The Table to Come

Last time, we watched washoku spread across the world and become a global word. Sushi crossed the sea, umami became a word among chefs, and it was inscribed even as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. The road the Japanese table had traveled arrived at a place blessed by the world.

Yet we, having walked through nine chapters, know this: where the light falls, a shadow has always kept close. In the very age when the world praises washoku, the Japanese table itself stands before a question unlike any before. In this final chapter, I would like to look upon the challenges the present table holds, without hurrying toward an answer. This is not a chapter for reaching conclusions, but one for gazing once more, slowly, at our own table.

A Table Where One Eats Alone

A meal was once a time when the family gathered around the same table. Yet that scene is quietly changing. As households of people living alone increase and the shapes of families grow diverse, eating alone — solitary eating — has become a commonplace sight.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ Shokuiku White Paper, the proportion of people taking all their meals of the day alone is said to show a certain presence in the surveys. Behind it, it is pointed out, lie the increase of single-person and single-parent households, and the increase of people who live alone in old age. Solitary eating cannot be flatly called a bad thing. It can also be an abundance of cherishing one’s own time. Yet, recalling that a meal was also an act that connected people to one another, the change in that scene reflects a change in the very role the table has carried.

As the scene of the table changes, the form of cooking has changed as well. Beyond home cooking made from scratch, ready-made dishes and bento bought and eaten at home — meal-takeout — have become a presence that supports the modern table.

From a Table That Cooks to a Table That Arranges

The prepared-food counter of the supermarket, the bento of the convenience store, home-delivered meals. Such meal-takeout has become an indispensable modern option, supporting busy lives and solitary tables. Even without the leisure to spend long hours cooking, one can reach a warm meal. That, too, is a sure progress in matters of food.

According to various surveys, the share of meal-takeout and dining out within food spending has, over the long run, been reported to rise. From an age when home cooking made from scratch was the center of the table, to an age of arranging a meal by skillfully combining ready-made things. One could say that the very premise that cooking is something one makes is being gently questioned anew. Convenience freed people from the burden of cooking. On the other hand, there are voices that the flavors passed down at home, and something that dwelt in the act of making, may be fading.

This ever-changing table holds one more, larger question. It is the question of where, exactly, the ingredients that support that abundant table come from.

Where Do the Things That Support the Table Come From?

The Japanese table is made up of ingredients from around the world. Wheat, soybeans, meat — much of it is owed to lands across the sea. As we have seen in this series, neither the settling-in of bread eating nor the spread of yoshoku could have come about without ingredients carried from abroad.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ announcements, Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate on a calorie basis is said to have hovered around 40 percent in recent years. That is to say, by calculation, more than half of the energy we put in our mouths is supported by imports from abroad. The abundant and diverse table has been realized by connecting with the world. Yet that connection can also waver with the world’s circumstances and with changes in climate. Ingredients obtained as a matter of course may not remain a matter of course forever. Beneath the feet of abundance lies a hard-to-see uncertainty.

How to receive the self-sufficiency figure divides by standpoint. There are voices that worry from the perspective of security, and voices that weigh the reality of enjoying an abundant diet through trade. Both arguments have grounds, and this series cannot side with one. What is certain, though, is that our table is no longer one that completes within a single country, but a table tied to the world.

Beyond Where Washoku and Yoshoku Have Melted Together

This series began with the washoku of rice and dashi, and traced the meat eating of the dawn of civilization, Japan’s own yoshoku, postwar bread eating, and the washoku the world discovered. Looking back, the Japanese table has walked on by not refusing flavors that came from outside, remaking them into its own.

Looking around our table now, this becomes clear. Bread and coffee in the morning, ramen or curry at noon, grilled fish and miso soup in the evening. Washoku and yoshoku have long melted together, mixed so thoroughly that even asking where the Japanese ends and the Western begins no longer holds meaning. That is not a figure that has lost its purity, but the form of food unique to this country, chosen by the Japanese over a long span of time.

How to receive solitary eating. What to cherish between the table that cooks and the table that arranges. How to face the uncertainty of a table tied to the world. None of these has a single correct answer. Yet, within the act of a meal repeated each day, I believe that each one of us answers those small questions. What, with whom, and in what way shall we eat tomorrow. The accumulation of those small choices will quietly shape the table to come of this country.

Thank you for keeping company with this long journey to here. If the story of the Japanese table, begun with rice and dashi, becomes a small occasion to gaze anew at your own table, I would be glad. May tonight’s meal, please, be a warm one.

【Washoku and Yoshoku: The Story of the Japanese Table — End】