Preserving the Japanese Way: Traditions of Salting, Fermenting, and Pickling for the Modern Kitchen
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About this ebook
In Preserving the Japanese Way, Nancy Singleton Hachisu offers step-by-step instructions for preserving fruits, vegetables, and fish using the age-old methods of Japanese farmers and fishermen. The recipes feature ingredients easily found in grocery stores or Asian food markets, such as soy sauce, rice vinegar, sake, and koji.
Recipes range from the ultratraditional— Umeboshi (Salted Sour Plums), Takuan (Half-Dried Daikon Pickled in Rice Bran), and Hakusai (Fermented Napa Cabbage)— to modern creations like Zucchini Pickled in Shoyu Koji, Turnips Pickled with Sour Plums, and Small Melons in Sake Lees.
Hundreds of full-color photos offer a window into the culinary life of Japan, from barrel makers and fish sauce producers to traditional morning pickle markets. More than a simple recipe book, Preserving the Japanese Way is a book about community, seasonality, and ultimately about why both are relevant in our lives today.
“This is a gorgeous, thoughtful—dare I say spiritual—guide to the world of Japanese pickling written with clarity and a deep respect for technique and tradition.” —Rick Bayless, author of Authentic Mexican and owner of Frontera Grill
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Preserving the Japanese Way - Nancy Singleton Hachisu
Contents
FOREWORD BY David Tanis
PRESERVING A WAY OF LIFE
CHAPTER ONE: SALT, WIND, AND SUN
CHAPTER TWO: MISO
CHAPTER THREE: SOY SAUCE
CHAPTER FOUR: FISH SAUCE
CHAPTER FIVE: RICE VINEGAR, SOUR PLUMS, AND PERSIMMONS
CHAPTER SIX: KOJI, SAKE LEES, AND RICE BRAN
CHAPTER SEVEN: TOFU, NATTO, AND KONNYAKU
CHAPTER EIGHT: KATSUOBUSHI, KONBU, AND NIBOSHI
CHAPTER NINE: CHILE PEPPERS AND KIMCHEE
CHAPTER TEN: SAKE, SHOCHU, AND TEA
AFTERWORD: THE SNOW OF 2014
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
GLOSSARY OF JAPANESE PRODUCE
FRUITS AND VEGETABLES BY PICKLING METHOD
FISH AND shellfish BY PICKLING METHOD
RESOURCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
METRIC CONVERSIONS AND EQUIVALENTS
INDEX
FOREWORD by David Tanis
Nancy Hachisu’s new cookbook, she says, is about preserving foods in the Japanese way. And it is, but it is so much more.
It is also about living and thinking in a Japanese way, as seen through the eyes of a plucky American expat who married a Japanese farmer, transplanted herself, and took on a thousand projects, each one a quest for flavor and spirit.
As a cook, her passion is learning to do things the old way—as things were done when families on working farms still produced all their own food and rarely bought anything from stores.
She lives, along with her husband and sons, in a century-old farmhouse. They grow their own rice, soybeans, mustard greens, and rows of the Japanese leek called negi. But if she hears of someone in another village who is producing something different, off she goes in search of it. She is especially eager to talk food and make food with the elders, the aunts and grandmothers. They have the knowledge of traditional ways to make the pickles and fermented products now produced mostly in factories.
Nancy’s food is simple. Introductions to her recipes frequently begin with something along the lines of, It may seem intimidating, but it is easier than you imagine.
And it’s true, even if, with some, you may need to wait a couple of years to sample it. Though nothing could be simpler than the salt massage she recommends for making quick pickled mizuna greens with kumquat. Or rolling up shiso leaves around a bit of miso for an easy snack.
Even before you arrive at Chapter One, Nancy sets the stage by familiarizing the reader with ingredients they will encounter throughout the book. Then she throws in a story or two about daily life, both modern and historical, and a glimpse of the community in which she is involved and a tour of the house she and her family inhabit and care for.
There’s a discussion about knives, about tea, about seaweed.
You’ll learn, among other tangential odysseys, at least five traditional ways to preserve fruits, vegetables, and fish: with salt, with miso, with fish sauce, by air-drying, and with sake lees. You’ll also learn to make a fermented vinegar mash with persimmons.
Should you choose to follow Nancy’s inspiring example, you’ll want to put the following chores on your to-do list: Make your own miso from brown rice; make your own rice vinegar; make your own tofu; even your own sake. Not to worry, the recipes in the book don’t require that you do. But isn’t it wonderful that you could? And the information is right here.
Years ago, I visited friends in Japan in a small town during cherry blossom season, a rather magical time of year. I was able to observe firsthand how the locals would gather in the public spaces to picnic beneath the blooming trees for hours, often sharing little cups of sake or high-octane shochu. An appreciation bordering on love for the everyday Japanese ways with life and food was instilled in me during those few weeks, yet somehow I never returned.
I am grateful to have this book to spend time with, to rekindle those feelings. With Nancy’s encouragement, I am anxious for spring to arrive, for now I know how to salt and pickle cherry blossom buds and sprinkle them over a bowl of steamed rice.
preserving a way of life
In the post-WWII exodus from the country to the city, many farms lay fallow, and it became difficult for urban Japanese to continue life as they had known it before the war. The traditions of preserving food largely passed from the country grandmothers into the hands of professionals, though, if one looks more closely, some grandmothers are still making pickles here and there. And some young fermenting and pickling aficionados are taking up the mantle as well. After the war, farming families who could make a living remained on their land and ate what they grew. But they raised their children with the goal of attending university and working in nonagrarian jobs. The countryside is wide open, so often a convenient place for large companies to build plants. And these plants provide jobs. Most sons (or daughters) of farming families did not follow in their parents’ footsteps. My husband, however, did.
Like so many, I took my mother-in-law for granted, thinking she would always be there. But somewhere along the line I noticed that she was no longer making miso. I blinked twice and saw that she had given up on making takuan and hakusai. They were easier to buy. I had my hands full with Western conserves such as marmalade, jams, pickles, sauerkraut, confit, and chorizo, so put the Japanese pickles on a back burner. I’ll learn how to make them later
was my excuse.
But after renovating and moving into the family farmhouse in 2000, my position in the family shifted. I could no longer shirk my responsibilities as the oyome (bride). I needed to steward the house along with Tadaaki. Tadaaki had thus far been the main Japanese cook of our household, while I cooked from the rest of the world. But being installed in the family home meant taking an active part in extended family dinners during Japanese holidays, not just as assistant, but as co-cook. And through this transition period, I found that many dishes fared well in my hands. My children were getting older, and I became more serious about my writing. People wanted me to write about the food we eat and the life we lead, so I did. In doing so, Tadaaki’s food evolved into something more personal: It became mine. And I liked it better for the lightness and brightness that I brought to our Japanese farm food.
In writing Japanese Farm Food, I developed self-confidence in pickling, fermenting, and salting, which had always seemed mysteriously Tadaaki’s purview, not mine. The second winter I made takuan and hakusai, Tadaaki pronounced them just like my grandmother’s.
Thus began my odyssey of Japanese preserving.
The easiest preparations involve salt and air-drying. Half-day dried fish has taut slightly salty flesh that firms up when broiled and is surprisingly delicious. Or even more basic: Cut up some eggplant or shiitake and set them to dry in the sun until they are completely desiccated. I joined our friend’s miso-making group and wondered why I had not done so years earlier. Around the same time, a young couple living in a nearby mountain town started a soy sauce–making co-op that I was able to jump into. All of a sudden, I was making my own miso, soy sauce, and the most traditional Japanese pickle trilogy: umbeboshi, takuan, and hakusai. All of a sudden I was a real Japanese farmwife, and it felt good.
And as I took control of the family fermenting projects, my attention also focused on the ingredients we used in our kitchen. I knew our vinegar was excellent, but I wanted to know more. What was the difference between the clear organic rice vinegar that my husband bought and the organic brown rice vinegar that I bought? How were they made? What would be the difference in the food? This journey led me to Fujisu: an organic Japanese vinegar made from local Japanese rice by Iio Jozo and Kakuida in Kagoshima. Our vinegars, albeit organic, had been made with American rice. I had heretofore been happy to have good-quality organic rice vinegars in the pantry, but once I knew which ones had been produced by Japanese rice, and once I met the vinegar makers themselves, I started using those vinegars (though I still use the more cost-effective American-grown rice vinegars for large-batch pickles).
Fuji TV filmed a 20-minute documentary sequence around vinegar, which included our trip to a vinegar maker. The director asked a sampling of people on the streets of Tokyo if they knew how rice vinegar was made, and none of them did (despite the fact that it is a centuries-old Japanese food tradition).
I also discovered that a large portion of Japanese did not know how soy sauce and miso were made, and I started a crusade to lay bare the methods for creating these elemental Japanese ingredients. Granted, not everyone can purchase local and artisanal 2-year-aged organic soy sauce and miso. We are eternally grateful to live in the same town as Yamaki Jozo. There are not enough soybeans in Japan to supply Kikkoman and Yamasa (the largest soy sauce companies), so the majority of soy sauce must be fermented from American-grown beans. Certainly not everyone is willing to pay three times as much for artisanal soy sauce over the least expensive variety. Nonetheless, it is important to understand why artisanal is more expensive: It is fermented from whole soybeans, whereas the cheapest soy sauce is quick fermented from defatted soy grits (the by-product of making soybean oil). It became an obsession of mine to introduce these foods in their best forms to the world. The taste speaks for itself.
I had long been fascinated with katsuobushi (simmered, smoked skipjack tuna that is fermented and sun-dried) and wanted to visit the katsuobushi producer for this book. Fuji TV was interested in tagging along, because they wanted to place katsuobushi more in the public eye. At the katsuobushi producer, I learned that 90% of all packaged shaved katsuobushi has only been smoked and not fermented and sun-dried. Shocked, I vowed to go back to shaving as needed from a whole katsuobushi filet and have done so. The visit to Sakai Katsuobushi in Kagoshima connected me with the producer, and I share that connection in this book. Not everyone can travel to where these products are made, but by introducing them here, I hope that readers can catch the enthusiasm and excitement. Now when I shave katsuobushi for lunch at my English immersion preschool, Sunny-Side Up!, the children gather round, fascinated, and stick out their hands eagerly when I ask, Who wants katsuobushi?
I never lack for things to do, so in the past I often put off preserving projects until too late. The best strategy with preserving is to balance out the quick souses and salting methods with a few of the long-term pickles. Pick ones that sound appealing, that you think you might be able to do. Remember that preserving and fermenting are processes. Don’t be afraid of them, but do keep in mind that it is necessary to monitor your pots and barrels.
And when fruit is ready, it is ready. You cannot shilly-shally. As the resident wife in this ancestral Hachisu farmhouse, I knew that processing the fruit from the trees was another responsibility I bore. And truthfully, I did not always fulfill my obligation. Sometimes I was overwhelmed by other projects, and sometimes I was out of town. Through the odyssey of writing this book I have realized that incorporating the seasons of preserving into my life makes me feel rooted, not always ricocheting from one project to the next. My life is ordered by the pull of the land and the need to be here when I should be.
I still cannot organize my life entirely around the land because there are times when I must be in the States, but I can be much more mindful of the seasons, taking advantage of what we have and not let our fruits and vegetables go to waste. I can try to be a good farmwife.
THE ROLES OF MEN AND WOMEN
One early morning weeding in the field before the sun became too unbearable, I started to think about how the lines had blurred and how much more difficult it is to live as a modern couple. There are so many choices: what career you will pursue, who you will marry, how you will set up your family life. And in these choices, there are inherent conflicts. Both members of the couple vie with each other to carve out their own time, as they divvy up the work that is needed for the home, the kids, and the land. Typically the woman’s job, my husband does the laundry, while I help in the fields. When asked, our sons pitch in here and there with farm work and cooking, but no cleaning.
The trade-off for gender equality and being able to choose one’s own way is the fallout of more unclear duty lines and rivalry for free time.
I grew up in an equal household during the 1960s with two progressive, intellectual parents. There were three boys and three girls in our family, all two years apart, all born in a girl-boy pattern. We all did the dishes, we all cleaned, and we all helped with the laundry. And we were all told we could be doctors or lawyers—whatever we wanted. I believed anything was possible. That is perhaps why I’m fearless about diving into even the most foreign fermentation projects such as narezushi or fish nukazuke. Nothing like a healthy dose of confidence to help you through tight spots. Tadaaki still shakes his head at some of my exploits, though in some way, I have stepped into his world and have usurped his place as the preserver in our family—only because I have made it a priority.
Tadaaki is wondering what his next steps are in the aftermath of the unprecedented snowfall that demolished his chicken coops. Fuji TV is talking about filming us together as we travel to locations about Japan. Now that the children are almost grown, maybe that is the next step: where we become partners once again, rather than competitors carving out separate directions.
TAKING RISKS
Sandor Katz wrote that you should not be afraid of mold. I agree. Also do not be afraid to try a preserving project that might take 3 months . . . or 3 years, especially if there is not much actual work involved, just waiting. The empowerment when you succeed is matchless. The raw materials will not set you back much, and the learning curve is exhilarating. But perhaps it makes sense to get your sea legs with some of the quicker pickling techniques. There is a myriad of simple methods to preserve, souse, and dry. Massage some salt into sliced vegetables, wrap tightly, and store in the fridge for a quick pickle. Throw a piece of squid in soy sauce and grill. Embed young green beans in miso and leave overnight. Dunk young ginger or myoga buds in plum vinegar for a few hours and you have an instant pickle. Drizzle with shio koji instead of a sprinkling of salt or shoyu koji in place of soy sauce, to transform even the simplest vegetable preparation such as grilled shiitake or sliced tomato wedges.
But also start a few long-term pots that don’t take much vigilance. I encourage you to put up a pot of chopped fish and salt to ferment for 2 to 3 years. And I am completely enthused about my pot of sake lees that sits alongside the fish sauce mash. It should be ready to press into red vinegar in 3 years (right about the time the fish sauce is ready). In the meantime, Persimmon Vinegar only takes 3 months to ferment and produces a startlingly fragrant vinegar. Fermented Napa Cabbage (hakusai) would be the first of the harder
fermented pickles to make, and I also recommend trying your hand at making miso. You will be very pleased with the result, as there is no substitute for homemade miso. Each miso is different because each person is different and each locale has its own airborne spores that affect the miso (for the better). Neither quick pickles nor long ferments take much time to put up because farmers were busy people. And once the pickles are done, they are extremely useful to have in the larder to pull out for drinks before dinner, casual buffets, or as a palate cleanser for almost any meal. There are plenty of simple pickling methods in this book, but once you’ve gained assurance, you might want to try some of the more traditional methods, for through accomplishing those, you will have climbed an important personal mountain.
FORGIVING YOURSELF
There are the times when you don’t succeed as well as you had hoped. It could mean that you did not watch the thing as closely as you should have. You were busy or out of town. This is not cause for alarm.
I ran into my friends Bill and Christine Campbell of Hotei Wines at a signing event I did at the Tokyo American Club. Bill is a fellow Stanford grad and also my wine supplier. We swapped stories about making umeboshi, and they told me their woes of the previous year. After their shipment of organic ume arrived, they salted them and immediately went out of town for several weeks. When they returned to Japan, 4 out of 5 of the crocks holding the salted ume were moldy. They rued the $64 paid for the 4 pounds of ume and promptly threw them out. My advice: Carefully pick off the mold and start drying the ume in the bright sun immediately.
While I don’t have to buy my ume, I do have to gather them, and that takes several hours. So for me, when mold forms on my ume, it’s less about the wasted money than the responsibility of having been less than vigilant. I should have checked the ume. Learn from your mistakes. Fix them. Each year you will get better. And realize that the window to perform many of these projects is short. Try approaching them without ego. Rather than deciding when you
want to do it, determine the best timing for your area and climate and give in to that.
Less decisions mean less anxiety. Let the seasons call the shots. The amount of choice that we have in this modern world, and particularly in the United States, is bewildering and frequently upsetting. Sometimes it’s nice to do what is mandated by conditions rather than personal whim.
More and more I just try to be the best me I can, regardless of American or Japanese customs: The best Nancy Hachisu in the Hachisu house that I am able to be, and that means every day, or every month, or every year trying to become a more fully integrated person with the house and the lands and the country.
TRYING AGAIN
Do not be afraid to try again. The main difference I have found between America and Japan is the idea in America that we can always improve ourselves. We can go back to school or succeed in school later in life, we can change careers midstream without eyebrows raised, we can slough off bad habits and become better people. We can have second chances. This concept is less a part of Japanese society, likely because of the deeply entrenched Japanese notion that there is one path set out and one must follow that path without deviation. Because the path is so firmly in place, it is terrifying, if not unimaginable, to deviate. How could one return?
The U-turn precept is where rural people such as Sakai-san from Sakai Katsuobushi go to urban areas to attend college and work but eventually return to the rural area to raise their families and perhaps take over the family business. But we are also now seeing another phenomena called I-turn,
where urban people like Yuka and Kazushi Murakami of the soy sauce community are leaving the city to start lives in rural areas. Perhaps they feel they can reinvent themselves out of their comfort zone. The reason why many Japanese are afraid to speak English is because they do not want to seem stupid or to make mistakes. This is crippling. And this fear is probably the reason why fewer and fewer young Japanese are cooking today. They are afraid of failure. If you use good ingredients and approach projects with conviction, the chance of failure is slim. It’s important to try and to stay on top of the process: Check your fermenting pots regularly. And it’s a way to monitor your own personal balance.
When my father-in-law to-be asked me if I thought I could be a bride in this farming family I immediately said, Yes, of course!
not knowing what it really meant. That’s a great thing about us Americans—our eternal optimism. But we are also naïve. There were plenty of customs I had a hard time following, and it took many years before I was firmly entrenched in this often maddening culture. When you marry into a farming family, the daughter-in-law is expected to jump into the mother-in-law’s kitchen and take over the job of cooking for the family. In our case, however, we had built our own house separate from the parents. And although I have been cooking since elementary school, when we were first married, I let my husband cook the Japanese food. We occasionally went to Tadaaki’s parents’ house to eat, and at that time Tadaaki was the main cook, just as he had been for the seven years living in his parents’ home following university. I thought it made complete sense for Tadaaki to do the cooking, since he knew what he was doing. My father-in-law did not agree.
There were four mysterious elements of Japanese country cooking that held me back from diving wildly in: the very fine cutting techniques with the scary-sharp Japanese knife; the roasting, then grinding of sesame seeds in the suribachi grinding bowl; the making of the ubiquitous dashi stock; and the rolling of udon noodles with the Japanese noodle rolling machine. In our area of Saitama prefecture, farm families grew rice and wheat on a rotating basis in the same field and ate udon noodles for dinner. My mother-in-law made udon noodles for her husband every night for about 50 years despite the fact that she hated udon. Clearly she was a better wife than I.
One day, when I was pregnant with my first son, I decided to make lasagna. Lasagna takes several hours to put together, so I had to start while Tadaaki was still working. He gave me a quick lesson on the noodle-rolling machine, and I started out with determination. You feed the dough through the rollers to make thinner and thinner sheets of pasta. To do this you have to rotate the screws a tad to narrow the gap between the rollers. The problem is that I got off balance on my screw tightening, so the gap was not evenly spaced. The dough came out raggy, a bit zigzaggy. A mess. I gave up. I was completely intimidated by the noodle machine.
Eighteen years later, writing the Japanese farm food book, I knew I needed to climb that mountain again. We had a photo shoot scheduled for a magazine article, so I thought I’d better enlist the help of Christopher, my oldest son, who was home from college for winter vacation. I prepared the dough. Christopher kneaded the plastic bag of dough with his feet and rolled it with the machine. Miura-san captured a series of great shots, then Christopher said he was finished and took off. Hey, what about the rest of the dough?
I asked. Christopher gave me a quick refresher on the machine and I gathered myself up, centered myself, and said, You can do this.
Quietly, patiently, I fed the dough through the machine, and the noodles came out perfectly. At that moment, I knew I could do anything.
It is not just the Japanese kitchen that calls for personal balance, but also the Japanese farmhouse. The 100-year-old sliding shoji doors require a gentle touch as you open and close them. Old tansu drawers must be pulled out evenly, without tugging or forcing, otherwise they stick. The obstinate drawers drove my father crazy, but that is what I love about living in a Japanese farmhouse. Every day I can fix my balance.
May 2014
The Fire
This is how I think about our house,
my husband, Tadaaki, informed me as he handed me an oversized book, appropriately called The House. Implicit in the gift was that somehow I did not feel the same, and that somehow he desperately needed me to understand his deep love for the house itself and his deep responsibility toward its stewardship. Our house was built by my husband’s grandfather almost 90 years ago. And in years when Tadaaki’s grandparents were alive, all surfaces in the house were rubbed lovingly every day, because the idea of caring for the house as if it were a living, breathing entity was part of that generation’s psyche. But in the intervening years, the children grew up and moved out, and the house began to accumulate more and more stacks of books, papers, and unneeded clutter. The back storage area was stacked high with futons from long-gone days when the aunts and cousins would come back to their family home during the holidays. Tadaaki’s father effected some modernizations in the 1970s, but the piles increased.
When Tadaaki and I renovated the house prior to moving in with the parents-in-law in 2000, we sorted through the accumulation of the last fifty years before finally just moving the boxed-up books and clothes to a 150-year-old outbuilding that, along with the house and the barn, forms an enclosed compound on our property. The boxes of books and clothes gathered dust, and eventually dirt, spiders, and other creatures. I spent the following five months washing down the 100 sliding wooden and glass doors (shoji), that would be papered along with some heavy wooden doors (fusuma) that would be used as is. And I wiped all surfaces of the house—every crack and crevice from floor to ceiling.
On May 11, 2014, at around 2 a.m., that storage house erupted in fire and a series of staccato explosions. The storehouse burned to a hollowed-out shell, and the firemen stayed until the sun came up.
As I stood in the street, hair awry, barefoot, clad in a T-shirt and flimsy jammies, clutching my laptop and one sandal (grabbed in my panic while searching for my cell phone), I ached for the house and wanted to hold her. It was a miracle that the fire did not spread to our house, only 6 feet away from the burning storehouse. Like my parents-in-law, we have let her become piled with papers and books and other miscellany over the years. The outside buildings are likewise stacked to the gills, almost overflowing. I dragged out the book that Tadaaki gave me that past Christmas and remembered a favorite book from my childhood: The Little Stone House. He and I were not so different in how we carried the concept of house in our hearts. I had just grown up with a more cavalier attitude than he. Immediately, and viscerally, I understood his pain at how we had let things go and vowed to spend the following months culling the accumulation, polishing the house, and once again letting her shine.
DAILY LIFE AND TRADITION
Every home has its own personality and life and idiosyncrasies. And a Japanese farmhouse also carries a weight of traditions, practical customs, and some superstitions. The traditional materials of a farmhouse are relatively fragile—wood, earth, paper, tatami flooring. Wooden surfaces, floors as well as chests, need to be wiped with a damp cloth. Papered shoji screens are particularly vulnerable to careless punctures; repapering them is a big chore. Sweaty and oily palms are the cause of unwashable dirt on white-plastered walls; similarly, when passing through the split curtain (noren) in entryways and between rooms, you push it aside with the back of your hand. These little things might seem excessive to urban apartment dwellers, but they are simply part of life in our house and are as natural as breathing.
Each part of the house has its traditions, ambience, and character, and I have included a brief glossary of terms and customs. Of course, the kitchen is where to start. Most of the tools on the list have admirable substitutes in the Western kitchen, though I do strongly recommend a sharp, all-purpose Japanese knife such as a bunka bocho. No need for fancy handles or signed blades; get an unpretentious one with a sharp edge. It is also worth searching out the largest grinding bowl (suribachi) that you can find, along with the wooden pestle (surikogi). Not only for Japanese food, the suribachi is extremely useful in the Western kitchen. (I use mine for pounding salt cod for brandade, and pork for chilorio and rillettes.) And although a decent-sized shichirin can be a major purchase, it could be the most useful barbecue implement you will ever use.
There is a plethora of folk arts and objects still being made in Japan. Handcrafted objects are understandably expensive and, as they approach fine art, are almost out of reach for most of us. However, folk objects are still quite findable at flea markets and antique junk stores. I collect these items because I see their numbers dwindling over the years and so cannot pass them by.
THE HOUSE
DOMA: Our kitchen is located in what used to be the doma (literally earthen room
). Originally, the floor surface of the doma was sweepable packed earth. My father-in-law covered the earth floor with linoleum in the 1970s, and we installed a floor heating system and Mexican tile in 2000. The doma was the work area of the farmhouse and thus a place under the roof where footwear was worn. Our current kitchen is a no-shoes area, though because of the in-and-out dogs, I’m not sure it should be.
SHOJI: Wooden framed sliding screens or doors, often made with sections of glass. The wooden lattice portions of shoji are mounted with thin Japanese paper (washi). My favorite shoji in our house are a pair of fancy ones from an upscale antique market that stand majestically behind our dining room table, and the mouse-eaten closet doors in our bedroom, which had been covered with newspaper by Tadaaki’s grandmother for insulation to keep the silkworms they raised warm. The burnished gnawed doors framed against the white paper are arresting when the closet is lit. They have atmosphere; they are cool. And I am also partial to the senbongoshi thousand-slatted
partitions that Tadaaki bought for $30 each but would cost at least $1,000 each IF someone could make them today.
FUSUMA: Solid sliding doors made with a lacquered frame and constructed with complex layering of paper; paper on both surfaces. Wooden sliding doors, colloquially called fusuma, are actually itado and may have papered surfaces to resemble a fusuma. The paper surfaces may have striking texture, color, and even paintings such as intricate landscapes. The oblong metal door pulls often have an interesting relief pattern and are worth noticing.
BYOBU: Literally to make the wind lie down
; hinged lacquer-framed standing screens constructed with layered paper similar to fusuma. Byobu are highly decorative and used as room dividers in distinguished houses or temples. Some of Japan’s greatest paintings are found on byobu.
TANSU: Japanese traditional chests. There are many styles, ranging from the oversized kitchen chests (mizuya dansu) to the elegant (and expensive) stair chest (kaidan dansu) to the most common two-tiered clothes chest (yofuku dansu) to the more elegant tea
chest (cha dansu) to small, multidrawered merchant chests. In our house we have several mizuya dansu for large storage items, many yofuku dansu, sometimes with single tiers used as coffee tables, a few cha dansu, and some small tansu scattered throughout the house.
HAICHO: A screened cupboard ranging from mini to slim refrigerator sized, used to store food. The screening allows air circulation and keeps the flies out. I use our haicho for wineglasses and overflow pottery.
KOTATSU: A square, low table frame over which a padded cloth is draped and covered with a square tabletop. People sit around the table on the tatami matting with the cloth draped over their knees. This was the family center and where people ate meals or watched TV. A heating element is attached to the underside of the frame, which emits a gentle warmth welcome in the frigid Japanese farmhouses. As Japanese moved to urban areas, they took with them the custom of eating and living around the kotatsu, despite the introduction of wall-based heating elements and electric carpets. Even today, central heating is not common in modern Japanese houses; however, tables and chairs are, so life around the kotatsu may eventually become obsolete.
HORIGOTATSU: A wood-framed square hole in the floor just deep enough to dangle legs over which a kotatsu is set. The heat source at the bottom was at one time charcoal-fueled but is now electric. Our house had a horigotatsu, but we floored it over for the living room area in our house renovation. In modern Japan, horigotatsu are more often found in restaurants than homes.
CLOTH AND PAPER
NOREN: The hemp or cotton split curtain that hangs in the inside and outside entryways of houses and restaurants. Noren act to provide privacy as clever dividers of space and can be gorgeous to boot.
TENUGUI: A long rectangular cotton cloth with countless uses (sometimes called a hand dryer
), used in the kitchen for steaming, straining, wiping, or drying. A tenugui can also be fashioned into a head cloth or twisted into a band to tie around the head (such as some sushi chefs do). Many shops and restaurants make tenugui each New Year to hand out to their customers as a thank-you gift. Tenugui, once a ubiquitous part of the Japanese country kitchen, has now become a collectable item.
SARASHI: A 13-inch (34-cm) wide bolt of cotton or linen cloth traditionally used as a loincloth, bandaging, to wrap a woman’s tummy during pregnancy, or to fashion diapers. These applications were still current when I came to Japan over two decades ago but are almost nonexistent today. Sarashi is also useful to line the steamer for cooking big batches of rice or soybeans or to cover preserving projects. In recent years, pieces of sarashi are sold cut and hemmed.
FUROSHIKI: A large square piece of cotton, linen, silk, or synthetic fiber used as a carrying cloth and to wrap gifts. Furoshiki may be plain or strikingly patterned. Furoshiki are now again in vogue as a multiuse wrapper/carrier (kind of a reaction against plastic bags).
WASHI: Often called rice paper
for some inexplicable reason. Washi literally means Japanese paper
and is handmade from paper mulberry (kozo), mitsumata, or gampi fibers. Washi is also hand dyed and can be used decoratively in the house as a covering for tansu or on shoji. In the late 19th century there were thousands of types of washi being made throughout the archipelago. Japan was truly a paper country. Today the craft is maintained by only a scattering of dedicated people. Due to increased paper imports from China and Thailand, this millennium-old cottage industry is threatened. In November 2014 Hosokawa washi (from Ogawa-machi and Higashi-Chichibu) was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List. The washi used in this book was all produced by Kubo Shotaro Washi, my favorite paper makers in the nearby town of Ogawa. Kubo-san generously (and enthusiastically) gave me permission to use his original works in the hopes of increasing awareness and spreading appreciation of this important craft to the world at large.
CALLIGRAPHY PAPER: Thin rectangular paper (larger than legal sized) sold in packs of 100 or so. Calligraphy paper is a delicate paper that is very handy to have around for lining plates of tempura. The paper is folded on the bias to form an asymmetrical shape. Available at many Japanese grocery stores and online at Japan Bargain (see Resources).
Preschoolers and Paper
Going anywhere with a motley crew of preschoolers is always a challenge, guaranteed to tax anyone’s patience. But try packing a gaggle of exuberant little English-speaking Japanese kids onto an excursion bus for a craft museum visit. Even a 5-minute walk to the field leaves us harried and exasperated. But that doesn’t mean we don’t do it. Because we do.
I’m constantly scrounging around for a new venue for field trips with my Sunny-Side Up! preschool students. One little impediment is that most places only conduct classes or demonstrations in Japanese. Since we’re an English immersion preschool, that doesn’t work. Several years ago, we were visted by Sam Seager, a photographer from England. He was in Japan shooting mountain towns to document their unfortunate demise. I took him to Ogawa-machi, a culturally and agriculturally thriving little town about 40 minutes away by car. I hadn’t been there since my first year in Japan, so didn’t know what to expect. We had no joy at the craft beer place, since Monday is the day they are closed. We also never found Frostpia, a well-known organic farm owned by Yoshinori Kaneko, where I have been taking visitors recently. On one last whim, we followed the signs to a place optimistically named Saitama Traditional Craft Hall. They, too, were shuttered up. I suppose nothing much happens on Mondays in Ogawa-machi. But peering through the windows, the craft hall looked promising, and so the next day I had my assistant make the call.
For about $2 per person, the kids could each make a sheet of paper. Since it sounded like a good deal, we reserved for an upcoming field trip. The issue of explanations in Japanese would be dealt with when we got there. My plan: The paper-making ladies could tell the teachers the instructions in Japanese, and we would explain to the kids in English. That was the theory.
The Japanese part was a disaster, but the kids had fun, and the paper turned out beautifully. Why obsess about the language? Unless we strictly enforce the no Japanese