This is Part 1 of a 47-part series of weekly blog posts looking at curries from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures.
Kanagawa Prefecture (map by Lincun for Wikimedia Commons)
Yokosuka, in Kanagawa Prefecture, is the perfect spot for a naval base. It occupies most of the Miura Peninsula, which forms a natural breakwater protecting the mouth of Tokyo Bay. The establishment of an Imperial Japanese Navy base there in the late 19th century gave Yokosuka an unexpected connection to the nation’s culinary history.
In its early days, the navy was plagued by the painful and often fatal disease beriberi. Food historian Katarzyna J. Cwiertka writes in her excellent book “Modern Japanese Cuisine” that 12 percent of all Japanese sailors were found to be suffering from the condition in 1883. A high-ranking navy doctor named Kanehiro Takagi was aware that beriberi was rare in Western navies, whose sailors more often ate meat. He theorized that a high-protein diet might improve sailors’ health. Efforts were begun to Westernize navy meals by including more meat, and curry was one of the dishes used for that purpose. It became a staple of Japanese navy cooking.
Yokosuka shipyard underconstruction ca. 1870 (public domain photo via Wikimedia commons)
Today, we know that beriberi is caused by a lack of vitamin B, which is associated with the heavy use of nutrient-poor white rice. But Takagi’s theory was a good one for its time, Cwiertka writes, because the concept of vitamins was not scientifically understood until the 1920s.
Meanwhile, curry’s prominence in military cooking in an era of large-scale conscription, and the influence of military cuisine on other forms of institutional food – most notably school lunches – helped make curry a de facto national dish.
The varieties of curry now available in Japan are beyond counting. For a series of weekly blog posts beginning today, I plan to eat one type of curry from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures. From within each prefecture, I will have many to choose from. (I’m open to recommendations.)
Not surprisingly, a number of curries are marketed with naval themes. One of these is Yokosuka Navy Curry, which I have chosen to represent Kanagawa Prefecture in my “Around Japan in 47 Curries” project. According to the label, this particular curry is based on the dish served at the city’s popular Wood Island restaurant. I purchased a single-serving package of it for 580 yen at Japan Food Market, a temporary-looking shop in the Koshigaya Laketown Mall in Saitama Prefecture.
Unfortunately, I found it rather bland. The chunks of beef it included seemed to be mostly fat. As a snooty 21st-century gourmet, I was not too impressed. But if I were a malnourished 19th-century draftee, I’m sure I would have gobbled it with gusto.
And with 46 curries to go, I’m sure there are some good ones out there.
The Academy Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, Feb. 24, in Los Angeles (which means Monday morning here in Japan). As usual, not all of the films have come to Japan yet. But there are 17 that you can see right now, including two that are legitimately available online for free.
I’ve put together a list by cross-referencing the official Oscar site, IMDB, Metropolis magazine, Tsutaya, YouTube and other sources. Click on the titles to see Japanese trailers.
This film has been nominated for:
Best Picture
Best Supporting Actor (Alan Arkin)
Best Film Editing
Best Original Score
Best Sound Editing
Best Sound Mixing
Best Adapted Screenplay
Metropolis magazine lists Kanto area theaters showing this filmhere. (Also, it’ll be out on disc here in March.)
This film has been nominated for:
Best Picture
Best Actor (Hugh Jackman)
Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway)
Best Costume Design
Best Makeup and Hair Styling
Best Original Song
Best Production Design
Best Sound Mixing
Metropolis magazine lists Kanto area theaters showing this film here.
This film has been nominated for:
Best Picture
Best Cinematography
Best Director (Ang Lee)
Best Film Editing
Best Original Score
Best Original Song
Best Production Design
Best Sound Editing
Best Sound Mixing
Best Visual Effects
Best Adapted Screenplay
Metropolis lists Kanto area theaters showing this film here.
This film has been nominated for:
Best Costume Design
Note: Costume designer Eiko Ishioka appears to be the only Japanese nominee in this year’s Academy Awards. If she wins, it will be a posthumous honor, as she died in January 2012. She previously won an Oscar for “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992).
You can rent “Mirror, Mirror” at the video store now. See its Tsutaya listing here.
This film has been nominated for:
Best Picture
Best Actor (Bradley Cooper)
Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence)
Best Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro)
Best Supporting Actress (Jacki Weaver)
Best Director (David O. Russell)
Best Film Editing
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Warner Mycal cinema chain has some showtime and venue information in Japanese, starting here.
The Year of the Dragon has just ended, and the Year of the Snake has just begun.
To mark the occasion, I have made a very quick video guide to the next 12 years of zodiac animals.
The sculptures shown in this video are by Seibo Kitamura (1884-1987), a native of Nagasaki whose most famous work is the Peace statue in that city. It’s one of the few artworks I’ve ever seen that personifies peace in male form, rather than as a goddess. The blog “Nagasaki Perspectives” has photos, plus critical comments.
Meanwhile, to see my “12 zodiac animals in 12 seconds” from a year ago, go here.
When I was in Kyoto for the Japan Writers Conference last month, a cephalopod surprise was not the only unusual treat I picked up in the city’s famous Nishiki Market. I also bought an akebia fruit.
These fruits grow on wild vines in Japanese forests, and my trip to Kyoto in November was the first time I had ever seen them. It struck me as quite a coincidence because October was first time I ever heard of them, even after living in Japan for many years. Chalk it up to the darake effect.
The English word “akebia” – which is just a Latinized version of the Japanese word “akebi” – became part of my vocabulary when I read about the fruit in Kevin Short’s nature column. It probably would have been a fleeting part of my vocabulary if I had not encountered the real thing so soon after.
The fruit is a fleshy pod that splits itself open when ripe, revealing a mass of glistening, gelatinous pulp inside. You can eat it with a spoon, or just dive in face-first. I chose a spoon.
According to Kevin Short, the “sweet pulp” is “downright delicious.” To my disappointment, the akebia I ate was almost completely flavorless. It was like eating paper.
The texture, however, was a little more interesting. The pulp was firm enough to hold its shape when I spread the rind open to get at it, and it continued to hold together as I dug in with my spoon. Once it was in my mouth, though, it felt softer than custard pudding – aside from the 30 or 40 hard black seeds in each bite. It turns out that, below the surface, there were more seeds than there was pulp. Fortunately, the pulp quickly turned into a near-liquid, and I was able to separate it from the seeds simply by straining it through my teeth. I spat the seeds out.
It was a lot of effort to obtain a small volume of edible matter from a fairly good-sized fruit. Considering that I had paid 500 yen for it, the cost-benefit ratio was rather unfavorable.
After the fact, I did some Internet research on akebia. According to Wikipedia, “Sweet but rather ‘insipid’ taste is probably an apt description.” I’d put more emphasis on the second of the two adjectives they used.
On the other hand, the gardening website Paghat.com had this to say: “When the pod first cracks open, it reveals what resembles a sack of insect or amphibian eggs. The sticky pulp is at that time at its sweetest, & very pleasant on the pallate [sic], reminiscent of a mild melon-flavored or guava-flavored tapioca.” It seems that Short and Paghat had better luck with their akebia than I had with mine. Even so, I’m not tempted to spend 500 yen for another shot at it.
However, Short’s column also contained this intriguing statement: “In most parts of Japan, the thick rinds are simply discarded, but in some parts of the Tohoku region, it is these rinds that are greatly prized. Here the pulp is discarded, as the rinds are packed with miso-flavored ground meat and various vegetables and fried to make sumptuous snacks that are eaten during the winter months.”
Hmm. If I ever see that on a menu, I may try akebia again after all.
Trees have it hard in Tokyo. There aren’t very many of them (at least outside of parks), and those that do exist are often subjected to extreme indignities. Instead of being carefully pruned, they tend to be thoroughly de-branched. Victims of this treatment look more like lumpy telephone poles than living organisms. In the fall, as soon as the foliage changes color, it is common to see crews of workmen methodically knocking every leaf to the ground so they can all be swept up and trucked away as quickly as possible.
That is why it has given me so much pleasure to see the ginkgo trees along Showa-dori avenue in Ginza left unmolested. Here is a Tokyo street where trees are allowed to be trees.
Vikas Swarup presented a sneak preview of his next novel, “The Accidental Apprentice,” to the Japan Writers Conference in Kyoto yesterday (Nov. 10, 2012). The book will be published in Janaury.
Swarup’s previous novels are “Q&A” (the basis of the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”) and “Six Suspects” (which Swarup mentioned is also in the process of becoming a film).
Swarup, appearing at the Japan Writers Conference for a third consecutive year, gave a reading of the opening pages of “The Accidental Apprentice” before taking questions from conference-goers.
It begins with a young Indian woman named Sapna Sinha sitting in a jail cell, reflecting on how she came to be accused of murder. She traces her troubles back to the day when, on a lunch break from her sales job at an electronics store, she visited a temple seeking expiation over a death for which she feels responsible. (It sounded as if this was not the death that led to her murder charge, but presumably all will be made clear as the novel unfolds.) At the temple, an old man plucked her out of the crowd, introduced himself as a fabulously wealthy industrialist whose companies produce everything “from toothpaste to turbines,” and said he wanted to recruit Sapna as his heir — if she would agree to undergo seven tests. It sounded like a fishy deal, so Sapna sensibly refused. At least, she refused at first…
In the question-and-answer period after the reading, Swarup said he believes it is important to start a story with a strong hook, so readers will stick around to see what happens.
In addition to being a best-selling novelist, Swarup is also the consul-general of India for the Osaka-Kobe area. He therefore referred to himself as a “weekend writer” whose day job keeps him too busy to write during the week. But he cheerily remarked that having a non-writing career freed him from some of the concerns that likely burden full-time fiction writers, such as meeting deadlines or trying to guess the tastes of the market.
All three of his novels so far have been set in India. He said that people in this country sometimes ask why he doesn’t write about Japan. He tells them that if he did, his stories would be all about yakuza gangsters — and his Japanese friends might not like that. But his characters couldn’t be ordinary Japanese people, he says, because they are too nice, calm, polite and orderly to write exciting stories about them.
Having arrived in Kyoto today for this weekend’s Japan Writers Conference, I spent an the afternoon wandering around town, with a particular focus on the always enjoyable Nishiki Market. I treated myself to various goodies, including this boiled octopus on a stick. If you think this looks good simply as an octopus, wait till you see what happens when you bite into its head…
Did you know that Tom Baker is stylish British animator?
It’s true – but I’m not that Tom Baker. (His website is here. )
The Tom Baker whose blog you are reading now is neither stylish nor British, but I can lay claim to a half-evening-long career as an animator. The following video contains all 65 seconds of my entire body of work:
The point of this video is to promote the 6th annual Japan Writers Conference. I’ve been to the past three JWCs, and I highly recommend them to anyone in Japan who is interested in writing in English.
Toyota’s Prius automobile is world-famous for its efficient combination of a gasoline engine and an electric motor.
I recently learned that the efficiency of an ice cream bar can be improved through a similar hybrid technique.
A major advantage of an ice cream bar is that it can be coated in sweet substances such as chocolate. But you can’t pick up a chocolate-coated ice cream bar with your fingers. Up until now, the state-of-the art solution to this problem was to use a wooden stick as a handle.
However, ice cream bars have to be individually wrapped for shipment and sale. Approximately one-third of the space inside the wrapper goes to waste. It contains nothing but stick and air.
A product from Japan’s Lotte confectionery company solves this problem by combining an ice cream bar with a treat that you can handle with your fingers – namely, an ice cream sandwich.
Some readers commenting on this post have alerted me to the fact that this isn’t necessarily a Japanese invention. Scroll down to read what they have to say about products already using the same concept elsewhere in the world.
Anyway, the construction of this frozen treat allows you to nibble your way down a vanilla ice cream bar coated in bitter chocolate that is studded with crunchy cookie crumbs – and when you get to the end, you’re left holding not a stick, but a petite ice cream sandwich between two little chocolate cookies.
Genius!
Lotte sells this under its Ghana brand, using the slogan “ikko de nido oishii” (delicious two ways in one piece). I recently purchased a box of four for 298 yen at a grocery store. They are sold individually at convenience stores for a somewhat higher price.
As ice cream novelties go, this is probably a fairly green one. No trees are killed to make sticks, there’s less post-consumer waste, and their carbon footprint is likely reduced by the fact that they pack (and therefore ship) more efficiently.
But here’s a note of caution to greedy ice-cream lovers: This treat is narrower than a conventional ice cream bar, which means that you aren’t getting more ice cream. Instead, you’re getting the same amount of ice cream delivered in a technologically sleek way.
In other words, ice cream engineers were not the only ones involved in developing this product. A supporting role was played by ice cream accountants.
A startlingly good movie came out in Japan this year. It’s called “Uchu Kyodai,” or “Space Brothers,” directed by Yoshitaka Mori. I began watching it with modest expectations, but soon found myself utterly charmed and even moved. I actually shed a tear at one point.
It’s about two brothers who make a childhood vow to become astronauts, but then follow different trajectories in adult life. Many years later, little brother Hibito (Masaki Okada) is still chasing that far-fetched dream while big brother Mutta (Shun Oguri) has settled on a more down-to-earth career designing cars.
Objectively, Mutta has made the more realistic choice. He has what should be a rewarding job that calls on his intelligence and creativity. But even the best-laid plans can go awry. Mutta’s boss is a clueless old stuffed suit who fails to appreciate his underling’s work – and soon that underling is out of work.
Meanwhile, Hibito has in fact become an astronaut and is living in Florida, where he is preparing for a NASA mission meant to lay the groundwork for human colonization of the moon. News coverage turns Hibito into a minor celebrity just as Mutta’s life is falling apart.
But then, Mutta receives a letter from JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) confirming his registration to take the qualifying exam for an astronaut training program. For Mutta, this is completely unexpected. Hibito had signed his brother up without telling him.
At first Mutta is resentful. Then he realizes he has nothing better to do. Then he starts to get into the idea. So, he goes and takes the exam – but there are many more hurdles to clear before he can finally put on a spacesuit.
Impressive realism
Early in Mutta’s training, Hibito finds himself in serious danger after an accident on the moon. At this point, I couldn’t help thinking, “Here we go: Now they’re going to have to put together a crack team to go and rescue Hibito, and for some reason Mutta will be considered indispensable for it, so they’ll end his training early and rush him into space where he can be the one to save his brother’s life.”
I often make such jaded guesses while watching Hollywood blockbusters. The bigger the movie is, the likelier I am to be right. But “Space Brothers” is an admirably realistic movie. Mutta’s training still has a couple of years to go, and he will not be leaving Earth any time soon. Whatever Hibito’s fate on the moon may be, he’s going to face it alone.
In a related difference from Hollywood convention, most of the film is about Mutta doing the work of preparing to become an astronaut. In most American movies these days, all of the hard work and study and testing and repetition and drudgery would be compressed into a brief montage to clear the way for the big action scenes. But hard work and preparation is a major part of what this movie is about. The only high-profile Hollywood picture I can think of offhand that has a similar focus is “An Officer and a Gentleman” – and that came out way back in 1982. Lots of movies have a “follow your dream” message. Fewer have a more meaningful “work for your dream” message.
Does this mean that “Space Brothers” is an especially Japanese movie, or just an especially good movie? I’ll leave the first part of that question up in the air, but I’ll say yes to the second part.
Japanese characteristics
However, one way in which it is clearly a Japanese movie is that Mutta, as the older brother, feels he should be the one to take the lead in anything he and Hibito do together. This magnifies the degree to which Hibito’s success makes Mutta feel like a failure, and helps to explain Mutta’s reluctance to go into space at all. The film doesn’t beat you over the head with this theme, but it is something that both brothers are clearly aware of.
“Space Brothers” is based on a manga by Chuya Koyama, which has also been adapted as an anime.
Another Japanese characteristic of the film is that in the small handful of scenes that take place in English, everyone speaks very slowly and almost flatly – including the white actors and black actors playing Americans, who are presumably native English speakers. Having seen this phenomenon before, I would guess there are two reasons for it. One might be that the foreign actors are trying not to speak faster than their Japanese counterparts. A more important reason might be that slowly delivered English is easier for Japanese moviegoers to comprehend as they draw on their half-remembered high school English lessons.
This could put the film at a disadvantage if it is ever released in an English-speaking country. However, I hope it won’t be much of a disadvantage since an overwhelming majority of the dialog is in Japanese.
Fortunately, the longest chunk of English-language dialog is delivered by a famous American who plays himself. He’s famous for something other than acting, but his slow English is the most natural-sounding in the film. It suits his role as a wise old man dispensing advice. (No, I won’t tell you who he is. That would be a spoiler.)
The supporting characters are all very small roles, and most of them blend into the scenery. The main focus is on the relationship between the two brothers, who embody two approaches to life. Take big chances, like Hibito, and you may get yourself killed. Play it safe, like Mutta, and you may die of disappointment.
We probably all have a little of both brothers inside of us.
Which one is stronger in you?
Availability
“Space Brothers” was released in Japan in May, and came out in Taiwan on Sept. 21. It will be released in Japan on DVD and Blu Ray in December. So why am I writing about it just now? I had that good fortune to watch it with English subtitles on transpacific flight earlier this month. (Thank you, American Airlines.) I’ll update this post as I learn about release dates in other countries. Until then, look for it on your next flight to or from Japan.
Update
As of Dec. 21, 2012, this movie is available on DVD and Blu Ray in Japan.
Not surprisingly, a number of curries are marketed with naval themes. One of these is Yokosuka Navy Curry, which I have chosen to represent Kanagawa Prefecture in my “Around Japan in 47 Curries” project. According to the label, this particular curry is based on the dish served at the city’s popular Wood Island restaurant. I purchased a single-serving package of it for 580 yen at Japan Food Market, a temporary-looking shop in the Koshigaya Laketown Mall in Saitama Prefecture.
Vikas Swarup at the Japan Writers Conference
November 11, 2012Vikas Swarup presented a sneak preview of his next novel, “The Accidental Apprentice,” to the Japan Writers Conference in Kyoto yesterday (Nov. 10, 2012). The book will be published in Janaury.
Swarup’s previous novels are “Q&A” (the basis of the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”) and “Six Suspects” (which Swarup mentioned is also in the process of becoming a film).
Swarup, appearing at the Japan Writers Conference for a third consecutive year, gave a reading of the opening pages of “The Accidental Apprentice” before taking questions from conference-goers.
It begins with a young Indian woman named Sapna Sinha sitting in a jail cell, reflecting on how she came to be accused of murder. She traces her troubles back to the day when, on a lunch break from her sales job at an electronics store, she visited a temple seeking expiation over a death for which she feels responsible. (It sounded as if this was not the death that led to her murder charge, but presumably all will be made clear as the novel unfolds.) At the temple, an old man plucked her out of the crowd, introduced himself as a fabulously wealthy industrialist whose companies produce everything “from toothpaste to turbines,” and said he wanted to recruit Sapna as his heir — if she would agree to undergo seven tests. It sounded like a fishy deal, so Sapna sensibly refused. At least, she refused at first…
In the question-and-answer period after the reading, Swarup said he believes it is important to start a story with a strong hook, so readers will stick around to see what happens.
In addition to being a best-selling novelist, Swarup is also the consul-general of India for the Osaka-Kobe area. He therefore referred to himself as a “weekend writer” whose day job keeps him too busy to write during the week. But he cheerily remarked that having a non-writing career freed him from some of the concerns that likely burden full-time fiction writers, such as meeting deadlines or trying to guess the tastes of the market.
All three of his novels so far have been set in India. He said that people in this country sometimes ask why he doesn’t write about Japan. He tells them that if he did, his stories would be all about yakuza gangsters — and his Japanese friends might not like that. But his characters couldn’t be ordinary Japanese people, he says, because they are too nice, calm, polite and orderly to write exciting stories about them.
Spoken like a true diplomat.
Tags: accidental apprentice, Japan Writers Conference, JWC, slumdog millionaire, vikas swarup
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