Today’s vocabulary course is about "basic foods".
I’ve concocted you a list of thirty words on what I considered, more or less, such as basic foods. In this list, there are no names of drinks, no names of fruits, nor vegetables; for those I will devote vocabulary course in itself. At most, I have placed a few names of dried fruits.
As often, there are quite a few borrowings from English and even a borrowing from Italian and another from Portuguese, you may recognize them.
After this list will follow a short presentation on the history of bread in Japan.
Let’s start.
パン
. the bread (from Portuguese "pão")
小麦粉 .
こむぎこ
. the wheat flour
全粒粉 .
ゼンリュウフン
. the whole wheat flour
全粒粉パン .
ゼンリュウフンパン
. the wholemeal bread
米 .
こめ
. the rice
白米 .
ハクマイ
. the white rice
御飯 / ご飯 .
ごハン
. the cooked rice; the meal
ライス
. the rice
シリアル
. the cereals
ナッツ
. the nuts
カシューナッツ
. the cashew nuts
ピスタチオ
. the pistachio (from the Italian "pistàcchio")
アーモンド
. the almond
オートミール
. the oatmeal
パスタ
. the pasta
ラーメン
. the ramen, the Chinese noodles
野菜 .
ヤサイ
. the vegetable
果物 .
くだもの
. the fruit
フルーツ
. the fruit
ドライ果物 .
ドライくだもの
. the dried fruit
ドライフルーツ
. the dried fruit
ジャム
. the jam
バター
. the butter
肉 .
ニク
. the meat
卵 / 玉子 .
たまご
. the egg
チーズ
. the cheese
ヨーグルト
. the yogourt
アイスクリーム
. the ice cream
種子 .
シュシ
. the seed
ソ一ス
. the sauce
スープ
. the soup
汁 .
しる
. the broth, the juice
汁物 .
しるもの
. the soup
Western bread was brought to Japan by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century. In 1543, a Portuguese ship which drifted ashore on Tanegashima introduced guns and bread, and the first bakery is said to have been opened by an Italian in Hirado, Matsuura district, Hizen province. After that, the production of bread was prohibited by the Christian prohibition, and it was transmitted in detail on the artificial island of Dejima (出島). There is almost no record that the Japanese ate it as a staple food in the Edo period. According to one theory, bread making was avoided because it was closely tied to Christianity, and it is believed that it did not suit people's tastes at the time. Edo period cookbooks describe how to make bread, and it was similar to mantou in China today. It is said that this type of bread was also offered to the Dutch delegation visiting the Tokugawa shogunate.
The "Gozengashi Hidensho" published in 1718 describes the method of making bread using yeast. It is a product in its own right that uses amazake (甘酒 . あまざけ) as a yeast seed, but there is no record of its production. The first Japanese to make bread (hard bread) would be Egawa Hidetatsu (江川 英龍) at the end of the Edo period. Egawa, the magistrate of Nirayama, who was good at military science, believed that if he cooked rice on the battlefield, the smoke would rise and the enemy would notice. On April 12, he built a bread oven at his home in Nirayama, Izu, and started baking bread. In 1855, Hōan Shibata (柴田 方奄) learned how to bake bread and cookies in Nagasaki and brought it back to the Mito clan (水戸藩). In 1858, the Yokohama Hotel was established, providing Western-style bread and food, and at that time each estate also started making military bread. When trade with Western countries began in 1859, the shogunate built a foreigners’ grocery store in Yokohama, and the Japanese began selling bread. In 1865, with the inauguration of the Yokohama and Yokosuka ironworks, many French engineers came to Japan and introduced French-style bread and cakes.
During the Meiji period, bread came to Japan in earnest under the wave of civilization and enlightenment. In 1869, the Fugetsudo establishment in Kyobashi, Tokyo started selling bread. This situation changed in 1874 when Yasubei Kimura (木村 安兵衛) of Kimuraya Sohonten (木村屋總本店) invented the anpan (あんパン / 餡パン). His creation was well received, and after that, sweet breads were developed one after another, and along with this trend, bread for side dishes also developed. The Imperial Japanese Navy was among the first to encourage the consumption of bread. In 1901, the Nakamuraya (中村屋) company was founded, and in 1905 it succeeded with cream bread. The Russo-Japanese War and World War I stimulated the production of military bread, and the bread industry grew considerably. In 1915, Genpei Tanabe developed dry yeast. The management of fresh yeast has become unnecessary and the number of bakeries has increased considerably.
During World War II, post-war bread was rationed. To buy rice, one had to bring a pound of rice to the distribution center before the 15th of the previous month and receive a bread purchase ticket and a registration ticket, which were not available on site.
After the war, when school meals began to be implemented in many schools, bread and skimmed milk powder began to be served in school meals using wheat flour supplied as relief supplies from the United States, which triggered the mass distribution of bread in Japan. As a result, bread consumption in Japan increased rapidly after 1955.
In 2005, the annual bread production in Japan was 601,552 tons of bread, 371,629 tons of sweet bread, and 223,344 tons of other breads, with bread accounting for about half. In the same year, the annual quantity of bread purchased per household was 19,216 grams of white bread and 20,725 grams of other breads. Bread production in Japan was 1,193,000 tons in 1991 and 1,215,000 tons in 2011, with slight fluctuations from year to year, but overall it has remained almost stable over the past 20 last years. However, as the consumption of rice, the staple food, continues to fall, the relative weight of bread has increased and, according to the Household Budget Survey of the Ministry of Interior and Communications of 2011, the quantity of bread purchased per household exceeded that of rice for the first time in the history of the Japanese archipelago.
Note : Dejima is an ancient man-made island located in Nagasaki Bay in Japan and encompassed by the city itself ever since. It was the place where the Portuguese (between 1634 and 1641), then the Dutch (from 1641 to 1853) traded with the Japanese. During this period, foreigners other than the Dutch of the Dutch East India Company were prohibited from trading with the Japanese archipelago. The latter did not have the right to leave the artificial island on which they were installed.
The anpan was first made in 1875, during the Meiji period, by a man called Yasubei Kimura, a samurai who lost his job with the rise of the imperial conscript army and the disbandment of the samurai as a social class. The Meiji era was a time when Japan was becoming increasingly modern, and many samurai who lost their jobs were given work that was completely new to them. The role of baker was one of those jobs.
One day, while walking around the area where many people employed in new jobs were working, Kimura Yasubei found a young man baking bread, and an idea was born. He started a bakery called Bun'eidō (文英堂), then in 1874, he moved to Ginza and renamed the bakery Kimuraya (木村屋), now Kimuraya Sohonten (木村屋 總本店). At that time, however, the only bread recipe known in Japan was to make a bread with a salty and sour taste, unsuited to Japanese tastes at the time. Yasubei wanted to make a bread that was more Japanese in taste. After some trial and error, he figured out how to make bread the Japanese manjū way - leavening the dough with the traditional sakadane liquid yeast. He then filled the bread with bean paste wagashi and sold anpan as snacks. The anpan was very popular, not only because of its taste, but also because the Japanese were interested in everything new and foreign at that time.
Later, a man named Yamaoka Tesshū (山岡 鉄舟), a chamberlain of the Meiji Emperor, who loved the anpan, asked the Tokugawas, the rulers of Japan before the Meiji era, to present the anpan to the emperor during his visit. The Tokugawas asked Yasubei to make some for the emperor. Yasubei worked hard to make the anpan, and because he also cared about their appearance, he decorated them with a salt-pickled sakura in the middle of each bun. This anpan was presented to Emperor Meiji on April 4, 1875. The emperor told Yasubei to present the anpan to him every day, and because of the rumor that the emperor ate anpan, the popularity of bread, and especially anpan, began to spread throughout the country.
The anpan is therefore a Japanese sweet bun most often filled with red bean paste. It can also be made with other fillings, including white bean paste (しろあん / 白あん / 白餡), green bean paste (うぐいすあん / うぐいす餡 / 鶯餡), sesame paste (ゴマあん / ゴマ餡 / 胡麻あん / 胡麻餡) and chestnut paste (クリあん / 栗あん / 栗餡).
This Japanese pastry is so famous and appreciated by the Japanese that it gave birth to one of the most famous characters in Japanese pop culture: Anpanman (アンパンマン). First from a children's manga by mangaka Takashi Yanase, he then became the character of a TV series. The manga started in 1973 and ended in 2013 with the death of the author, but the TV series, started in 1988, continues today. In addition to the manga and the main series, there are also video games, feature films, short films, clips illustrating songs and several series of an educational nature for learning to write (Japanese) or to English language. All featuring Anpanman and sometimes other characters from his universe. Of all the fictional characters, Anpanman is certainly the one that, in Japan, is the subject of more derivative products. From the small plastic object or the plush toy, the 100 yen trinket, to the passenger train (line on the island of Shikoku), there is not a single product in Japan, which is not available without its good face printed, engraved or molded in bas-relief: children's piano, bicycle, everyday objects, books, clothes, medicines, etc.
Unlike Westerners, the Japanese, like the populations of other Asian countries, are not big consumers of milk and other dairy products. At least, historically speaking. Milk culture has existed in Japan for centuries and traces of this culture dating back to the 6th century have come down to us. However, under the influence of the Chinese Empire, the Japanese chose to further develop the cultivation of rice, which quickly became the most consumed foodstuff in the archipelago. The cultivation of milk became more and more rare until it almost completely disappeared.
It will be necessary to wait for the 19th century and precisely the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to see milk and dairy products again on the front of the stage. In order to realize the westernization policy implemented by the new government, sophisticated milk processing techniques were introduced by the United States, which brought bottled liquid milk and sweetened condensed milk to Japanese tables. Among the American personalities who participated in introducing milk and dairy products to the Japanese, we can cite as an example Edwin Dun. An American rancher, he was also a foreign adviser to Japan during the Meiji era. He is one of the foreign personalities who have participated in the development of the dairy industry on the Japanese archipelago, and in particular on the island of Hokkaido. Upon his arrival in Japan, he brought fifty head of cattle, one hundred sheep, and several agricultural tools to serve as models for local craftsmen so that they could reproduce them. He first settled in an experimental farm near Tokyo, and taught students sent by the Japanese government breeding techniques, animal selection and veterinary medicine. Among other activities, he also participated in the creation of a pig farm with eighty pigs brought from the United States, and a dairy farm in addition with factories producing butter and cheese.
The third important moment for Japanese dairy culture is at the end of World War II (1945). With the presence of American troops, the government recommend and encourage the adoption of Western eating habits in place of certain traditional practices. People start eating bread instead of rice, meat instead of fish, and milk instead of miso soup in order to internationalize Japanese cuisine. These recommendations resulted from cultural, but also nutritional considerations.
However, unlike European countries, Japan remained a low consumer of cheese and butter, considered and consumed at the time as food and medicine. Chocolate, which is considered a sweet in the West, is also considered a medicine in Japan. It will take a few years of Western influence for chocolate, like all other dairy products, to become increasingly popular. If the first master chocolatiers in Japan were Westerners like the Frenchman Jean-Paul Hévin, today Japan trains its own master chocolatiers. For example, Shigeo Hirai (平井 茂雄), Japanese master chocolatier, crowned chocolate world champion in 2009.
The history of butter and dairy products in Japan is vast, but the main thing to remember is that the multiplication of relations between Japanese and Westerners has led the former to consume more dairy products. That is why, in Japan, it is possible to find not only butter but also cheese, chocolate, yogurt, ice cream and many other products made from milk. It should be noted, however, that the presence of all these dairy products still relies today on imports. For example, almost 90% of natural cheese is imported. The largest imports of this product are those from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland.
It took several decades for bread, chocolate and dairy products to become almost essential elements of everyday life in Japan. And in addition to these flagship products, pastries and pastries, particularly French, have also found their way onto Japanese tables. Croissants, chouquettes, éclairs, saint-honorés, profiteroles, cream puffs, brioches, chocolate or sesame sacristans and pain au chocolat to cite a non-exhaustive list. All these Western culinary specialties can be found in bakeries and pastry shops in Japan, attracting Western tourists who find familiar taste pleasures there and Japanese people who are fond of them. Furthermore, the pain au chocolat did not fail in its duty by reiterating the eternal debate in the Land of the Rising Sun. Do we say “pain au chocolat” or “chocolatine”? Thus, in certain bakeries, it is possible to see written on the shelves the katakanized French word パン・オ・ショコラ or even ショコラティーヌ. If you go to the Wikipedia page for pain au chocolat in the Japanese language, both names are offered there.
We are finally at the conclusion. Before finishing this course for good, I will give you some additional explanations, in particular on the word ピスタチオ, the word パスタ and the word ラーメン.
The word "pistachio" which is written and pronounced ピスタチオ was borrowed from the Italian "pistàcchio". For once the Japanese borrow from Italian rather than English, it is rare but it does happen. The word "pasta" which is written and pronounced パスタ is also a loan from Italian although English speakers have borrowed the same word as well.
The word ラーメン which specifically designates Chinese noodles can also be written in kanji but this one is hardly used any more today, I did not put it in the list above. If this interests you nevertheless, know that you can look it up in the dictionary.
This vocabulary course is now over, I leave you to your learning. Learn these words by heart, write them down, say them over and over again until you can remember them. There are thirty words to remember, so I advise you to learn them little by little. Start by learning ten words today, review them during the day, then the next day add five and repeat the same routine again until you remember them all. Nothing is more effective than repetition.
Thank you all for reading this course and good luck with your homework.
Introduction