Sushi Police

When you think that the politicians can't possibly find any other way to waste your tax yen...

It appears that the Japanese Agriculture ministry is finalizing plans to send agents around the world to certify restaurants that are serving authentic Japanese cuisine. There seems to be a number of restaurants around the world that claim to be Japanese, but don't sell authentic Japanese style food. I'm not sure what the criteria are for "authentic;" the commission will probably start their work in April, and I hope I can get a list of the criteria then.

I mean let's face it, accept for chestnuts, acorns, wild boar, and some other wild animals, everything has been imported from somewhere else and improved on over the years. For example, is tempura Japanese or a Portuguese import? Wet-paddy rice itself didn't reach Japan from Asia until around 300B.C. Over the years Japanese food has evolved differently over the archipelago.

If it were a private organization, I would get it, but they are going to spend our taxes on this charade. I have been to several Japanese restaurants in the US, and they all seem to have their little quirks that I would not expect to find in Japan. For example, I went to one restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona where the food was served in courses. First something like a salad, then the miso soup, then the rice and main dish. I would expect everything to be served at once in Japan. Then I went to a place in Georgia where the management shouted unintelligible syllables as customers walked in the door, probably to imitate the "irashaimase" greeting that one would receive at a Japanese establishment. The food wasn't great, and the management wasn't Japanese, but what are the Sushi Police going to do, expect everyone to give a blood test to be checked for Japanese genes?

The best case senario is that it would give customers a guide for good food. Any newspaper in any country could do that though, and without my tax money.

Understanding Japan

During this next academic year, I have a class in Japanese and American Comparative Culture. I am really looking forward to it, and have bought some books on Japan for preparation. One of the books, Kata: The key to understanding and dealing with the Japanese! by Boye Lafayette De Mente, was a pretty good find, despite the title. His thesis is that the Japanese have ways of doing things, and if those ways are understood, then we can have an insight into what motivates their behavior.

The book is interesting enough, and I recommend it for Japanologists, but I was intrigued most, not by what this writer had written, but by a reference that De Mente makes to another scholar of things Japanese. In a subheading, he talks about "Clark's Curve." This refers to a graph that Gregory Clark, Vice President at Akita International University, has developed from his research into "...why the collectivist/communalistic, particularistic Japanese had been able to create an economy powerful enough to frighten us advanced, modern, individualistic, rationalistic Westerners.

You can find his discussion of this topic at his web site, which happens to be his life story. Terrific reading, really. He finally decides that societies don't follow linear progressions, but rather curved progressions, and that Japan has yet to reach the apex, where the best points of a village society and older, rationalistic society are in perfect balance.