A Thousand Years of Japanese Banquets

[Saionji Shonagon]

Was just made aware of an article that may be of interest. "A Thousand Years of Japanese Banquets" appears on p. 104 of "The Meal: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 2001."

It can be read online or downloaded from the link below.

books.google.co.uk/books?id=GsNyprRS7EIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Meal:+Proceedings+of+the+Oxford+Symposium+on+Food+and+Cookery+2001&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qmtpUdTdL8urPPKrgMAE#v=onepage&q=The%20Meal%3A%20Proceedings%20of%20the%20Oxford%20Symposium%20on%20Food%20and%20Cookery%202001&f=false

[solveig]

"A Thousand Years of Japanese Banquets" is definitely an interesting article. Some of the stuff that Hosking writes embraces conventional wisdom of several decades ago. The people recreating premodern Japanese meals at Japanese museums appear to disagree with Hosking on several matters. So too do a number of Japanese food historians. Regardless, yes there are several interesting types of meals which were consumed in premodern Japan. There is a whole book out in English just on the Dajosai which was performed once each imperial reign as I recall. The spoons which Hosking writes about have long thins handles and fig shaped bowls. They show up in various drawings of premodern banquets. Kaiseki for the tea ceremony doe not have courses. Hassun does show up at one point, but that is toward the end of the meal and does not have its own zen. Rather, diners pick a few nibbly bits from the hassun and deposit them on their zen. There is also some interesting bits with two types of pickles and hot water at the end of the kaiseki for the tea ceremony. Incidentally, I formally studied kaiseki for the tea ceremony in Tokyo for over a year. There is precisely one school which advertises in Tanko and they operate in three cities on Honshu. I do not know where the students at the Urasenke Tea College in Kyoto study kaiseki. However, Tanko is the monthly journal produced in Japanese by Urasenke. Iconographic evidence clearly dates honzen dining of some sort earlier than claimed by Hosking.