“Would it offend you if I ate fish?” I asked my husband in the doorway of the sushi restaurant. The owner, who I'd met in a cafe a few weeks earlier, had invited us for a meal.
I'd spent nearly 20 years as a vegetarian, but in the past few years I'd begun to make exceptions. Once our Romani neighbours had brought over a plate of roast pork and it hadn't seemed right to say no. I'd come to feel that by refusing to take part in non-vegetarian meals, I was withholding companionship (the word comes from a root meaning “to break bread with,” after all), and that in a world where none is free from sin, this was not so much principled as ungenerous.
My husband said he wouldn't mind. The restaurant's sashimi was one of the best things I've ever tasted.
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I don't know if food is more important in Japanese fiction than English-language fiction, or if I just notice it more. There are novels that focus on food, of course, like Kashiwai Hisashi's Kamogawa Food Detectives series, but even in straightforward detective novels like Matsumoto Seichō's and Higashino Keigo's, we get a careful description of what the protagonists eat while they ponder clues.
My ever-growing interest in Japanese culture was the first positive thing to occupy my mind in some time. It seemed impossible to devour other aspects of the culture without eating the food. Vegetarians are a tiny minority in Japan; with a bit of planning, you might be able to avoid meat, but ruling out fish would make much of the cuisine off-limits, and place unusual demands on hosts and cooks. Demands often seem like barriers, and I'd had my fill of those. So I decided I would drop my restrictions at Japanese tables, if not elsewhere.
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Now I think of it, perhaps the first chink was made in my vegetarian armour when I read an article by a Christian vegetarian claiming Jesus had fed the 5,000 and/or 4,000 not on loaves and fishes, but loaves and relishes. I felt the same irritation as when Baptists back in West Virginia had insisted that the “wine” in the gospels was grape juice: Grow up.
If you're wondering what that author based their claim on, it was a combination of etymological fallacy and wishful thinking. The authors of Matthew, Mark and Luke use the unambiguous ἰχθύς for fish, but the author of John uses ὀψάριον, a word that originally meant “delicacy” but was almost invariably used to mean “fish” by the time the gospel was written. John's gospel was also written some time after the other three, so this argument doesn't get Jesus off the vegetarians’ hook.
What has the vocabulary of John's gospel got to do with Japanese? More than you might think. “Sakana” originally meant just a snack served with sake. The kanji for that meaning is 肴, and it's still used sometimes. But by the 17th century, “sakana,” represented by the kanji 魚, had become the main word for “fish,” whether on the table or in the sea.
As for the kanji, it's a drawing of a fish that has been simplified over millennia. It's kept the essentials: the wriggling motion and the shine of scales.
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A Japanese folk tale called かしき長者 (Kashiki Chōja; roughly, “Fishermen's Cook to Rich Man”) tells the story of a simple, shy cook on a fishing vessel who, despite being mocked for it by the rest of the crew, throws leftover scraps into the sea every day to feed the fish. One night the god of the sea rewards him by turning the sea into gold dust, and he gathers enough to escape his life of ridicule.
As a child, I read an English adaptation of this story (The Sea of Gold) by Yoshiko Uchida. I hoped that in some world beneath the surface, some living thing might see my heart for what it was and rescue me.
The story was animated by Maeda Kosei for the 1970s television series まんが世界昔ばなし (Manga Fairy Tales of the World).
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Before my breakdown, I worked supporting projects that helped people spend time in nature to benefit their mental and physical health. Fishing, in particular, has been found to benefit people suffering from depression, post-traumatic stress and brain injuries. Sitting quietly and observing the water, having enough of a goal in mind to feel empowered but recognising that success is at the whim of an unseen aquatic world, seems to soothe and heal the brain.
At one fishing project in a London nature reserve, I met a family who were visiting the reserve for the first time, despite having lived in the area for 20 years. The grandmother told how people had fished in her childhood village in Bangladesh, and I shared memories of fishing with my father in West Virginia (I think I might have caught a bluegill once). The conversation flowed from fish to God.
Eventually someone landed a trout. The awestruck group took turns touching its scales, and then we threw it back.
When my husband suffered a stroke a few years ago (he's since recovered), the organiser of one project offered to take him fishing to help his recovery. We couldn't accept the offer then, but now I wonder if I should go myself.
*****
Fukuyama Masaharu starred in Last Man, an occasionally preposterous but compelling TV series about a blind FBI profiler who's seconded to the Tokyo police. One of the first excerpts I saw from it is this clip from the second episode in which his sidekick, played by Oizumi Yo, serves him some fish he's cooked at the table. I think it's simple salt-grilled fish (塩焼き, shioyaki).
The scene isn't crucial to the plot of the episode, but its charged atmosphere is no accident. I won't spoil it, but the themes of food and cooking turn out to be important to the series’ story arc, and particularly to the relationship between these two characters. Sharing that fish breaks down a barrier and connects two worlds.