Written by Wakaba Saito
As technologies develop, the way people obtain food has also changed. Traditional barter methods of obtaining food have become uncommon in modern Japan. Exchanges and gifts of food and other items for long-term mutual support may seem peculiar from a capitalist perspective. This food-related interview, which focuses on eating habits and the meaning behind them gave insights into the connections of a small community composed of relatives and the backgrounds of its members. In recent years, the meaning behind foods and customs has been less emphasized, and people are more conscious of what nutrients they consume.
I interviewed Setsuko Yanagi, a Japanese woman who was born in 1937, right before WW2, and is currently 87 years old. She was born the youngest child in one of the larger farm families in the area, then she married in 1961 at the age of 24 and had two children. Even before her marriage, she worked in various jobs and continued to do so until she was 75. She now lives alone in their house after her husband’s death.
To facilitate the smoothness of the interview, the interview questions and answers were given in Japanese but translated into English to be presented here. The dialects used in various parts of the interviews have been translated using words that are as close to the meaning as possible, but when a direct translation is difficult, the original language is indicated and introduced.
There are two unique characteristics of Setsuko’s diet. One is that much of what she eats is self-produced (a typical case of farmers), and the other is the strength of mutual support among neighboring relatives through food.
About half of the vegetables, eggs, and rice she eats are produced on the land she rents out to other farmers, and the remaining is produced by herself in the farm garden of her residence. Setsuko used to go to a large field near her house to farm, but as she got older, she shifted to only farming the housing field and renting out the large land to other farmers, who would bring her rice and vegetables produced there. Due to this production style, the food Setsuko eats is often seasonal. When her neighbors, especially relatives who know that Setsuko lives alone and those who rent their fields from her, get food such as meat and fish, they buy fish not only for themselves but also for Setsuko to share. The things she can not gain from by growing it herself, getting it from land she rents, or obtaining it through her neighbors, would be gained from a cooperative association or the local supermarket. These are some of the main ways Setsuko gains the materials for the diet.
Tradition, Custom, and Meaning
Ingredients obtained in these various ways would be cooked by Setsuko herself. In the culture she grew up, cooking was a woman’s job, so her husband did not help with the household chores. Therefore, Setsuko has been responsible for cooking since her marriage to her husband.
As mentioned above, since she makes use of ingredients that she either grows herself or receives from those around her, a situation where she has to go shopping for a specific recipe rarely occurs. She combines the ingredients she already has and cooks what she can based on seasonal vegetables and fish. “If I have potatoes, I make a Nikkorogashi (煮っころがし, simmered taro), and if I have Konnyaku, I make oden,” she says. Most of the recipes can be made with only certain seasonings such as soy sauce, sake, mirin, sugar, vinegar, and other basic seasonings that are used in combination to flavor the dish.
Many of Setsuko’s recipes were passed down to her from her grandmother. In addition, most of her favorite foods and recipes that left a memorable impression on her were based mostly on her family and her childhood life. Recipes such as the feast made for village festivals and Manju (a sweet bun) by Setsuko’s grandmother in her childhood seem to have remained as precious and good memories for her. One of Setsuko’s favorite recipes, however, is the chocolate-covered bread. For her (and especially for Setsuko as a child), chocolate was something she could barely eat, and the combination of chocolate and bread was a very important and memorable food for her, even with how they are now so easily available at convenience stores. For Setsuko, how available food is now is not an important factor; what is more important is what the food means to them, and what they remember through the food.
For Setsuko, how available food is now is not an important factor; what is more important is what the food means to them, and what they remember through the food.
Another interesting point in hearing more about the recipes Setsuko mentions is that there were many customs of eating something in a specific situation. Most of these customs were health-promoting and were based on local lore and knowledge of health in the diet. For example, there were customs when people were not feeling well such as drinking kumquat when catching a cold, drinking pickled plums with hot water when catching a cold, making ginger tea with green onions and ginger, covering the throat with green onions (by roasting them and placing them on the throat), and egg porridge for nutrition. Custom allows people to actively take in nutrition and feed them foods that are considered good for their bodies. Some of these are still utilized today.
The “recommended during pregnancy” diet and related customs are one with many implications. Although this culture has been fading in recent years when the availability of nutritional food was limited, it was a matter of critical need for pregnant women and also for mothers with young children, for their energy to do all the work and also to supply the nutrition for their children through breastfeeding. Mothers and pregnant women needed a lot of nutrition because even pregnant women were important workers due to manpower issues back when Setsuko was young. During and after the war, the nutrition of pregnant women was so important that special distribution of food (rationing) was provided for them. A typical custom was feeding them carp to replenish their energy during childbirth. Rice cakes and other foods were also given to mothers immediately after childbirth to improve breast milk production. Nutritious eggs were also recommended to pregnant women because they were believed to make the delivery easier. Setsuko commented on this egg custom saying, “I think it was a way and reasoning for the people around the mothers to take care of her.” Women were also considered important workers in a “Houkenshugi（奉献主義, consecrations）” way, and people were trying very hard to protect pregnant women.
In addition to meals, there is the custom of “Koshogatsu (小正月)” which can be translated as “small New Year’s holiday”. It was a custom for married women, who usually had to serve the people around them. They take their children to their parents’ homes to be “the guests” and to rest. This custom was aimed at allowing the wives to take a break from the continuous service from the end of the year to the beginning of the New Year and throughout January. (“Married women” means the women who came to that house by marrying a man in that house.)
Apart from these customs rooted in daily life, there are also customs for New Year’s meals, celebratory meals, and meals for ancestor worship such as Obon and Higan. Setsuko states that these are based on the concept of “Engi (縁起, auspiciousness)” or “good fortune,” which seems to regulate one’s future fortune. One of the most famous examples of some of Japan’s auspicious customs is the New Year’s Osechi meal. This is a New Year’s meal that is eaten as a good luck charm, with many of the items having various meanings; at the same time, it is a tradition that makes it easier for the women who prepare the table, as they can prepare everything in advance by packing it all into a stacked box. The New Year’s ornaments are also meaningful at the same time: mochi (rice cake) is pounded on December 28, and the ornaments are displayed from the 28th until Kagamibiraki (鏡開き) on the 11th of January. Decorating only for one night is not considered auspicious, as it is the same formality as decorating for funerals (decorations are displayed only on the day before the funeral). At the same time, the 29th is also considered unlucky (because the 9 in the 29th can be read as “ku” in Japanese, which is associated with “凶(wickedness and bad luck)”, so it is avoided.
Similarly, it is customary to offer food or rice, water, and incense at the butsudan (a place to enshrine deceased ancestors, who are called “Hotoke-sama”). The food used here is often eaten by the family if it is a luxurious offering (like expensive fruits) during the period when “Hotoke-sama” is thought to be returning to their home, but may not be eaten otherwise. However, discarding offerings in front of the “Hotoke-sama” would cause “Bachi” (bad luck or the idea of retribution for doing something bad), so they are given to animals and plants can consume them. Thus, customs that include many concepts such as “good luck” to pray for future good fortune are considered important and remain so today. It is also evident that people are conscious of not wasting food, of not wasting it poorly, and of receiving good luck through food.
This concept of “good luck” was also present in Setsuko’s garden. “I like to plant fruit,” she says, “for good luck and to have good fruit later.”. Other than the field area in her house, her garden has many planted and cared for plants. Many of these plants are “memorial trees,” which is where they come from. For each of her daughter’s special days like their birthdays and entrance ceremony, Setsuko purchased plants, especially fruit. She preferred to plant those that bore fruit, such as plums, peaches, and grapes. This is derived from the Japanese word “Mi-wo-musubu (実を結ぶ),” which means “to bear fruit,” which can also mean “good luck,” since it can also mean that results will appear or that one’s efforts will be fruitful.
For Setsuko, “auspiciousness” is not a religious concept that she religiously follows. However, she believes that good things may happen in the future if she follows it. The basis of this auspiciousness is often connected to food and those who eat. For her, eating is not just about nutrition, but also about what kind of meaning would have throughout her daily life, such as what she eats.
Local community connections
Based on this idea, it seems that during the war, people from each family would get together and cooperate to make progress on the farm work of each family whose male labor force had been reduced by being drafted into the army. Perhaps a custom from that time, much food and other supplies were shared among relatives living in the neighborhood, supporting people such as Setsuko who were gradually having difficulty accessing distant places (although the number of such people in the village continues to increase). Normally, each of them interacts with each other, and there are few opportunities for them to get together as a housing unit or for the entire village to get together and interact. The exception is once every three months or so when they gather at the local shrine for the summer, spring, and fall festivals. These festivals were places where special meals, not normally available, were served and where the work of many people, not just the laborers, was rewarded. Each festival celebrated different things, but they gradually became less and less significant. There were customs of praying for the harvest and giving thanks to the moon (which was regarded as a god) for the harvest, but there does not seem to have been a deep belief in a particular god. Although there were many “customs” in situations where ancestors were worshipped, Setsuko was not aware that they were deeply rooted in religion, at least not in the way she thought. Each village has both shrines and temples, but it is not important to the villagers which religion they believe in. It is more likely that the purpose of the shrine is for interaction and celebration within the village, while the temple is only for Higan and Obon (the time of mourning for deceased ancestors). The festivals held regularly at shrines were also a place for each person belonging to the community to share information. Today, more and more people live alone or do not live in family units, but in the past, “being alone in a village” was an extremely unique situation. This was an opportunity to understand their situations and provide support, to report on recent developments, and to reaffirm the form of unity within the unit of the village (a group of neighborhood associations during and after the war). The festivals in the community to which Setsuko belonged were not so much religious events as occasions to eat foods that were not normally available, to work with each other, and to reaffirm the bonds and cooperation within the community that were essential to spending time in the village.
Between World War II and now, culture has changed dramatically in terms of diet, lifestyle, and family patterns. For those born during the war, the decades following the war were extremely different from the life they had imagined in their childhood, especially in terms of how families interacted with each other and with the community due to the declining birthrate and the increasing trend of nuclear families, which is the family consisted by parents and their children.
Setsuko commented, “It’s a good time to have trains and buses, but I feel like we are going back to the old days with a smaller population. Things have become more convenient, such as being able to buy what you want by mail order if you want it. Elderly people can now be taken care of at facilities instead of at home.” She does not know if this is good or bad. The elderly people she has seen died happily “at home,” surrounded by family members who took care of them. The changes in recent years have been lonely for her. The trends of the times and the inability to use new technology will be left behind. She repeated that it was not what she had pictured in her childhood. “Moon was the thing we treated as the god… human can go to what we used to treat as a god.”
For Setsuko, food is a manifestation of the habits she has acquired over the years and relationships she has built along the way, and it is also a strong reflection of the environment in which she grew up. At the same time, however, the dramatic technological developments she experienced also facilitated a divergence from the habits and diet she had been familiar with since childhood. Setsuko’s generation has experienced particularly significant technological developments. The changing society and developing technology are not what she envisioned as a child. Setsuko’s imagined “happiness” toward the end of her life is slightly different from the current situation. Yet, as lonely as Setsuko was, she also seemed to have different feelings. “It’s delightful to be able to tell someone an old story like this, and I’m very happy to be able to pass on customs that someone doesn’t know about.” Setsuko continued, “The same ‘happiness’ I imagined doesn’t exist anymore, but I can tell you things like this that you don’t know. This is a delight I never imagined.”
The Polyphony 