HOF Episode 21: Umami and Kimchi (Japan and Korea)

Cultural appropriation. How's that for a loaded term to get us started? Yes, cultural appropriation, that is, one culture lifting elements from another and making them their own, is it really a thing? Most certainly yes, but is it a bad thing? No, with a giant butt. Look, there's a deeper meaning here, I'd have to be willfully ignorant or completely fogged by privilege to ignore. A lot of times what people mean today by cultural appropriation refers specifically to a culture in a position of power, picking up stealing, if you will, elements of culture from a group they are simultaneously oppressing and/or subjugating. Hipping hip-hop music while ignoring black poverty, erasing Native American history while taking its imagery, just a couple examples. In that light, cultural appropriation is indeed racist and just downright icky. But if we're talking about cultural appropriation solely as a literal term, I would argue that it has been a force for good over the course of human society. Actually, for any hope of progress, there's almost no avoiding appropriation, even if you want to. It's just how human civilization works. The story of humankind's history is just one smaller story after another of cultures appropriating each other, learning from each other, building on each other's ideas and inventions, growing as a result of these exchanges. Indeed, as we've discussed before, it may not be possible for a civilization to happen at all without a neighboring civilization with which it can compete and copy off of. Today, on the history of food, I want to explore why that's nothing to be ashamed of. How some of the greatest societies in history got their start following someone else's example and then gradually making it into their own thing. And to do that, I want to look at two historical peoples in particular, in Far East Asia. Both legends of cuisine and culture today, but technically, offshoots of another more older, original civilization. I'm talking, of course, about the lands of kimchi and umami, Korea and Japan. Last time on this podcast, we ended the second season with an introduction to the Colombian exchange. When the East and West hemispheres of this world, long, separate and isolated, came together and began mixing their people, culture and ingredients. That event will shape so much of world history to come, and we've only just begun by unpacking what happened afterwards. I have a lot more to say about the world post-Columbus. Most of us history fans have heard much already about the tumult and change of early modern Europe and the transformations that followed it. Or rarely do we hear about what was happening in other parts of the world in that time. This is why before we further unpack Europe, I wanted to detour to the Far East again. We've only heard from the ancient and medieval empires of China twice, and from the geographically small but geopolitically significant lands of Korea and Japan, almost nothing. And it just so happens that they are perhaps the best possible examples, with which to study this idea of cultural appropriation, being how human societies develop and create new things. So obviously with that wapper of a thesis and two whole civilizations to go over today, we've got a lot to cover. So let's dive right in. I hope you're in the mood for pickles and seafood. The Korean Peninsula and the Japanese archipelago are both titans of food and culture today. But chronologically, things get interesting first in Korea, so they get to go first in this somewhat bisected episode. The first migrants from mainland Asia, speaking languages that were the ancestors of modern Korean, arrived in prehistoric times. Hunter gatherer societies who made their living fishing and hunting and collecting wild plants. Even before the arrival of agriculture, interestingly these early Koreans still made pottery, showing a very early cultural affinity for ceramics. Pottery is actually one of the best examples of how cultures can borrow something from another and then make it totally their own. So they learned the original technology from China. It was eventually China who came to revere and covet Korean pottery making, whose artistry and skill had surpassed their own. But I'm already getting ahead of myself. The true neolithic, the origins of farming and modern life, arrived in Korea around 3500 BC directly from China. People continued to hunt and fish but also began to cultivate, millet, barley, old-world beans like soy and eventually rice several centuries later. As usual, food was the precursor to civilization. In this case, the Chinese version of it. Millet and western crops were just the first of many things. Koreans borrowed from their neighboring civilization on the yellow and yanksy rivers. Korean cuisine was bronze and ironworking, writing, architecture, political systems, religions, notably Buddhism, and even musical instruments. Koreans adapted all of these things and made them their own. As prehistoric farming technology and good metal tools developed to produce more food, people ate well, actually better than most old world civilizations in fact. And populations rose. Overflow of people sailed across the eastern sea. What we call today the Sea of Japan. They were on their way to, you guessed it, Japan. As I'll get more into later, this was the beginning of Japanese farming villages and eventually urbanism, meaning that the Japanese and Korean peoples are close cultural cousins, as much as they have also diverged by today. The next millennia and a half would see the Japanese-Korean relationship characterized by trade, linked economies and cultural exchange, punctuated by intermittent periods of war and conflict, which served just as much to influence cultural exchange as the trade did. More about that stuff later. As agricultural life fully took hold in the Korean Peninsula, society coalesced into hundreds of villages and tribal territories. The initiation of the Bronze Age in Korea, around 300 BC, would see the first time that clans grew into large chieftains and the biggest villages became towns. Keep in mind that China has already been through several phases and dynasties at this point. This is contemporary with Han, China, and the Roman Empire far to the west. The transmission of Buddhism brought with it the adoption of Chinese writing, officially initiating the historical period in Korea, known as the Three Kingdoms Era. In addition to historians finally having something to work with, this was an era of profound cultural evolution. As the name suggests, three major chieftains, fighting and competing with each other, took shape as kingdoms and dominated most of the Korean Peninsula. Although the very southern portion was still owned by almost 100 smaller tribal states. If you've listened to earlier episodes, you might notice that, yes, Korea does not deviate from the pattern we've seen time and time again, of the three city-state trifecta, ricocheting off of one another until a whole civilization emerges. Each of these three kingdoms had its own distinct set of foods and cultural practices. Somewhat surprisingly, despite microfluctuations, this overall balance of power would hold for the next seven centuries, when the Kingdom of Silla, through an alliance with Tang China, emerged dominant and finally unified the whole peninsula under its control for the first time in history. But that control fell apart pretty quickly, as fights over succession to the Silla throne broke apart the Kingdom again. Local warlords formed their own states and literally duked it out with each other. One warlord called Wang Yuan formed a state called Goryo, the name of which gives us the modern word Korea. Goryo Korea, Goryo Korea. He defeated his rivals and in 935 became the the next great ruler of the peninsula. The Goryo period saw more importing from China, particularly in the form of neo-confusionism. This was also the peak of Kury and pottery making that we mentioned earlier, when the exquisite Cilidan style was produced at the envy of all East Asia. By the 14th century though, the Goryo dynasty was in decline, and eventually overthrown, ushering a new dynasty in era called the Jocione period. This next Jocione dynasty would last until the 1800s, and it's under their watch that Korean cuisine, farming, and food culture in general really begin to take shape into something unique, beyond being just a Chinese transplant. First of all, a shift in cultural attitudes brought about by Confucian philosophy caused scholars to look more outside their own country for ideas and techniques to improve their lives. Importing all sorts of innovations like rain gauges, irrigation networks, and rice paddy agriculture, the Koreans got really good at farming. To keep encouraging this trend, the government even published books on farming to educate and improve overall technique and know-how. Not only that, they simplified and lowered taxes, allowing peasant farmers to produce larger volumes of crops not only for sustenance, but also as cash crops, food surplus, and even profit on top of it. To take Korean agricultural success during the Jocione period into the stratosphere, it's at this time that crops from the new world begin to appear via trade with China, Japan, Europe, and the Philippines. Crops like corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, squash, and of course, chili peppers took root even before governments were aware they existed, spreading over soils on land that was previously unsuitable for farming, further increasing the bounty of every farmer's harvest. It's for all of these compounded reasons that early modern Koreans enjoyed an astounding amount of food by standards at the time. This was not just the well to do. Even peasants were so blessed with plenty to eat that Korean dining habits sometimes shocked foreign visitors, and even due criticism as being gluttonous. From 15th century scholars in Korea complained to the king that people were not saving food, but rather eating in one meal the amount of food that the Chinese or Japanese would eat in a day. In one book, chronicling life during the Jocione dynasty in the late 16th century, another author wrote that "In ordinary grown man eats more than 2 pounds of rice per meal." Europeans who visited Korea later on in the 19th century also noted that Koreans typically ate double or triple the amount of food that they or other East Asians ate. One travelogue notes that "Korean soldiers were muscular, stocky, and well nourished, in much better condition than was the norm, presumably from all of the food they were packing in." Korea was still an agricultural society, and most people ate very little meat. There was lots of fish and seafood, but pork and especially beef were rare and expensive. For protein, people scarfed down tofu and beans primarily. Beban Bob, the beloved Korean dish that consists of various veggies and a little meat sometimes arranged on top of a bowl of rice, has its roots in culinary thrift and modest eating, at least by Korean standards. Originally kind of a poor man's hodgepodge, the famous rice bowl is really just a dish of leftovers. Side dishes from the last meal that didn't get completely eaten all thrown together to make something new and really delicious, elevated by topping with a fried egg. And if that's how poor people were eating, you can begin to imagine the opulence of Korean hot cuisine for nobles and royals. The long-lived Jocelyn dynasty is very much associated with what's called Korean royal court cuisine, the style of high-end cookery many of whose traditions persist to the present day. Jocelyn royalty had the finest of foods sent from regions all over and around Korea, to form a culinary showcase. Cooks had eight provinces and then some worth of foods to choose from. Meals were not seasonal like commoners ate, instead they varied significantly from day to day and were based on taste. Meals were also not limited in their amount. In general, five per day were served in the royal palace, three of which were full course offerings. The first meal of the day in the royal court was a kind of rice porridge, spiked with all kinds of other ingredients. This rich porridge was thought to give vitality to the king and queen throughout their day. Next official breakfast was served at 10 in the morning, and the evening meals were served between 6 and 7 at night. Each came with two types of rice, two types of soup, three types of stew, one casserole of meat and vegetables, three types of kimchi and three types of pickles, and 12 side dishes in total. Korean cuisine has always been sharing-oriented, so a typical meal can consist of several large communal platters, and an umpteen number of side dishes all served at once. Actually, one of the most stand out aspects of South Korean kitchens is the huge amount of side dishes you still see at a single meal. Historically, the number of side dishes you had reflected your social status. Only the king was allowed to be served 12 of them. The Korean food heritage has been inscribed by the modern Korean government as important, intangible cultural property, and for good reason. The ingredients in Korean cooking are pretty similar to many found in China and Japan. Not surprising considering that they are neighbors and for all the cultural exchange going on. But what makes Korean cuisine different, of course, are how those ingredients are used. And to understand exactly what that means, we have to talk pickles and fermentation. First, there's one element that defines Korean food more than anything against all others. It's the love for pickles, known collectively as kimchi. But kimchi isn't just the hot and sour cabbage we all think of today. The very first variety was made out of radishes. More than that, kimchi encompasses salted and fermented veggies of all sorts. Cooking in an endless amount of variety and served multiple times at every meal, as essential to the table as salt itself. How and why did this cultural preference happen? Answering that question should give us a good understanding of how Korean food developed over the centuries. Since the existence of kimchi is traceable all the way back to the first people that started to use agriculture to sustain themselves. All cultures have found their own favorite preserved foods, but Korea in particular had more problems with the weather than their neighbors. Specifically, it gets really cold over the winter. Before they really fully figured out agriculture and could grow those massive bounties we just talked about, ice and freezing temperatures nearly 86 the whole operation before it could get started. But Korean farmers found a way to survive. Even more so than in other ancient cultures, it became critical to save and preserve food through the long winter when nothing fresh could be grown. Over time, the Koreans preferred salting and became masters of its application for preservation and fermentation. As early as the three kingdoms period and Korea's first urban civilizations, foreign visitors noticed the Korean affinity for pickling their food, making all manner of delicious kimchi. The great virtue of kimchi was that it provided a nutritious veggie during the long Korean winter. Traditionally, Koreans would make it in November and then bury its jars in the ground to keep it from freezing. That way they'd have vegetables until next spring. Underground storage helped in the summer too by keeping things cool and slowing down the fermentation process. The art of kimchi began to grow in complexity later on during the Gureo period and medieval times, where trade enabled all sorts of vegetables to find their way into Korea, including Chinese cabbage, which makes the most common and popular version of kimchi today. staple like garlic, ginger, sesame, and soy. their way into kimchi preparations as well. It can be said that there is a direct link between the trade with other countries and therefore an increase in ingredients and the number of different kinds of kimchi. There are officially over 200 types of it documented across Korea today, but that surely does not even account for the thousands of variations and silent recipes not written down across the ages. As long as it was a veggie and as long as it was fermented, the term kimchi applies. That trend of growing sophistication only accelerated in the coming jossion dynasty up to the modern era. Most notable by far is the introduction of the chili pepper, which radically changed not only Korean cuisine overall, but in particular most kimchi recipes. So many of them incorporated chilies as Korean people tried spicy food and discovered that they loved it. All of this variety, fueled by trade and foreign influence, makes kimchi the perfect encapsulation of what I mean by natural cultural appropriation, taking something old and making it new. Over many centuries, the dish adapted to changing situations and was enriched by different kinds of ingredients which were previously unknown to the Koreans, resulting in a wide cuisine to finding cornucopia of pickles and fermented foods today. Pickling and fermentation may have not been invented in Korea, but the art of kimchi was. And you'll see I'm further broadening the definition of kimchi here. It's not just the act of fermenting vegetables, it's the seeking out of and trying new ones. Kimchi is the process of opening oneself up and once culture as well to the outside world. It's tasting new things and having the open mind to know your own life will be enriched by incorporating them. Who knows, you might end up making something even better, or at the very least unique. More than anything, this, kimchi, is what defines Korean cuisine, historically and currently. The story that we find in Japan is not so different. Okay, yeah, actually it's a totally different story, but there are some similar themes of borrowing from other cultures and then transforming those things into your own thing. In fact, much of this cultural growth in both Korea and Japan was a result of those two societies trading, fighting and otherwise bouncing off each other and of course their enormous neighbor, China. So let's turn even further to the east now and explore the other side of that great historical exchange on the islands of Japan. Throughout their history, the Japanese peoples have alternated several times between two extremes. They're either fully open-minded to the influx of foreign culture and influence, or they're completely shut out from the rest of the world, full isolationist, often for hundreds of years at a time. It's usually either or and never much in between. Both extremes serve a function in the cycle of Japanese cultural growth. When the doors are open, ideas and ingredients fled in, as locals pick and choose the ones they like. When drawn into isolation, those ideas become refined to better fit into current Japanese culture, transforming the foreign ideas into newer Japanese ones. Over the years, this repetitive blending and refining of cultural differences and national norms has created an incredibly distinctive food identity. Today, there is a theory of five basic flavors in Japanese cuisine. That's right, not four, five. You have the familiar, salty, sour, bitter and sweet that we acknowledge in the West, but there's also one not so familiar, at least not until recent globalization. I'm talking of course about the flavor group Umami. There's no good or at least no concise translation of what exactly Umami means. And yet, with its own distinct flavor receptors on the tongue, it is a real thing. You might call it meaty or savory, but to me that's an oversimplification. The glutamates and amino acids that make foods like roasted meats, rich broths and stocks, mushrooms, age cheeses, fish and soy sauce, and other fermented foods Umami are flavor compounds that make our taste buds and the brains interpreting them excited. A note of Umami in a dish can seem to make all the other flavors it's mixed with, almost jump off the pallet and around the mouth. It's the ultimate expression of flavor. And just as Kim Chi can be a metaphor for a culture's outlook, so too can Umami. Japanese cuisine is defined by the quest for the strongest, most pure and powerful flavors, concentrated into simple and yet deeply complex dishes. Or looking at it another way, taking a wide range of foods from foreign neighbors, and distilling them down to their essence. How very Japanese. Anthropologists still don't know exactly when people first came to the Japanese archipelago. For a long time, it was believed that there was no paleolithic occupation of Japan. But in the reopening of the country in the years after World War II, thousands of archaeological sites were unearthed and continued to be today, with all kinds of tools and primitive settlements providing a long occupation since prehistoric times. There's little doubt that the first immigrants to Japan came from the Asian continent. At one stage, land connections veer what are now the Korea and Tsushima Straits, made walking from the Korean Peninsula to Japan possible, hence the deep connection between Japan and Korea and their peoples and cultures. Hunter Gatherers, of course, crossed over in pursuit of prey and pickings. The lush green lands of the islands these first immigrants found inspired 10,000 years more of foraging life, as well as a vast pantheon of spirits and nature worship. This kind of animist religion is found across ancient and current Hunter Gatherer cultures. But what makes the Japanese version so special is that it's still around today. The religion known as Shintoism has a through line from prehistoric days to the present, and it's been hugely influential on Japanese history and culture across the ages. Given that one of the most venerated deities of the Shinto was the goddess of food, there was a deep respect for eating and the nature from which food comes, even from Japan's most ancient days. This proto-Japanese period of foraging and then early farming lasts for over 10,000 years. Like in Korea, Neolithic life continued for many thousands of years, even after urbanism had already gotten started in China. Not until the first millennium BC, when new immigrants and their technologies make their way once again from continental Asia to Japan via Korea, does urbanism finally take hold? As agriculture spread, the population rose and cities appeared. This era called the Ayoy Period is the true beginning of Japanese urbanism and its modern culture. This period of foreign influx corresponds with the chin and then the Han Dynasty's in China, who were already in the middle of the Iron Age. Chinese armies occupied Manchuria and Northern Korea, where they established several colonies. These outposts served as a base for a strong influx of Chinese culture into Korea, where in turn it's spread to Japan. The fact that Japanese urban culture had iron implements from the outset and bronze implements somewhat later probably indicates borrowings from Han culture. The cultivation of rice introduced from southern China was one of the most important features of this time. Extensive paddy agriculture makes its way into the archaeological record at sites all over the island, but in particular around the site of Tokyo, the earliest known densely populated urban complex. With the rise of populations and intensive agriculture came the rise of social class and inequality. A hereditary power structure largely imported from China as well, but over time made uniquely Japanese. While these new cultural elements arrive later in Japan and represent a migration of people and ideas from the Korean Peninsula and China, the migration did not alter the people who had already inhabited Japan for millennia. Ya-yoi culture is undoubtedly a mix of new elements, but it seems like those chief strains of proto-Japanese culture found throughout the country during the earlier periods was not disrupted but rather integrated with and carried over into later ages. Differences and skeletons before and after do occur, but as a result of nutritional changes, as people switch from forager to farmer diets. We see here in the earliest days of Japanese civilization as we do time and time again, Japan lets in things from the outside and incorporates them, but does not change its own fundamental character. As more cities appeared, Japan became a mix of competing often-waring tribal kingdoms, but after the 300s AD a unified central government began to take shape. In Emperor, beginning a royal dynasty and a golden age in Japanese civilization for hundreds of years, Unity led to cultural advancement. In addition to importing the concept of an Emperor as Divine Authority, Japan also imported Buddhism, and from that point onward, Japanese religious life was a mix of Buddhist and Shinto ideas, a hybrid that persists to this day. Of course, all civilizations declined and so did the power of the first Japanese emperors. Warlords and leaders of Great Clans began to rise in their own power and contest the influence of the imperial courts. This was the beginning of the famous Shogun era, where he with the greatest military might control Japan. But as the power of even the Shoguns declined, and as regional warlords called Dimeos, the dukes and barons etc. of Japan, increasingly squabbled with each other and ignored the central government, Japan descended into civil war, during which it was much more susceptible to outside influence. China and Europe both increased contact and attempted to influence Japan during this time. That includes, as we'll see, food and ingredients. This was also when we see the true rise of the samurai. These highly tribal clan warriors were skilled and mounted combat in archery. Initially used by emperors to put down insurrections, samurai came to dominate the armies of the increasingly powerful Dimeos. Samurai were seen as the ideal warrior and model citizen. They edged out the traditional aristocracy to become the dominant social class of Japan, whose society became one all about distinguishing between these warrior nobles and everyone else. The samurai soon acquired enough manpower, resources and political clout to claim blood ties with the emperor and dominate the imperial government. In time, it was the samurai who were in charge. The emperor was just a figurehead. Even though this era is often characterized as a kind of dark age for Japan, there are some perks to being a militarily dominated society. Japan managed to survive not one, but two Mongol invasions, only seven years apart in the 13th century. There was some luck involved. The first invading Mongol fleet was decimated by storms, and the second ravaged by one of Japan's legendary typhoons. With Mother Nature's help, the armies of medieval Japan were easily able to mop up what remained of the invaders, who had been unstoppable everywhere else in Eurasia. It took many, many years of civil war and power games, but Japan was eventually reunified by a powerful Dimeo called Nobunaga, and then cemented by his successor Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi had grand ambitions. He saw incredible potential in the unflinching, disciplined samurai armies of Japan. He thought he might use them to conquer China. Only problem is between Japan and China is Korea. And so Hideyoshi invaded Korea in 1592, as a means to get to China. The samurai absolutely dominated Korean armies on land, and soon had pillaged and annexed much of the peninsula. But to fully control Korea, and then have access to China, you must also control the seas around Korea, and that is where Hideyoshi and the Japanese armies faltered. A Korean admiral called Yee-soon-sun, a folk hero in Korea, but largely unknown in western histories, was quite possibly one of the greatest tactical naval minds of all time. In his famous fleet of turtle ships, Admiral Yee never lost a battle with the much bigger Japanese fleet. The Japanese were so decimated at sea that they were forced to withdraw their entire campaign, making it a failed invasion. The entire episode, interestingly, foreshadows almost exactly what would happen again, a few hundred years later in the 20th century, when Japan conquered and mistreated Korea similarly during World War II. But that's definitely a story for another podcast. After Hideyoshi died, a new powerful daimyo called Tokugawa rose to power, and was appointed Shogun by the Emperor. He's likely the most famous one in Japanese history. The Tokugawa Shogunate ushered in what's called the Edo period. Over two centuries of peace and prosperity, definitely a new golden age for Japan. Tokugawa did not achieve this without some very harsh government intervention. He imposed a strict samurai class system on all of Japanese society, and he also took Japan back into full isolation mode, cutting off almost all contact with the outside world. He even went so far as to ban the new technology of firearms entirely, mainly because they enabled any commoner to kill a highly trained and noble samurai, unthinkable in the outlook of this time period. The Edo period was one of those eras of refinement I talked about earlier. When all that outside influence that had poured in over the past centuries, interaction with China, Korea, and others was transformed into unique Japanese culture by turning inward afterwards. In some ways, Japanese society became stricter than ever before. Intolerant of individuality and outside influence, more than ever, every aspect of their lives from the bedroom to the dining room was governed by an incredibly elaborate code of etiquette, full of all kinds of rules and specific social norms and behaviors that were critical to follow. Most symbolic of this transformation was the way people thought about cooking and serving their cuisine. The Edo period was when a great shift in opinion about food occurred. When chefs spoke up and people began to really take dining more seriously, thus its prep and presentation became an integral aspect of Japanese culture. Find dining for East Asia. More than anywhere we've talked about before on this podcast, I think, presentation of food for the Japanese is a ritualistic pursuit of perfection. A common proverb was, and still is, I think, that man eats with his eyes as well as his mouth. The food is simple, the portions intentionally light and modest, but the colors, shapes, textures, and flavors are all balanced into something close to perfection. It's not just about what's on the plate, it's the entire setting that's taken into account. The plates themselves, the utensils, the room, even the conversations the diners are having are all judged when thinking about how good a meal is. This ceremonial, almost religious presentation of food is the result of an older Japanese cultural practice called Haikai. Haikai was a life outlook, a reference for the beauty of nature expressed through poetry and art. Before the Aedo period, Haikai only included the sacred senses of sight, sound, and smell. Taste was not recognized as elegant, in fact it had been considered vulgar. But that That all changed after Tokugawa brought on the Aedo period. Through ceremony and meal etiquette, cuisine became more sophisticated and refined, rivaling any hot cuisine in Europe. It was perhaps the result of a civilization's worth of accumulating ingredients and ideas from outside, and then long eras of peace for reflection and cultural growth. A strict society actually made for a cultural flourishing. Perhaps not unlike rules in the literary canon for what canon cannot be used in certain types of poems. These restrictions confine a poet into doing something creative they might not otherwise have come up with. Or of course, a little more relevant, how traditional recipes adhere to in the kitchen provide the baseline for cooks, to build off each other and create great dishes and meals. Restrictions on art force the artist to distill ideas to their purest essence, to make them work for the desired format. Like we mentioned, when introducing the section of the episode, there might not be a better analogy for describing what makes Japanese culture so Japanese. So through all this cultural advancement, taste and thus dining, we're finally taken seriously as high art. This new attention to food is the true birth of Japanese cuisine as we now know it today. Which speaking of, now that we've made it through the Ado period, I think we can pause the history and get straight to table talk. What can we say quickly and concisely right off the bat? The true heart of Japanese cuisine is definitely the sea. I mean, it is an island nation surrounded by waters teeming with fish. That's why the entire culinary tradition is based around it. Even greens like seaweed are the main through line across all of Japanese history. It's likely what the very first hunter gathers on the island subsisted on. The first farmers too. The first urbanites, the first imperial subjects and so on. They all ate and depended on seafood. And it's really no different today. Because no one in Japan is ever very far from the sea, the ideal became fish as fresh as could possibly be found. Unlike in the west where most fish was consumed as salted, smoked or otherwise preserved in the majority of cases, at least cooked, the Japanese, on the other hand, preferred to eat their high quality fish raw to experience its purest, ultimate flavor. There was still cooking involved. Common wisdom was that you could lightly grill a fish, or maybe simmer and poach it only if you were desperate or wanted to make a stock or simply didn't want to weigh something. Preservation was used only for surplus. In all other cases, raw was the way. From very early on, as is still done today, fish was cut into thin slices. Though the practice of dipping what we now call sashimi in soy sauce didn't start until midway through the Ado period. Even then soy sauce, which masks the flavor of many delicate types of fish, was only to be used in certain applications. This exceedingly high standard for freshness is part of what makes Japanese foods so delicious and special. The word shun is probably the most important in Japanese kitchens, and it translates to peak season or tastiest time. The exact window every year when a particular fish, fruit, or veggie is at its best. The obvious preference for fresh is not to say that preserved food didn't have a roll too. I'll come back to miso paste, but while we're talking about seafood, I of course have to mention dashi. Dashi just means stock in Japanese, but it almost always refers to the specific ubiquitous quick broth made from Ocean kelp and bonito. Bonito being dried, fermented, and then smoked fish flakes. In a quiet taste if you've never had them, but incredible vessels of fishy umami flavor when properly applied. Dashi is almost essential to Japanese cooking as rice itself. Flip through any cookbook and you'll quickly see that without some good kelp and bonito broth around, even of the instant variety, you won't be able to make many recipes. One final note on fish here, sushi in its original form was not the fresh fish we think of today. It evolved as a preservation method, where a bite-sized piece of fish was salted and rolled in vinegar soaked rice and left to cure. Initially, you had to discard the bacteria-lit and rice to get to the preserved fish, but in the 15th century chefs figured out a quicker way to ferment it, and then the rice roll could be consumed too. Eventually, unfermented sushi with rossy food wrapped in rice took shape during when else the Aido period. To accompany the fish of your choice, there are an endless array of Japanese vegetables to choose from. Many of them imported from Korea or China and then modified over generations. Greens, cabbage, lotus root, mushrooms, cucumber, sweet potato, ginger. Most unique to Japan has got to be the ubiquity of seaweed. Plentiful and salty, these sea greens have rounded out the Japanese diet as its central vegetable for millennia. Also of special mention is Daikon, the giant Japanese take on the radish, and the impossibly thin strips it is cut into, are probably the most well-known vegetable of the region. Soy beans, too, are of course of particular note. Soy was introduced to Japan by China around 300 BC, and it has since become a major player in the Japanese diet. It can be boiled into soy milk, served cold as a mame, made into tofu, the technique of which was also introduced from China, and it was a vital source of protein for vegetarian Buddhist monks. Daikon also of course be fermented. The Japanese version of fermented soy paste is called miso, another critical ingredient and flavor in so many Japanese recipes. There are endless different types, some of them quite refined and expensive, different ventages, local brands, yellow miso, white or red miso, some light and mild, other's dark, pungent and salty. It was not unlike the European obsession over wine. You can learn even more about miso in past episodes about China on this podcast. As discussed before, and same two in Japan, soy sauce was originally just the leftover byproduct of making miso, which is what people were initially after. But soon people discovered just how delicious this leftover sauce was. Today it's as prevalent across Japanese cooking as the miso it's born with. There's a huge aspect of Japanese cuisine that I've just barely mentioned so far. Do you know what it is? Rice, of course, is the best that we've saved for last. It was brought over to Japan with some of the first Neolithic immigrants from Asia. The central staple which binds all of the Japanese diet together. Almost all people consume it daily, often for breakfast, lunch and always for dinner. Across its history, rice was ideally served as the central source of calories and amel, accompanied by two or three sides to complement it. Even more often though, especially for the common poor, it was a whole meal just on its own. The words for rice and meal can be interchangeable in the Japanese language. Rice here is not exactly the same as we've seen in the rest of the world. It was shorter-grained, sticky when cooked and is relatively sweet. To this day, the Japanese don't really eat long-grain rice. Much of their cuisine is based on that special quality of the rice that they use and the fact that it sticks together. You can pick it up with chopsticks and morsels. The respect and reverence given to rice is so great that it's often not flavored or seasoned with spices or sauces at all. It is always boiled and kept as pure as possible. Other foods may be added on top of it, but should not saturate it with sauce. The rice should be pure and bland to start with and basically remain so. This is a kind of respect for the natural flavor and aroma that the rice has all on its own as nature made it. One exception to this rule of purity is mochi. Rice cakes that are made by pounding steamed rice into new shapes. This so-called corruption of rice is allowed because the idea here is that you're concentrating the spirit of the flavor and actually making it pure. It is an intensification, and mochi is one of those things that you consume on New Year's as a special occasion. Much of the same can be said about sake. Even though it's also thought of as a corruption of rice, it is considered raising it to a finer and more spiritual level. Sake plays a very important role in religious ceremony and festivals. It is the food of the gods and the shinto religion, and part of all sorts of traditions across the islands. In the 8th century, Japan learned via cultural diffusion from China how to transform their rice into noodles. Later noodles made from flour were introduced as well, and the Japanese had soon made their own famous pasta creations. The udon noodle, popular in western Japan, and then the buckwheat or soba noodle introduced in the 14th and 15th century. Noodles became especially popular in the 1600s. During the 8th period, you know what, I'm just not going to say at this time. Ramen are of course a much more recent invention. Too recent to dive into this episode. But I'll just say for now that the ramen tradition drew from a longer tradition of other noodleing that came before it. Originally in China, then to Korea, and to Japan. Each time twisting into something new and unique. Well, before I get too far ahead of myself again, I think that about wraps up what I wanted to talk about today. Be assured, this is not the last we've heard from Korea and Japan. But now, when they come back into our forthcoming discussions about the world post-Columbus, and it's shaping into the modern one, we should now have a pretty good foundation on the origins and cuisines of the cultures in Japan and Korea, who we so tragically were neglecting before. More broadly, I hope we've established an understanding of those bigger concepts I made out of kimchi and umami. Not just in reference to flavors and ingredients, but to the cultural outlook of and how human societies just tend to work. Looking at the humble origins, and then ultimately highly advanced destinations of Korean and Japanese society, really illustrates how, despite our rapid rise on the world stage, and our reputation for ingenuity and technological advancement, humans on an individual level aren't the most original creatures. Despite images in popular culture, we don't advance on the shoulders of a few geniuses with brilliant ideas. Rather, we make new things all the time, but most often we do that by taking something someone else has done, either an ancestor or perhaps a neighbor just across the street, and then shaping it a new according to our own experiences. Another word for it is that loaded one, cultural appropriation, which like we talked about, of course has its darker side. But I think the vast majority of exchanges and copycating that has occurred across history has overall had a positive impact on us. So I hope I've dispensed any idea of shame for this reality that I somehow am looking down on Korea and Japan for being unoriginal offshoots of China or something like that. I'm not at all. That's how chefs operate in the kitchen, stealing and modifying recipes in a world with seemingly nothing new under the sun. So to all humans and all things, what others have done is the ultimate inspiration. If we didn't steal and reshape each other's ideas, I'm pretty sure humanity would still be smashing rocks together in the Stone Age. So I'll see you next time on the history of food. Visit anthrochef.blog for recipes in the meantime, you know we'll be making some kimchi. And thanks as always for listening and spreading the word.