Foodscapes of Contemporary Japanese Women Writers

An Ecocritical Journey around the Hearth of Modernity

Masami Yuki

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137477231
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Translated from Japanese, this study exposes English-language scholars to the complexities of the relationship between food, culture, the environment, and literature in Japan. Yuki explores the systems of value surrounding food as expressed in four popular Japanese female writers: Ishimure Michiko, Taguchi Randy, Morisaki Kazue, and Nashiki Kaho.

Part I

A Discussion with Ishimure Michiko

1

Interview with Ishimure Michiko

What Have People Eaten?

ISHIMURE MICHIKO—Author. Born 1927 in Amakusa, Kumamoto Prefecture, raised in Minamata. Graduated from Minamata Jitsumu School. Published Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: Our Minamata Disease, the first section of Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow, in 1969. Selected as the first recipient of the Ōya Sōichi Prize, but declined. Received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1973 and the Asahi Prize in 2001.

Her main publications include Fish from Heaven (1974), Sea of Camellias (1976), Legend of the Battle of Seinan (1980), Cat’s Cradle (1983), The Sixteenth Night’s Bridge (1992; winner of the Murasaki Shikibu Prize), Lake of Heaven (1997), Bird of the Anima (1999), Bashful Country: A Collection of the Poetry of Ishimure Michiko (2001; officially recommended by the Ministry of Arts; winner of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Prize), and others. Published collections include The Collected Prose and Poetry of Ishimure Michiko (seven volumes published between 2009 and 2011) and The Complete Ishimure Michiko: Shiranui, the publication of which started in 2004 and will total 17 main volumes with one supplementary volume.

Interview: What Have People Eaten?

Since the release of her work Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow (1969), Ishimure Michiko has been writing vivid stories of daily life lived on the shores of the Shiranui sea, an inland sea in Kyushu, Japan. People living in the fishing villages along those shores called the sea their “garden.”¹ I cannot think of an appropriate example, but just like many people become skillful at pulling fresh vegetables from their gardens, day in and day out, these fishing people enjoyed the fresh fish that they were able to take from the sea. They shared life with the sea, and when the sea was contaminated by organic mercury, so were their bodies.

For Ishimure, raised in Minamata, Minamata-byō—the Japanese name for the terrible disease caused by organic mercury poisoning—was a personal problem before it was a social or political one. Our Minamata Disease, the subtitle of her book Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow, says so much. Ishimure does not have the disease, but is intimately familiar with the lives of many who do. Aware of this difference, she continues to work relentlessly to deepen our knowledge of the problems of the disease from both an insider and an outsider’s perspective. How does such a person, I wondered, view the foodscape of Minamata? With such a question in mind, I visited Ishimure. We shared a moment together in warm sunlight, reminiscent of spring, at her office in Kumamoto on February 20, 2012.

The Sprouting Buds of Spring

YUKI: When I asked you this time if you would be willing to do an interview, you responded that you were not doing well. In the latter half of your response, you wrote about “tofu pickled in unrefined miso made from barley.” You also wrote that you would be able to meet for one hour, an offer that I have rather presumptuously taken you up on.

ISHIMURE: I just started making that unrefined tofu, and it has been giving me great pleasure. I always mention it to people with whom I have a connection.

YUKI: Do you make it yourself?

ISHIMURE: Yes. [Pointing at Yonemitsu Kumiko, her personal assistant] The two of us make it together.

YUKI: Do you often cook here at your office?

ISHIMURE: Sometimes I feel like cooking. I can’t go grocery shopping by myself, and my knees are bad, so sometimes I ask people to help me out while I do the cooking.

YUKI: Today is quite warm, the weather is beautiful. While reading your wonderful work, I noticed that there are many parts where you write that in spring you want to stop working and go outside.

ISHIMURE: Yes, that is right. I feel like going out to pick edible grasses. People give me flowers and things, so it is not that I can’t pick up on the subtle change of the seasons, but when you are holed up in a room, your sense of the seasons starts to fade. I think that is most unfortunate.

YUKI: Is spring a particularly important season for you?

ISHIMURE: At the moment, I am thinking most of spring by the sea. Sea-lettuce, brown algae, and wakame kelp start to come out in spring. The sprouts of all kinds of seaweed come out. They come out in the sea.

YUKI: When did you stop going out to collect brown algae and wakame kelp?

ISHIMURE: Hmm, let me think for a second. Well, I came here to my office in Kumamoto and got Parkinson’s right away. Then I hurt myself and was unable to go out to collect algae and seaweed. Until then, I used to go back to Minamata for what we called “shiodoki,” which is when the tides come in. The waterline gets quite high during the neap tide and the flood tide in spring. When the tides come in, all of the plants raised by the sea are there. On the shore, there are even trees with their branches reaching out into the water. On the ends of their branches, they would hang out something called an “aerial root,” like they wanted to go out into the sea themselves! There are shellfish born and lying around the same area, so that is where I would most like to go. I used to go there regularly up until about six or seven years ago.

YUKI: Do you feel that way particularly on a nice, warm day like today?

ISHIMURE: A warm day like today [Pauses] . . . In spring, when the flood tides come in, even people from the hills drop their hoes and come down to the sea together.

Tofu Pickled in Whole Grain Barley Miso

ISHIMURE: This is my tofu pickled in miso. [The tofu is brought out to us]

ISHIMURE: I always put in some pickled plums too. I do that to keep the tofu from spoiling. I also do it for the flavor. For my pickling, I have used whole grain barley. And, to sterilize the tofu, these days I use a microwave to heat it up. For the tofu, I buy grilled or firm tofu, strain it, and add heat. It’s best if you put it on top of hot, white rice.

YUKI: How long do you have to pickle it before it’s ready to eat?

ISHIMURE: I wanted to taste it the day right after I pickled it. You know, the flavor changes every day. This one has been pickled for two weeks now.

YUKI: [Takes a bite] It is quite rich, isn’t it?

ISHIMURE: Yes it is, a bit like cheese.

YUKI: [Takes another bite] This would go well with sake, no?

ISHIMURE: Right. Everyone says that.

YUKI: There is a sweetness to it, too.

ISHIMURE: The flavor is mostly coming from the barley. I think it would have been better had I added a bit more konbu seaweed to it for flavor though. It would probably be good if I added some ginger, too.

YUKI: Did you invent this dish yourself?

ISHIMURE: I wouldn’t exactly say it was my invention. Originally it comes from a village up in the mountains. You know the lullaby called “itsuki” or the “five trees lullaby?” Well, if you go up to places like Itsuki village, they sell tofu pickled in miso as a souvenir. I bought some and brought it back home.

When you get tofu as a souvenir from somewhere near Itsuki, you tie it in a knot and bring it down from the village. When I heard that, I wondered what type of tofu you could tie into a knot. That really caught my interest, so I went and got some. But when I got it, it was incredibly salty. Of course, it tasted like miso, but I wouldn’t exactly say it tasted good. You could say it tasted like what it was; that is, preserved food from the hills.

YUKI: Was that tofu pickled in miso firmer than yours?

ISHIMURE: [Pointing at the pickled tofu on the table] About the same as this, I guess. And about the same color as miso. It was just salty. Back in the days when people ate rice and not much else, I’m sure it was quite the delicacy though. I couldn’t get that tofu out of my mind, so I thought that I could make a better-tasting version of the miso to pickle the tofu in. I added konbu seaweed and ginger. I also added the pickled plums so the tofu wouldn’t go bad.

YUKI: How long does it last before it goes bad?

ISHIMURE: I always eat it all within 20 days.

YUKI: You wrap the tofu in a paper towel and then pickle it?

ISHIMURE: If you strain it really well and get all the water out, you can pickle it directly without wrapping it in anything. I wrap it in a paper towel so that the tofu holds its shape and doesn’t fall apart. Then, when I have the chance to offer it to people, they can really enjoy it. When you give someone a souvenir, and you take care to make sure that it looks right, they usually enjoy it.

YUKI: It sounds like you have many guests.

ISHIMURE: People coming for interviews and the like.

YUKI: Then I suppose you get people like me too.

ISHIMURE: No no. Anyway, it became a dish that I was proud of. These days, you can get anything. You can get things from overseas, anything that tastes good. So I thought to myself that I would like to make something traditional and Japanese.

Memories of Barley and Firewood

ISHIMURE: I have a really vivid memory of barley. I often used to tread barley with my mother. I would follow behind her and copy whatever she did. I was about three years old at the time. We would go and tread on barley when the sprouts came up. Back then, you had to tread your barley no matter what. I don’t know about these days. Barley that has been tread upon springs back up stronger than it was before it was stepped on. I don’t know if it was just her muttering or if it was a song, but she would hum the words to the barley while we walked, “Don’t let the rat graze on you, don’t let the crow take you away, we are going to have you become a dumpling for us.” She would say that because we would make wheat flour out of the barley, and we really liked making dumplings out of the flour.

YUKI: In your books Sea of Camellias and Making Food and Playing House, there are quite a few scenes where you write about making dumplings. Your mother used to make dumplings several times a year, yes?

ISHIMURE: It was just like in the poetry almanacs. For New Year’s, we make mochi rice cakes, so the ingredients are different, you know, but they are like dumplings too. She would say the same thing to the azuki beans that would become the sweet paste for the rice cakes, “We are going to have you become a dumpling for us.”

YUKI: You have many memories of barley.

ISHIMURE: Even a single grain of barley would take us to the field, and I would copy whatever my mother was doing. We would go and tread the barley together.

YUKI: Is there anything that you stopped making once your mother passed away?

ISHIMURE: I used to remember the times we had together and then actually make the things that I would remember. I even used to make dumplings the same way I wrote about in Making Food and Playing House and give them to people who came for interviews. You know, it also feels like playing house! If you use the word “cooking” or “cuisine” it sounds like something made by a full-fledged chef, so instead, I used the words “making food” or “putting together food.”

YUKI: You once wrote that “making food” is something you do on a dirt floor, and that “cooking” is something you do in a kitchen.² Did your home have a dirt floor?³

ISHIMURE: When I was small we had a dirt floor.

YUKI: You also used to collect firewood.

ISHIMURE: Yes. When I moved from a small town next to Chisso called Sakae to a village by the mouth of a river, the tides would come in and out. The river floods when it rains really hard. Whenever that would happen, pieces of wood that looked like they were part of a roof or a house that had been broken apart would come down the river. My father used to go out to collect all of that wood. The people in the village used to say that wood didn’t flow down the river, it came to visit us. People would say that they were going out to gather the “visiting wood” and collect it house by house as it came flowing by.

YUKI: That “visiting wood” was used for firewood. Was it quite important for everyone?

ISHIMURE: Yes, we also used it to build small houses.

House by house, we would pull the wood up out of the river and then mark it with something so that it was easy to tell which wood was for which house. Nobody would take the wood that someone else had collected. After taking it up out of the river, we would let it sit in the wind and rain for a while to wash the seawater out of it. Then, we would wait until it dried to take it away because wet wood is quite heavy. The people in the village by the mouth of the river had a lot of small bits of wisdom like that. It was an interesting little village.

YUKI: So to mark the wood as yours, you didn’t have to put your name on it. It sounds like you just put something, some sign, on it and then everyone knew whose thing it was.

ISHIMURE: There was one family that would hang an iron pot on the wood! That sure was different!

YUKI: It’s hard to imagine people doing that now.

ISHIMURE: Yes, I suppose that’s true. Nowadays, people might take off with the wood that other people had collected.

YUKI: Was the “visiting wood” enough to provide all of the firewood that people needed?

ISHIMURE: You can never have enough firewood. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part I   A Discussion with Ishimure Michiko
• Part II   A Discussion with Taguchi Randy
• Part III   A Discussion with Morisaki Kazue
• Part IV   A Discussion with Nashiki Kaho
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index