Then Automobiles, Now its Washoku!
Boyé Lafayette De Mente Japan kept itself isolated from the Western world from the late 1630s until the mid-1800s. When that exclusion policy was decreed by the Tokugawa shogunate it prohibited any Japanese who happened to be abroad at that time (and there were thousands) from ever returning home.
It also made it a capital offense for any more Japanese to leave the country. Except for a small company of Dutch traders kept under guard by samurai warriors on a man-made islet in Nagasaki Harbor, the decree also forbade the entry of foreigners into Japan.
But then in the early 1850s the United States sent a naval task force to Japan demanding that the country eliminate its isolation policy, and giving the government a deadline for meeting the demand.
The arrival of the Americans in Japan resulted in two civil wars, one that ended the Tokugawa Shogunate and the other that firmly established a new government in place.
The Japanese were determined that they would not allow their country to be colonized by Westerns—a fate that had befallen much of Asia. They sent the leaders of the two civil wars on several missions to the U.S. and to England, Germany, France and Italy to study their constitutional forms of government to see which one would be best for Japan.
After several years of research in Europe these extraordinary ex-samurai warriors determined that the only way they could protect Japan from being swallowed up by the West was to become a combined industrial-military power as quickly as possible, without being unduly hampered by human rights and other Western ideas.
Not only did the Japanese create an industrial and trading superpower in the next 15 years, they also built a powerful army and navy, and then set out to become a colonial power just like the Western countries.
Around 1915 a Japanese nationalist wrote a book entitled “The Coming War with the United States.” Talk about long-term planning!
Within ten years after the U.S. defeated Japan in 1945 the Japanese were well on their way back to superpower status. First came such tiny things as transistor radios, then came motorcycles, then came cars. Next came virtually everything Americans and Europeans used in their daily lives.
And then came sushi (raw fish!) and ramen, and udon, and soba and soy sauce and a stream of other Japanese foods that until the 1950s and beyond most Westerners wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole, much less a pair of chopsticks.
And then came animation, and comics and manga and digital games that have taken over much of the so-called entertainment industries worldwide.
Now, the Japanese, on a private as well as a government level (with the prime minister in the forefront of the effort), have gotten serious about exporting Japan’s food culture on a massive scale.
Given the smarts and skills of the Japanese—and the fundamental fact that traditional Japanese cuisine is healthier than typical Western fare—they will very likely succeed in this new effort.
This new export effort refers to washoku (wah-shoh-kuu), or Japanese food, as the soul of Japan’s culture. It is certainly an extraordinary manifestation of the best of Japanese culture.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 the country’s famous Admiral Yamamoto said he was afraid they had awakened a sleeping giant. I wonder if any American leader had any such misgivings in the early 1850s when Admiral Perry was sent to Edo (Tokyo) to force the Japanese to open their doors to the West.
Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente
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Te see a list of the author’s 40-plus pioneer books on Japan, go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/, or key his full name into Amazon.com's book search window.
