japanese food culture

 The Japanese call their homeland Dai Nihon or Nippon, meaning "origin of the sun." It is from this name that Japan has also been called "Land of the Rising Sun." It is an apt name. For in the short span of about a hundred years, Japan has shaken off the shackles of an ancient feudal system and hundreds of years of isolation from the rest of the world, united her people, elevated her standard of living, and today proudly stands prominently as a world class industrial nation.

The four main islands that make up Japan – Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu – are 80 percent mountainous. Picturesque lakes dot the mountain areas and small rivers water the rolling plains. Only 15 percent of the land is arable but it is from this that diligent Japanese farmers coax rice and other grains, vegetables, and a wide variety of fruits. From the surrounding seas come cold and warm currents and air masses that give Japan a climate that varies from short summers and severe winters in the North to torrential rains and whipping winds, hot days and humid nights in the South. But from the seas also come Japan's great harvest of fish, seafood, and edible seaweed.

Japan's first outside contact was with Korea in the early 300s C.E. Chinese industrial arts, crafts, and learning found their way through Korea to Japan. Shintoism, Japan's indigenous cult of imperial and ancestor worship, existed side by side'' with Buddhism since the latter was introduced from India (through Korea and China) in 538 C.E. Gradually the cult of ancestor worship blended with Buddhism and deeply affected many aspects of Japanese life. Appreciation of nature and a cultivation of simplicity and grace in everyday life influenced not only food and dress, but also literature and the arts.

One of the most exquisite examples of the infusion of the blend of Buddhism and Shintoism into art and thence into everyday life is found in the Japanese art of tsutsumu. This is the art of packaging, and includes everything from a farmer's quantity of eggs delicately laced in rice stray, to a gratuity that is not placed directly in the hand, but is wrapped in folds of delicate paper to resemble a flower. Tsutsumurepresents utility as well as beauty and simplicity. Materials and colors for wrapping, as well as the completed shapes, delight the eye and symbolize the spiritual essence of nature.

In this same way, although Japan adopted crafts, arts, language, industries, and even religion from other lands, she has given each an indelible Japanese stamp. From the Chinese
and Koreans the Japanese learned how to write by using Chinese ideograms, but soon simplified and refined the complex characters into two native kana syllabaries:katagana and hiragana. The Japanese word Kana means a symbol representing a syllable. This resulted in a flourishing of Japanese literature and learning previously unsurpassed...

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