Bushido or shintō ?

Travelling from Tokyo to Ise-jingū, to Paris, Spain and back to Japan

This is the result of a promise I made to Yukako Saito, founder of GEN, Genuine Education Network, and Justin Yip, who works side by side with Yukako.

I had never heard of them nor of GEN when I got to being interviewed by Justin who was then recruiting a group of people from different nationalities and backgrounds to go visit and learn about some of the ways and habits of the people of Mie, one of Japan’s most ancient and historically important provinces of Japan.

Thanks to both Yukako and Justin I soon embarked for one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life, filled with unexpected and beautiful encounters, packed with humanity and kindness, a true voyage that allowed me to get a glimpse of the nature of the Japanese soul, of its wonderful culture and, as that was the main goal of the journey, of its traditions, skills and ways in preparing food and food products, both casual and sophisticated.

I decided to write on the influence of shintō in the culinary world.

Working on this topic I soon sensed that the question might be

« bushido or shintō ? ».

It does sound a bit ridiculous and I do admit a bit preposterous.

I am not a scholar and my knowledge of shintō is not even that of a 3 years old.

My knowledge of Japan, its people and thousands years of culture comes from books and cinema, but I know a bit about food and ways to prepare it in many countries and different cultures.

From Japan to Brazil, Burkina-Faso to China, Canada to Spain, Argentina to Denmark, not to speak of France, India, Morocco or Italy, I have had the opportunity to travel and eat, enter the kitchens of a number of restaurants, get acquainted with many chefs and cooks, famous or not. Thus I have witnessed a number of things and often wondered why it is that Japanese cooks are so often frantically sought after and admired throughout the world.

Little by little, the more I ate at Japanese restaurants and could witness truly great chefs hiring Japanese cooks in their « brigade », the more I got convinced that there must be something in the Japanese mindset and culture that explains why.

Two famous Chefs helped me without knowing it: Jiro Ono, whom I do not know but through the « Jiro dreams of sushi » documentary by David Gelb, and Alain Passard, another 3 star Michelin, Chef at l’Arpège in Paris, who’s become a close friend of mine and has given me access to his kitchen and staff. I do not pretend these two have got a magic wand that has allowed me to understand what I can sense but they’ve certainly given me more than a hint.

Is Japanese tradition embodied and thriving in shintō ? I do not know but, as John Lennon and Paul McCartney once sang it: « I’ve got a feeling »…

The search for perfection, both typically japanese and typical of 3 star Chefs, to stick to my self-inflicted topic, can be mistaken for a maniac search, a psychotic behavior, but I now understand that it is first the recognition that perfection cannot be attained, only approached, and that it is one’s honor to do his best, always, as a token of appreciation to the many deities that accompany us through our life, the kami.

One thing shintō practices and rituals teach us is that nothing is ever done, thus nothing really matters, everything is recycled again and again.

Time is of the essence but we do not live twice so we should do our best while we live and transmit what we know to our fellow earthlings and companions.

A bit cryptic, isn’t it? But we do sense that we are talking of universal values, not Japanese only, don’t we ?

One anecdote might help us understand.

I was once wandering in the Tsukiji market, asking myself where I could eat wonderful sushi. I asked a man who’d been working in the market for all of his life, as a pharmacist and first aid provider. He gave me five names and told me of the hierarchy of restaurants he made; the first one was 160 years old, the second was 90 years old, the third one was 50 years old, the fourth one was 40 years old and the fifth one was « 8 years old only but very good and hardworking », as he put it. 

I then understood that this man, and this is typically Japanese, would give more credit to the oldest than to the youngest. Not because of age but because of the years of experience passed in performing the same gestures over and over again and transmitting that particular knowledge from generation to generation.

During our trip to Mie, we went to the Hariyama restaurant in Nabari, a kaiseki. There again we were presented with the marvelous food and plates that have been carefully made the same way for many years, centuries even. Everyone will take pride in being able to transmit things the way they were, have always been and should remain.

In « his » documentary, Jiro Ono states that he would not trust his son or his first « chef de cuisine » before a number of years. Not 2 or 3 years but 10 to 20 and that he himself would not have dared create a new sushi without years of probing it. Again not a year or two but 10 or 12.

In our contemporary world these are attitudes one does not live with easily.

In the food business, in the Chefs and restaurants world, capacity to change the more often the better, fusion of products and techniques coming from very different countries and cultures, mix of products that makes one wonder what season this is and perpetual search for « new » are the most valued. Time is an enemy.

You have to start young, to open your first restaurant before the age of 30, to own other restaurants if you can, to impress your customers with tricks and fumes. It is as there was no time left, as if we would not have descendants, as if we were not able to project ourselves in the future via our ability to transmit a gesture, a way of doing, thus a way of living.

Modern Japan, starting at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, has had a violent history and a tradition to celebrate a number of wartime and warriors’ values via the Bushido, for example.

Bushido tells us « who to serve and how to do it best »; this could very well be the motto of all restaurants and chefs anywhere on our planet. It certainly is still very much true in modern day Japan.

Such train of thought has a real value but its very light hides a profound darkness, namely violence and abuse, too often present in the daily life of many an apprentice in that extremely demanding universe of kitchens and restaurants.

To us French people and to many westerners alike, Japan is still better symbolized by the Bushido than it is by shintō. It is as if we were kids who prefer to play violent video games rather than read poetry, lead a meaningful life, respect our environment and take care of our planet.

To most of us, Japanese culture and ways have become known in the late 50’s, more by a minority, through the works of cinematographers such as Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, and increasingly popular through the 60’s and 70’s thanks to the works of Kurosawa, again, Ōshima, Mishima, Kawabata and Tanizaki among others.

Most of these brilliant men had been born and raised in what I would characterize as a « Bushido Japan », a war-driven country where the « code of honor » and supposedly samurai traditions were held as the utmost of values in a military state; they conveyed some of that tradition in their works and masterpieces. But all this was nothing compared to the waves of popularity and love for anything Japanese that swept the western world during the 80’s and 90’s with the outburst of manga and TV series.

Although artists such as Osamu Tesuka, Hayao Miyazaki or Jiro Taniguchi, Satoshi Kon, Isao Takahata and some others profess a vision of our relation with nature and our fellow men, most of what has been worldwide success is nowadays related to violence, super-heroes and meaningless dramas.

Nevertheless millions of us have had a glimpse at some of the most exquisite traditions of Japanese beliefs through such masterpieces as Tonari-no-Totoro (My neighbor Totoro) and a number of other feature films, novels and manga.

As Alejandro Jodorowsky, one other visionary artist, puts it : « Un verdadero arte debe cambiar el espiritu de la gente, la alma  » (True art must change the spirit, the soul of people).

Maybe food and the art of food does just that, as well as literature or film, in many different and tiny ways.

As David Chang, another famous and acclaimed Chef, puts it : « I realize that the light side is a much more difficult path to follow ».

It seems that the days of the all too powerful Chefs, dictators in their kitchens and all charm outside and on TV, are numbered. It might take time but the countdown has started and some of the most renowned, such as René Redzepi or David Chang, are expressing their wish to walk on the light side and publicly so.

So the time might soon be that of a more quiet approach, both tranquil and extremely professional.

Time, seasons, quality of locally produced ingredients, precision, economy and beauty of the gesture, « beauty of the hand » as Alain Passard emphasizes it, all this will become the epitome of modern cuisine.

As it has been so for centuries in the shintō ways of cooking for the deities, everyday at the Ise-jingū shrine.

One might think that this is all too Japanese and that it’ll be a whole other story elsewhere. That would be so untrue. Just think of the SlowFood movement for instance, not to speak of GEN, of course. The values and beliefs they convey are very similar to what shintō teaches us.

And what if I’d tell you that all this is already at work in Spain, of all places, in the province of Andalusia, from Sevilla to Granada and Almería to Cádiz?

Time for another anecdote.

I have a house in Andalusia where I try to spend as much time as I can. I speak Spanish, which helps, and I have been pretty much everywhere in Spain since my early childhood.

One thing strikes me each time I spend time over there, it is the similarity between the Spanish people, more so the Andalusian people, and the Japanese. I often joke that Japan is Andalusia with method.

A few years back I found it amazing that « la cocina a la plancha » and the teppanyaki are so much alike.

My two trips to Japan, and the Mie trip specifically, have convinced me further of the similarities of character one can find between the Japanese and Andalusian people.

But it is only a few weeks back that I finally got what I consider to be the most daring proof of all, an historical one.

Andalusia and its people so much attracted the Japanese that the first ever embassy from Japan to Europe, held by Hasekura Tsunenaga on behalf of his Daimyo, Date Masamune of Sendai, that very first embassy which set foot in Andalusia, namely in Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 5 October 1614, that embassy itself saw 6 samurai of its escort fall in love with the country and subsequently asked and were granted authorization to settle there.

Their 800 descendants to this very day mostly live in the town of Coria del Río where, in 2013, Prince Hiro-no-miya Naruhito Shinno, heir to the imperial throne of Japan, came to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the establishment of relations between Spain and Japan.

I know you are wondering where I am driving you. The answer is plain and simple: I don’t know but I can tell a sign when I see one.

If you’d know that area of Andalusia, marshes and rice fields along the Guadalquivir, you would very well be convinced, as I am, that all this might be part of a plan, maybe a design of Amaterasu-ōmikami herself, goddess of the sun, most certainly at work in Andalusia.

The quiet solemnity and peace that radiate from the Ise-jingū shrine, possibly the most worshipped of all Japan, could seem at worst absent of our today lives or fading away, at best hidden, but tradition lives on in the most important of shintō rituals, the periodic rebuilding of the temples of the shrine.

Eternity of the same practice, transmission of the craftsmen’ knowledge, simplicity of the beautiful. No frills and no artefacts.

Could it be THE way for modern cooks and chefs ?