on the shogunal requisition, and led to the reconfiguration of market relations.

In this newly revised and updated 2nd edition of Voices of Early Modern Japan, Constantine Nomikos Vaporis offers an accessible collection of annotated historical documents of an extraordinary period in Japanese history, ranging from the unification of warring states under Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early seventeenth century to the overthrow of the shogunate just after the opening of Japan by the West in the mid- nineteenth century. Through close examination of primary sources from "The Great Peace," this fascinating textbook offers fresh insights into the Tokugawa era: its political institutions, rigid class hierarchy, artistic and material culture, religious life, and more, demonstrating what historians can uncover from the words of ordinary people. New features include: • An expanded section on religion, morality and ethics; • A new selection of maps and visual documents; • Sources from government documents and household records to diaries and personal correspondence, translated and examined in light of the latest scholarship; • Updated references for student projects and research assignments. The first edition of Voices of Early Modern Japan was the winner of the 2013 Franklin R. Buchanan Prize for Curricular Materials. This fully revised textbook will prove a comprehensive resource for teachers and students of East Asian Studies, history, culture, and anthropology.

This study is an unique approach to social and cultural history of Japan through the scope of food and food ways. In this book-length study of food markets in the early modern Japanese capital of Edo, Akira Shimizu draws a fascinating picture of early modern Japanese society where specialty foods--seasonal, regional, and hard-to-find delicacies that satisfied the palate of nation's highest political authority, the shogun--served as a powerful nexus that connected different social groups. In the course of their daily lives, peasants, fisherfolks, and merchants, who made specialty food available at the market, were in constant negotiation with powerful wholesalers and government authorities in charge of procuring specialty foods of the highest qualities for the shogun's Edo Castle. Utilizing a number of previously unused archival materials that reveals the lives of those at the bottom of the society, the book traces the production, supply, and handling of specialty foods and shows how ordinary people were empowered to assume control over the distribution of specialty food, eventually affecting their procurement for the shogunal kitchen. In doing so, they disrupted the existing market order on the shogunal requisition, and led to the reconfiguration of market relations.

Cuisines in Japan have an ideological dimension that cannot be ignored. In 2013, ‘traditional Japanese dietary cultures’ (washoku) was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Washoku’s predecessor was “national people’s cuisine,” an attempt during World War II to create a uniform diet for all citizens. Japan’s Cuisines reveals the great diversity of Japanese cuisine and explains how Japan’s modern food culture arose through the direction of private and public institutions. Readers discover how tea came to be portrayed as the origin of Japanese cuisine, how lunch became a gourmet meal, and how regions on Japan’s periphery are reasserting their distinct food cultures. From wartime foodstuffs to modern diets, this fascinating book shows how the cuisine from the land of the rising sun shapes national, local, and personal identity.

Spanning nearly six hundred years of Japanese food culture, Japanese Foodways, Past and Present considers the production, consumption, and circulation of Japanese foods from the mid-fifteenth century to the present day in contexts that are political, economic, cultural, social, and religious. Diverse contributors--including anthropologists, historians, sociologists, a tea master, and a chef--address a range of issues such as medieval banquet cuisine, the tea ceremony, table manners, cookbooks in modern times, food during the U.S. occupation period, eating and dining out during wartimes, the role of heirloom vegetables in the revitalization of rural areas, children's lunches, and the gentrification of blue-collar foods. Framed by two reoccurring themes--food in relation to place and food in relation to status--the collection considers the complicated relationships between the globalization of foodways and the integrity of national identity through eating habits. Focusing on the consumption of Western foods, heirloom foods, once-taboo foods, and contemporary Japanese cuisines, Japanese Foodways, Past and Present shows how Japanese concerns for and consumption of food has relevance and resonance with other foodways around the world. Contributors are Stephanie Assmann, Gary Soka Cadwallader, Katarzyna Cwiertka, Satomi Fukutomi, Shoko Higashiyotsuyanagi, Joseph R. Justice, Michael Kinski, Barak Kushner, Bridget Love, Joji Nozawa, Tomoko Onabe, Eric C. Rath, Akira Shimizu, George Solt, David E. Wells, and Miho Yasuhara.