Okay, this was going to be the last of the three-part vinegar story, but it's spiraling out of control, stretching into the recent Japanese history and what not... I'm going to post the first half of it here.

So I'm back to vinegar. In the previous post, I left off the topic with a remark about the increased interest in traditional regional cuisines in Japan in recent years. (The first part of the vinegar sequence, one about a successful PR campaign by a large producer is here.) This trend may be seen as a grand culinary circle that started with homogenization and Westernization in the Meiji Restoration era now coming to a completion with a renaissance of regional food traditions of the old days.

Japan, though small, was divided into even smaller regions, especially before the Meiji Restoration in the mid-19th century, by a bunch of different factors. One large factor is geographical: steep mountains and wide rivers often drew natural boundaries beyond which people did not interact. In the long, relatively peaceful years under the Edo Shogunate (which lasted for about 250 years without too many disturbances), the shogunate promoted this regional division, with the hope of keeping its subjects from forming horizontal alliances behind its back. The idea was to keep the "han" (smaller geopolitical entities led by feudal lords who exercised certain amount of autonomy within their boundaries but were under direct control of the shogunate) separate from each other. This policy of geographical isolation somewhat matched the feudal lords' need to keep their subjects under control. People were not free to travel, and both the shogunate and the individual han's established checkpoints ("seki" or "seki-sho") at strategic junctions along the road system to control the flow of travelers, ranging from samurai's on business to merchants, itinerant theaters and pilgrims.

This strict restriction of travel, combined with the natural obstacles, kept different regions in Japan fairly unique and isolated until very recently. Geographical, political and economical isolation enabled these regions retain their linguistic and cultural variations, and these included, of course, food and cuisine.

All this started to change when the Meiji government abolished the "han" system and established prefectures under direct control of the central government. In order to strengthen the nation's economy and military to face the imminent threat of colonization by the Western countries (the Japanese officials had seen the colonization of China after the First Opium War, 1840-42 with alarm), the central government tried to integrate the previously fragmented country into a powerful and coherent nation state. (Much like the case in Italy around the time of its unification, ordinary Japanese people probably didn't have the sense of "Japan" as a nation. Their loyalty was tied much more strongly to the "han" to which they used to belong.) Food and cooking may not have been the newborn government's primary concern, but this march toward integrated nationhood did have a significant impact on the regional food cultures.

For instance, the Meiji government promoted the consumption of meat--once a taboo in the Buddhist tradition--in order to transform the physique of the Japanese into one that’s fit for a Western-style military. If this kind of deliberate governmental intervention in the field of food and cooking was rare, the increased inter-regional commerce and human interaction accelerated the homogenization of Japanese cooking. Although there still exist a wide range of regional cuisines in the present-day Japan, something that could be called “national cuisine” has come into being in the past century. (Long after the Meiji Restoration, the power of cooking shows and cooking magazines for housewives throughout the 20th century was tremendous in this homogenizing process.)

As was the case with the meat-eating habit, the birth of the standard Japanese national cuisine was often paired with the desire for Western-style cuisine and westernization of lifestyle in general. From the era of the Meiji Restoration (which promoted the slightly hypocritical combination of “Japanese in spirit and Western in practicality” (”wakon-yosai”) all the way after the World War II, all things Western were cool in Japanese eyes. The hostility between Japan and the Western world in the first half of the 20th century dampened the trend a little, but when the United States took over Japan in 1945, the Japanese people were ready to go back to their worship of the West. The particularly Japanese interpretation of Western cuisine (called “yoshoku”), which I discussed a little in the post about okosama lunch, was born in this atmosphere in the early 20th century. Going to restaurants that served “yoshoku” was the coolest thing to do for urban intellectuals for a long time. And in a way, it still is. High-end French and Italian restaurants are still among the most revered places to eat and to be seen among the Japanese who are increasingly more interested in cuisines other than French and Italian.

To be continued (again)!