The Perfection of Ichiju-Sansai — Washoku as a Style

Last time, we traced the road by which rice and dashi, and a form of food that abstained from meat, quietly grew from antiquity into the medieval age. Yet that remained at the stage of ingredients and heart. In time, an era arrives in which these are ordered into a ‘style.’ The warrior class fixed the form of the meal tray within its etiquette; tea masters refined cuisine for the sake of a single bowl of tea; and in the streets of Edo, a city where a million people lived, new foods that the common folk could enjoy with ease were born one after another. The outline of what we call washoku was drawn clearly in this age.

Order Upon the Tray — Honzen Ryori

As the latter half of the medieval age arrived and the warrior class came to stand at the center of the world, the meal took on meaning not merely as an act of filling the belly, but as a ‘ceremony’ for paying respect and displaying rank. From this was ordered the form known as honzen ryori.

Honzen ryori had its budding in the Heian era, developed along with the warrior etiquette of the Muromachi period, and is said to have had its form further refined upon entering the Edo period. Its distinctive feature lay in arranging dishes neatly upon footed trays, fixing in fine detail even the order of serving and the position of placement. On the main tray, rice and soup, along with side dishes such as pickles, namasu, simmered fare, and grilled fare, were arranged in a set form. Here can be seen the idea of the menu later known as the basic form of washoku — ‘ichiju-sansai,’ one soup and three side dishes.

Honzen ryori was a cuisine that prized not only flavor but the neatness of appearance and the manners themselves. Which tray to serve in which order, and how to set one’s chopsticks upon it. Meaning was placed in each and every such gesture, and the meal was carried out as a kind of rite. This lavish and formal style, even as it was later simplified, engraved deep into the Japanese table a sense of ‘form.‘

For a Single Bowl of Tea — The Heart of Kaiseki

While honzen ryori pursued formality and lavishness, a current that looked at food anew from the very opposite direction was also being born. This was the world of the way of tea — that is, the tea ceremony.

The plain dishes served before drinking tea are said to have been nurtured as Sen no Rikyu and others deepened the way of tea in the Azuchi-Momoyama period. These later came to be called ‘kaiseki.’ The word kaiseki is said to derive from the tale of Zen monks in training who held warmed stones against their bosoms to ward off hunger and cold, and it originally carried the sense of a modest meal, just enough to stave off hunger.

What kaiseki left to Japanese food was great. The pairing of vessels, the expression of the seasons, plating pared of all waste, and the care devoted to the guest — these nurtured a sensibility for savoring cuisine as a single, comprehensive beauty. If honzen ryori showed ‘the beauty of order,’ then kaiseki showed ‘richness within simplicity.’ These two currents formed the spiritual backbone of washoku.

Flavors Born of the Street — The Food of Edo

While formal cuisine was being refined in the upper world, an entirely different energy swirled in the streets of Edo. In the Edo period, as the age of peace continued, this vast city said to have held over a million people was home to a great many artisans and servants who had come from the provinces to work. Many of them were single, with little time or place to cook for themselves. There, a culture of ‘eating out’ — food easily had outside the home — burst into great bloom.

The bearers of this were the food stalls that lined the street corners. Cheap, fast, and tasty — these were stalls whose creed it was, and they played the role of what we would now call fast food. Those that grew most in number were soba, tempura, and sushi. Soba was loved as a bowl that could be quickly slurped down, and tempura, freshly fried on a skewer, was a pleasure the common folk gobbled up standing.

Above all, it is said that nigiri sushi, which would later spread to the world, drew close to its present form in this age too. Until then, sushi had centered on a preserved food in which fish was pickled together with rice over a long time, but around the Bunsei era, Hanaya Yohei and others of Edo are said to have spread a quick sushi, pressing fresh toppings upon vinegared rice on the spot. Pressed the moment it was ordered and carried to the mouth while standing, this sushi suited well the impatient temperament of the people of Edo.

Thus, by the end of the Edo period, the formal style and the energy of the street, the vessels reflecting the four seasons and the sensitivity to ingredients had layered upon one another, and the outline of what we now picture as washoku was very nearly complete. In a later age, when ‘Washoku, traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese’ was inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2013, what was praised were such features as the heart that reveres the seasons and nature, the menu based on ichiju-sansai, and the ties to annual events. Much of this was nurtured precisely by this age.

Yet this matured table could not remain quietly so forever. In time, the age of peace draws toward its end, and from beyond the sea the black ships make their appearance. The western wind would shake to its very foundations this form of food, built over a thousand years.