For hundreds of years Japan has followed traditions handed down by many generations from the Feudal Age, but rapid economic growth after the WW2 changed much of this. Even though I was born in the post-war period, I could still somewhat remember: how the taste of our older day life was different. In Japan, our eating habits, clothing, and dwelling life have changed drastically since around that period.
When it comes to eating, Japanese vegetables and fruits produced by nutritious black soil are the best in the world, and we Japanese also have great deal of seafood hauled from our coastal and deep-sea fisheries. Even if Western food has already become familiar among us, our basic, traditional eating habits have been preserved and unchanged.
However, we just missed a particularly great aroma which used to be filling entire houses many years ago. It was common when people were often engaged in time-consuming work for preparing traditional food, commodities, preserved foods or ceremonial foods, etc. Today when I suddenly come across the elegant smell of the dashi soup of konbu(a seaweed) cooked in volume, just by the swoony smell in older days, I would feel stunned. When “real foods” were all around, it used to emit a stronger smell and aroma, but now the ingredients are replaced by artificially flavored, mass-produced foods.
Japanese houses also made significant changes from the old period. Before the modern way of living was introduced, the Japanese were co-habitating with natural environment at a much higher level, closely attached to the breath of nature. Not only were the people living by farming and fishing, but also, the people were living in urban areas, which have experienced great lifestyle changes.
As an urban person, my most cherished memory of childhood was about how we spent the summer days. Until the period early Showa 30’s (1955-1965) in the reign of Emperor Showa, we had no air-conditioners. We lived out our hot and humid summer only with electric fans and uchiwa (paper fans), but we had also a lot of nice, traditional wisdom of living for the dog days of summer. For example, pure Japanese style houses built in wood characteristically had excellent ventilation, to always allow a good breeze. The draftiness would make one feel pleasantly cool inside, even in the hottest summers. Our traditional residences were mainly developed adjusted to hot summer season, rather than to winter.
These elegant old houses were still common in my childhood. The wooden, high-floored houses were equipped with large en-gawa, a wooden veranda-like porch, facing the garden. It functioned as the spot for people to communicate with, or be inspired by nature. (“En” means “border/edge”, but also means “link by fate” in Buddhist term./“Gawa” means “side.”) Under the eaves, we made “mukae-bi,” a small fire lit at gate of a house in the evening of the first day of the Bon Festival （July 13-15 or August 13-15）, to welcome back departed souls of our ancestors.
When it turned to fall, it is also recalled that “Moon viewing” ceremonies were held in the lunar calender’s full moon nights. In the clear, crispy nights, we put decorations of pampa grass, moon-offerings of sake and ball cakes, served at engawa. Engawa was also the spot for people’s open communication, to have conversations with neighbors, but it has almost been lost these days, since houses are now built in concrete and mortar.
We also offered plenty of special food and drinks of summer. Our early summer was started with taste of freshwater fish, such as grilled ayu or yamame. When you feel groggy in the hottest end of July, you could enjoy unagi (crispy kabayaki eels, which is almost like teriyaki) on Doyou day (Midsummer Day of the Ox), to get your stamina back. We had variety of traditional cool summer noodles, such as hiyamugi and so-men, or cool sweets such as mizu-yokan, a transparent jerry-like cake with sweet bean paste, along with watermelons or ice creams. Plenty of summer treats were waiting for children, relaxing on summer vacation. A tidbit for alcohol, such as “Edamame with beer”, was also our summer delight especially favored by the daddies after work, in a somewhat patriarchal family scene
When it comes to clothing, Japanese’ everyday attire had been already half-Westernized since pre-war period, and kimono has been increasingly diminishing. In my guess, today kimono just means quality: it is often well-prepared pricey clothes for authentic formal situation. However, we could still enjoy yukata (inexpensive, casual cotton kimono) in some summer events such as bon-odori (Bon festival dance at shrines and local communities) , and firework festivals. For today’s young people, these are rare opportunities for them to casually enjoy kimono. Yukata is still getting increasingly popular among youth; urban young girls in fashionable yukata would be seen in the trains, when firework festivals are held in nationwide waterfronts in mid summer.
After all, the image of our sweet summer days always resides in the summer vacation’s memory in childhood. We enjoyed hunting insects (cicadas, unicorn beetles) with an insect net in the forest, or we enjoyed sea-bathing on the beaches. Today’s urban parents are struggling to pass down nice summer memories to their children.
While now our residences are modernized and sealed up, we are losing the touch of nature and its fascination.
Our autumn, winter and spring are also recalled with countless seasonal delicacies. During winter break, family members spent together in freezing days. Our most important ceremony is indeed, still the New Year holidays, but its traditional details were lost. Kagami-mochi (rice cake display) was set up as offering to the gods during the holidays, which becomes all covered with mildew by the end. On the Seventh Day of New Year, people used to hammer it into pieces to remove the mildew, and put it into sweet bean soup, or seven spring herb soup. Today’s plastic sealed rice cake displays never gets mildew, and people almost never eat it anymore.
When there were no greenhouses, vegetables grown in outdoors tasted more glamorous in each season. People recognized season from foods. If you have a plum tree in your garden, try creating pickled plums (umeboshi) in June. You would dip the ripen, yellowish plums in shochu liquor and rock salt (shochu is distilled strong spirit made from rice, potatoes, wheat or the like) just for two weeks, then dry them on bamboo sieve in the sun for forty-eight hours. If you put them back into shochu with purple Shiso leaves, it will turn pickles. It would be only processed by bless of nature, not by any machines. It somewhat arouse empathy in my mind about how old time people might have felt;
“I’m only concerning about tomorrow’s weather forecast just for sun drying my food in the sun..”
I was born and grew up in Tokyo after it was well urbanized. I lived in a sealed house for decades, commuting to the office by a crowded train and eating the foods only bought at super-markets. A significant part of our grandparents’ culture may have already lost here. Things have turned artificial, electrical, automatic and convenient, but people may rather feel poor or not blessed.
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