The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (31 page)

3. Our tables are already set before the meal is brought out; their tables are brought out from the kitchen along with the meal
.

In the fifth century the Merovingian king, Meroavaeus, ushered in a new custom for Europe's elite; where previously Romans reclined, Europeans now sat upright in a chair or on a bench at a table, or what was actually a board laid across two trestles.
¹²
In Frois' Portugal and most of Europe it was common for guests to pair-up around the table and eat with their hands from the same bowl or dish, thus the Portuguese idiom signifying that two people are good friends: “
comer com alguém no prato
” ([they] eat from the same plate).
¹³
It is still common practice in parts of Portugal and Spain for friends and family to literally share one large salad, with everyone diving in from wherever they are sitting, albeit with forks rather than their hands.

The lacquered tables used by the Japanese were small—“Tea-trays, with legs like dachshunds”
¹⁴
—and were brought from the kitchen by the woman of the
house as easily as a waitresses carries trays of food. Writing around 1880, Isabella Bird observed that each person was served from four to twelve dishes or bowls of edibles.
¹⁵
In Japan, today, this manner of eating is only true for some traditional-style restaurants. At home, most people eat around a Western-style table. In Korea, however, food is still often served in the manner described by Bird.

4. Our tables are high and have tablecloths and napkins; Japanese tables are lacquered panels of wood, rectangular in shape, low, with no tablecloths or napkins
.

Wealthy Europeans actually sat at tables with what amounted to several tablecloths. The bottom-most cloth hung down like a swag and was used as a communal napkin. On top of this cloth were one or more “over cloths,” which were sequentially removed before each new dinner course. As noted, during Frois' lifetime napkins became somewhat popular, again particularly among the wealthy. Arguably, most Europeans lacked the resources to buy tablecloths and napkins and continued a medieval tradition of wiping their mouths with their clothing, the back of the hand, or a piece of bread.
¹⁶

Japanese tables were generally four to eight inches from the floor or
tatami
. Japanese reliance on chopsticks and consumption of bite-sized edibles made napkins unnecessary. Actually, the Japanese found napkins disgusting, apparently because the Jesuits re-used them or washed them irregularly.

5. When we eat, we sit on chairs so that we can extend our legs; they sit on the tatami or on the floor, with their legs crossed
.

In sixteenth-century Japan men began meals in the
sei-za
or “proper-seat” position (knees on the floor and sitting back on the heels), but rarely ate entire meals that way. They switched to the informal cross-legged style described by Frois. Both then and now, women almost never sit cross-legged; they sit more or less formally all the time.

6. Their dishes are served either all together or on three tables; our dishes are served with one course following another
.

Note that this is a rare instance in the
Tratado
where Frois reversed the order of the distich, presenting the Japanese custom first (perhaps Frois had grown fond of this particular Japanese custom). Elites in Portugal were accustomed to eating twice a day: “dinner” around mid-day and a light “supper” in the evening. Dinner was the main meal of the day and usually came in three separate courses, which might include items such as sausage, boiled and fricasseed chicken, and roasted meat or poultry (lesser nobility or peasants might have two or one main course, respectively).
¹⁷
A clerical sumptuary edict from England in 1541 indicated that archbishops might have up to six kinds of meat at a meal, bishops no more than five, deans and archdeacons four, and all other clergy no more than three.
¹⁸

Frois' fellow Jesuit, Rodrigues, noted that the Japanese had five different types of formal banquets, including a “banquet of three tables,” where each guest was provided with many different items rather than merely one item constituting a course. In Frois' time, people eating formally in Japan always began with a few morsels of rice followed by a sip of soup (
shiru
), repeated thrice over. Details of formal three-, five-, and seven-table banquets were provided by Rodrigues. For example:

in the banquettes of three tables … there are twenty dishes and they include four
shiru
… with five tables they serve twenty-six dishes, among which are included six
shiru
… with six tables or trays, there are thirty-two dishes, among which are included eight
shiru
, that is five of fish, one of shell fish and two of meat; one of these is crane …
¹⁹

During the 1980s in Japan, tables full of dishes became a popular type of television quiz show—not one show mind you, but a
genre
found on channel after channel, day and night. A personality would be shown eating, and game-show participants would be asked either to guess the next dish he or she (usually a very pretty she) would reach for, or, harder yet, give the order of the first five or so items.

European banquets of the sixteenth century were equally elaborate, structured events, although as Frois suggests, the presentation of food came more in courses than all at once. A banquet held in 1529 for the Duke of Ferrara featured at least seven courses; the 104 guests dined on everything from antipasto to suckling pig, served on 2,835 plates.
²⁰
The first course at the wedding feast for Portugal's Prince Afonso and Princess Isabel of Spain, in 1490, began when:

… there came to the head of the table a large golden cart which seemed to be pulled by two huge roasted whole steers, with gilded horns and hooves; the cart was completely filled with a large number of roasted whole sheep with gilded horns; the whole thing was on such a low contraption, with little wheels underneath where they could not be seen, that the steers appeared to be alive and walking.”
²¹

7. We can eat just fine without soup; the Japanese can not eat without soup.
²²

European peasants certainly ate their fair share of pottages and soups, but as Frois suggests, soup was not central to Mediterranean cuisine. The Japanese
believe that slurping soup at intervals during a meal rather than as a separate course helps other food go down, so to speak. While fancy restaurants still serve fish and fowl in
shiru
, as described by Rodrigues above, today this soup is almost always either a cloudy fermented bean-curd soup or one of a number of clear
suimono
—literally “sucking-thing” soups. The ingredients of both are almost entirely vegetable, but tiny shellfish (
asari
or
shijimi
) in the shell are often added to improve the flavor of the former, which is called
miso-shiru
(well known to health-food devotees in the West). In Japan it receives as much good press as wine in France. Hardly a week goes by without the publication of a new study showing some new medical benefits (never the opposite; see
#57
, below) of
miso
.
²³

8. Our table service is made of silver or pewter
²⁴
; in Japan the table service is made of wood lacquered red or black
.

Europeans used pottery and wooden cups and bowls to consume liquids like soup or ale. Large slices of bread, called trenchers or
manchets
, commonly were used as “plates.” The bread absorbed juice from meat or fish and was consumed at the end of the meal or given to the dog or to the poor, as alms. By Frois' time, Europeans also were using round wooden or pewter plates under or instead of
manchets
. The sixteenth century also witnessed mass production of earthenware and more expensive porcelain, which was durable and non-porous. Wealthier Europeans or religious such as the Jesuits were likely to have table service of pewter; the truly privileged had silver or even gold.

Lacquered wood has a hard and durable finish that results from the application of a varnish of tree resin to which iron oxide and other pigments have been added (thus the often-seen red and/or black). Unlike many ceramics, lacquered wood is light as well as non-porous. It also has advantages over pewter or silver in that it conducts little heat. Today in Japan most ostensibly wood-lacquered bowls and spoons (rarely plates) are made of plastic.

9. We use earthenware pots and porringers
²⁵
to prepare and cook food; the Japanese use pots and pans made of cast iron
.

Clay pots and porringers were no doubt used by Frois' mother and grandmother to prepare
caldeirada
(fish stew like
bouillabaisse
) or various bean-and-pork dishes (cozidos) that are the ancestors of Brazilian
feijoada
(“re-introduced” to Portugal and found today on restaurant menus throughout Portugal).

This contrast and the one that follows suggest that the gentry in Japan relied heavily on cast iron cookware. Japan nevertheless has a long history of fine cooking utensils made of clay as well as iron. Long before Frois wrote, the cracked
stew pot was a popular trope for a widow or woman whose virginity was a distant memory. Today it is common in Japan to see stews slowly cooking in earthenware rather than metal pots.

10. The tripod that we use [
for cooking
] is positioned with the legs pointing down; the Japanese place theirs with the legs pointing up
.

During the sixteenth century many Japanese homes had an
irori
, a square, sunken hearth that functioned much like braziers in Iberia and the fireplace set in the wall, which was becoming common elsewhere in Europe.
²⁶
The
irori
provided warmth and heat for cooking using cast-iron pots that were suspended over the coals using a tripod that looks something like a wrought iron stool, minus the seat, turned upside down.

11. Men in Europe ordinarily eat with their women; in Japan this is very rare because their tables are also separated
.

One of the things that made Jesus so radical was his commensality, particularly his acceptance of women at the dinner table.
²⁷
Although the Romans encouraged women to eat with men, it was hardly as equals (women serving or entertaining enhanced the meal). By the sixteenth century probably
most
European men and their wives ate together, although in parts of Iberia, Germany, and France it was common for the men to eat separately (served by women or servants), while the women ate in the kitchen or standing up.
²⁸

In Japan, as in Europe, the two genders were not considered equal and women joined men at the table mostly in a serving capacity. This was particularly true for the gentry (as per
Chapter 2
,
#53
). Among the common folk or peasantry, husbands and wives often ate together.

As the twentieth century began, this matter of men and women eating together became part of Japan's national agenda to Westernize and thus gain the respect of the world powers. Yet even today, husband and wife still eat and socialize together far less than they do in the West. The reason, however, has perhaps less to do with traditional segregation of male and female. Japanese working and commuting hours are usually so long that people eat and socialize with their colleagues. The married man who perseveres until he gets home to eat with his wife, might well eat dinner at midnight! (This is especially the case with small companies, where male employees work more hours than is reflected in official statistics.)

12. People in Europe enjoy eating fish that has been baked or boiled; the Japanese enjoy it much more when it is raw
.

Going without meat was a big part of life in Christian Europe. In Frois' Portugal there were around sixty-eight days a year when Christians were forbidden to eat meat.
²⁹
In Provence, the number was closer to 150.
³⁰
Marques notes that seafood
such as whiting, eels, mullet, sardines, flounder, mussels, and crabs were a regular part of the Portuguese diet.
³¹

The “raw” fish preferred by the Japanese was not as raw as one might imagine. In Frois' time the Japanese dipped the fish in boiling vinegar or fermented it in a mustard sauce (
karashi
). Interestingly, few Japanese today seem to realize that pickled or fermented, i.e. semi-raw fish, was once the norm. The diverse and extremely appealing
sushi
that the West recently has come to know and love was one of many gastronomical developments of the Edo era (1615–1868). The advent of refrigeration expanded the possibilities for
sushi
yet further and have made it a world-class food. Vinegary
o-sumono
still survives in the sushi shop repertoire and is not all that different from the pickled herring that the Dutch made a huge industry during the fourteenth century. Still, for many Jesuits in Japan—many of whom were from Iberia—having to eat “raw” fish was a “continual torment.”

13. Among us, all fruits are eaten when they are ripe, except for cucumbers, which are eaten green; the Japanese eat all their fruit when it is green, except for cucumbers, which are eaten very yellow and ripe
.

Fresh as well as dried and preserved fruit (e.g. biter orange, cherries, peaches, figs) were very popular in Mediterranean Europe, including Portugal. According to Marques, the Portuguese seem to have particularly enjoyed pairing fruit and wine, often in the evening as a light meal.
³²

The Japanese pickled most fruit, with the apparent exception of the cucumber. The Portuguese must not have exercised one iota of influence on Japanese taste in fruit, for the first British ambassador after the “opening” of Japan (1854), Sir Rutherford Alcock wrote: