Factbook

In 1872 two important books on Western food, recipes and cooking were published in Japan: Seiyo Ryoritsu,The Expert on Western Cookery, and Seiyo Ryori Shinan, Guide to Western Cooking. Both were written by Robun Kanagaki (1829-1894), a well-known author and journalist.

While Japan’s first book on Western etiquette, lifestyles and hospitality was published five years earlier, in 1867, these two books by Kanagaki are often viewed as the first Western cookery books published in Japanese. 

The Expert on Western Cookery was published in two illustrated volumes. The original English names of dishes were included as well as descriptions in Japanese covering: soups, fish, sauces, and boiling and baking.

The book was based on translations of recipes used in the foreign port settlement in Yokohama with its contingent of British curry-eating merchant sailors, and contains one illustration of a Westerner offering a meat dish to a rather perplexed looking Japanese guest. 

As well as recipes, including Japan’s first for Curry Rice, Kanagaki stressed that easting Western food was a patriotic duty and vital to Japan’s future. Up until then, most Japanese people hadn’t eaten meat as it had been banned on and off for more than a thousand years.

Published the same year that the Meiji Emperor (1852-1912) and his family announced that they had begun to eat beef and mutton, the book’s comprehensive range of recipes for meat dishes including curried beef, mutton, veal and fowl, started a national love affair with curry or Kare raisu as the popular dish is now known in Japan. 

It is known from such books as the Nihon Shoki, The Chronicles of Japan, one of Japan’s oldest books, that Japanese Emperors did eat meat in ancient times and enjoyed hunting. We also know that pig farms existed in Japan. But with the introduction of Buddhism in the 6^thcentury, the eating of meat was prohibited – with the exception of game, which was considered by some to bemedicinal.

Most Japanese cookbooks didn’t include recipes for game and other meats. And most people didn’t eat meat or drink milk, considering it to be a social taboo – even during periods when it was not technically prohibited. 

Japan’s Meiji Era (1868-1912) marked a turning point during which Japan came out of its 250 years of isolation and made significant contact with the West. Learning about Western food, etiquette and eating meat were considered important for Japan’s development into a modern nation with a strong and healthy population. Not everyone though agreed with this way of thinking. Some Buddhist monks, for instance, argued that eating meat would destroy the soul of the nation.

This, however, didn’t deter a small section of Japanese society who were eating meat well before the Emperor had announced that he had become a meat convert. These were trendy carnivore early adopters. Kanagaki wrote about them in his satirical illustrated book, published in 1871, Aguranabe, The Beef Eater. The book portrays trendy experimental urban free-spirited individuals who were proud to walk on the wild side and eat meat.

Kanagaki and others including Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901) took the view that eating beef was a symbol of modernity.

Some local meat companies even quoted Fukuzawa in their promotional materials:  “We Japanese must also open our eyes and begin to receive the benefits to be had from beef and milk,” one quotes him as saying.

At that time no one would have predicted that Kobe Beef would become the world’s most desirable and expensive beef.