The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (34 page)

42. Among us, rotten fish tripe is considered an abomination; the Japanese like it a great deal and have it as an appetizer.
⁶⁶

The Japanese once salted and aged many varieties of fish tripe and roe. Today,
shiokara
, or “salt tripe,” almost invariably means the guts of squid (often mixed with strips of squid flesh). There is, however, a far more expensive fermented tripe,
konowata
(sea cucumber guts), which for centuries was a tribute item delivered annually to the imperial court.
Konowata
is still considered one of the top gourmet foods in Japan, although not all Japanese would eat it.

43. Among us, making loud noises while eating and completely draining a cup of wine are considered slovenly; the Japanese consider both of these things to be refined manners
.

The Japanese do not pay much attention to eating and drinking noises. The correct way to eat noodles or drink soup is to slurp loudly, because it is the best way to experience or savor the combination of broth and noodle, not to mention avoid getting scalded. Quick eating generally has been considered good etiquette among this job-oriented culture. Samurai, in particular, took pride in eating and defecating quickly. Even today, a noodle shop in Japan gives fast food a new meaning. One feels like using a stopwatch at some of these “slurpers”!

As far as
sake
goes, since the usual sake cup holds only about half a shot and the alcohol content is as low as wine, men are not adverse to tossing them back, and the Japanese do often gulp aloud when they drink, simply because they are unconscious of such noises, having never been trained to avoid them. One could well imagine that this would look indecorous to a wine-sipping European.

44. We praise our hosts' wine with a happy and gracious smile; the Japanese praise their hosts' wine by making such a miserable face that they look like they are crying
.

What the Japanese do, even today, is grimace. Europeans and Americans generally think a good drink should be mellow. Among the Japanese, strength is a desired characteristic of a drink. Thus a grimace showing that a drink hit the spot is the traditional way to express gratitude. (It is no wonder the Japanese are fond of American Westerns, as grimacing is precisely what cowboys do when they reach the saloon and knock down a whiskey.)

45. At our tables we converse, but we do not sing or dance; it is not until the very end of the meal that the Japanese converse, and more often, dance and sing
.

This is
not
your average weekday dinner, but a party of men. After sitting for a good while on
tatami
, it feels good to move a little. Moreover, the song and dance of traditional Japan, unlike most of Europe, can easily be performed by individuals (see
Chapter 13
).

46. Among us, the guest expresses thanks to the host; in Japan the host expresses thanks to the guest
.

In Japan, guests bring gifts and hosts thank them for taking the trouble for coming, rather than the guest thanking the host for hosting the affair. It makes sense, for the guest is the one who has to travel. But Frois may have a particular situation in mind. Okada believes that Frois was referring to ceremonial tea etiquette. The Jesuits became rightly preoccupied with this etiquette because it was important to the nobility and samurai class whose favors they courted. As noted in the critical introduction, one of the rules drawn up after the Bungo Consultation mandated that all Jesuit residences and even missions have a special room near the entrance door for ceremonial tea, and also a tea attendant (
chanoyusha
) who was to be continuously on duty.
⁶⁷

47. We like fried fish; they do not, and [
instead
] enjoy fried seaweed
.

The Japanese roast fish or boil it; they rarely fry it. Deep-fried
konbu
(kelp) is rare today, except, paradoxically, in
tempura
, something the Japanese adopted from the Portuguese.
⁶⁸
Fried seaweed of all kinds remains very popular.

48. Among us, fishing is viewed as recreation by honorable people; in Japan, it is considered lowly and an activity for base individuals
.

Japan's oldest anthology of poetry, the
Manyoushu
(ca. 768), has several poems about noble poets who go fishing and meet goddesses in the guise of fishing girls. But the Japanese have nothing like the “
Compleat Angler
” tradition found in the West.
⁶⁹
One reason for this is suggested by another poem in the same anthology by Okakura, which speaks of the sinful nature of cormorant fishers. Buddhism, with its strong taboo against the taking of life, was spreading throughout Japan at that time, and soon poets and other good people no longer fished, or at least they did not fish and boast about it.

In the twentieth century, however, the number of Japanese anglers multiplied as fast as good streams were ruined by developers, with the comical result seen in photo magazines: unbelievable crowding (more fishermen than fish).

49. We are diligent about cleaning our teeth after eating; the Japanese do so in the morning, before washing their faces
.

Perhaps because the Japanese ate less sweets as well as meat, which was likely to get caught between the teeth, they saw little need to brush before bedtime.

50. Among us, animals eat the leaves of plants and ignore the roots; in Japan, during certain months of the year, the poor eat the roots of plants and ignore the leaves
.

This unfair likening of the Japanese to livestock would seem to reflect Frois' encounter with the destitute in Japan, who relied on the last crops of the year—turnips and radishes (called
daikon
⁷⁰
) as a condiment to season their
miso
during
the winter. Of course, the poor in Europe, of whom there were many in Frois' time, ate just about anything, including all manner of plant roots and leaves (everything from dandelions to turnips).

51. Among us, it would be an insult to eat, or to send someone, a gift of rotten meat or fish; in Japan these things are eaten, and foul smell and all, they are sent [
as gifts
] without embarrassment
.

Frois may have been referring in this distich to Japan's oldest form of
sushi
, called
narezushi
(fermented rice and carp). Then there is
kusaya
, which Kenyusha's Japanese-English dictionary defines as “a horse-mackerel dipped in salt water and dried in the sun, which has a very characteristic odor.” As previously noted, most
sushi
in Frois' day was “aged” or allowed to ferment for four or five days in the fall or spring, or for a day or two in the summer. Like
natto
(fermented soy beans that have a slimy texture like okra), in winter one literally had to sleep on it in order to make it ferment in a house with no central heating. This may seem strange but one of us had an east-European neighbor who slept with his home-made yoghurt for the same reason!

52. In Europe it would be considered vulgar for an honorable citizen to sell wine in his house as if it were a tavern; in Japan highly respected citizens sell it and portion it out with their own hands
.

Then, as now, European nobility or bourgeois pretenders left the actual sale of wine or grapes from their vineyards to hired hands or
negociants
. In Japan, a “liquor store” is seen as innocent as any other store. At the time Frois wrote, most
sake
was sold by
dosô
, money-lenders who operated out of earthen rooms or “stores” that provided protection from fire and thieves. There were up to 300 of these stores in operation in Kyoto circa 1585. The question is whether Frois' “respected citizens” means the owners of the largest of these stores, or, as Okada
⁷¹
suggests, major merchants who got into the sake business, selling sake alongside the
dosô
. That these “respected citizens” portioned out the sake with their own hands may well reflect the “hands-on way” of doing business that still characterizes Japanese commerce. In Japan as well as in China and Korea, business owners often go out of their way to meet and greet clients and customers, rather than entrust such tasks to an employee.

53. Europeans like to raise chickens, mallards
,
⁷²
[pigeons and ducks]
⁷³
; the Japanese don't enjoy any of this, except raising roosters to delight the children.

Chicken, duck, and geese were eaten by Europeans, in general. Game birds and spectacular fowl (e.g. crane, stork, peacock) often were focal points of banquets and feasts hosted by European nobility. Roosters were Japan's pride. Although elsewhere in Asia the bird's combativeness was particularly valued, the Japanese seem to have valued the rooster's long tail (for which they were bred) and their
diligent time-keeping. Ducks actually were common in some rural areas and made a significant contribution to the health of rice paddies by oxygenating the water and eating insects. Although their wings were clipped, perhaps they were not managed closely enough for Frois to consider them honest-to-goodness domesticated animals, or he never lived in an area where they were bred and consumed.

54. In Europe, pastries are made with wheat flour; in Japan, they remove the pulp from an orange and stuff the peel to make a pie
.

Europeans ate pastries that were both sweet and savory (i.e. meat pies). As noted, fresh as well as dried and preserved fruit were very popular in Portugal and were sometimes used as a filling in milk turnovers. In Japan, Frois probably was treated to
yûmiso
, which is made by stuffing sweet
miso
inside a hollowed-out
yuzu
, or citron (also called a “Chinese lemon”), which is lightly braised. (The scent of the citron skin is heavenly!) Although
yûmiso
is still common in Japan today, Western-style pies are more common, as are continental pastries, particularly cakes (Japanese “pastry shops” or
wagashiya
are mostly places where you buy beautifully wrapped treats to bring as gifts when visiting someone).

55. In Europe one eats wild boar roasted; in Japan it is eaten raw, in slices
.

Restaurants in Portugal (e.g. Fialho in Evora!) are still renowned for their roast pork, especially from black hogs that root for acorns in the cork oak forests of the Alentejo region, to the south and east of Lisbon.

This contrast would seem to suggest that
sashimi
, in the modern sense of the word (fresh and raw slices), was a part of Japanese cuisine in the sixteenth century, although pork (cooked or raw) was not something eaten by most Japanese. When one considers the incredibly diverse swine culture of their Chinese neighbors, Japanese forbearance is nothing short of miraculous. Indeed, perhaps Japanese attitudes toward pork were at some level meant to signal their distance from the Chinese. The Jesuits in Japan initially raised pigs and goats and purchased cattle that were slaughtered on their premises, but this largely stopped once it was realized that the Jesuits were seen by the Japanese as “slobs with little upbringing” (
sucios y de poca criacion
).
⁷⁴

56. With us, not having salt for food is but a small inconvenience; the Japanese become bloated or sick if they do not have salt
.

Europeans, and the Portuguese in particular, had access to and often preferred various spices over salt. They also ate a lot of pork products such as ham that were preserved with salt, perhaps explaining why a lack of table salt was a small inconvenience. Going without salt was considered such an excruciating experience in Japan that there was even a custom of fasting from salt (
shiodachi
). Even today, all Japanese children learn in school the tale of a sixteenth-century Japanese noble, Uesugi Kenshin, who decided not to cut off his rival's access to salt, famously saying, “Wars are to be won with swords and spears, not with rice and salt.”

57. We usually find their xiru salty; they think our soup is bland
.

This is a simple yet poignant distich, inasmuch as it reflects Frois' apparent appreciation that something so seemingly essential—one's senses—are governed by custom or habit.

58. In Portugal, rice cooked without salt is used as a treatment for diarrhea; in Japan, rice cooked without salt is their regular staple food, as bread is for us
.

Now we know why Frois noted the absence of salt in Japanese rice. The Portuguese home remedy for diarrhea still makes sense as there is a good deal of soluble fiber in rice that helps ameliorate the problem of watery stools. It is worth mentioning parenthetically that our medical profession continued to eliminate salt from the diet to treat bowel disorders (malabsorption) until the advent of the Space Age, when they finally discovered that some salt in sugar water facilitated absorption of the latter.

59. Among us, mullet is prized; in Japan, it is considered repugnant and food for the poor
.

As far back as antiquity, Mediterranean peoples relied on the red and grey mullet (the red mullet is still a Portuguese favorite). Mullet roe was appreciated in Japan, but mullet itself was mostly eaten by the poor.

60. Among us, belching at the table in front of guests is considered ill-mannered; in Japan it is very common and no one pays any mind to it
.

Yet one more difference in manners to be added to
#31
,
#38
and
#43
above. The Japanese today are not quite so belch-positive. While a burp is not so strongly disliked as in the West because of the generally greater tolerance for body noise (as opposed to less tolerance for body odor, which Frois never mentions), it is not particularly welcome at a Japanese table.

1
  
Paus
, a
very
broad term including sticks, twigs, poles, pieces of wood, and even lumber.

2
  Michael Cooper,
They Came to Japan
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1995[1965]), 193.