Agriculture & Food Systems · World Cuisines & Food Culture
A topic within World Cuisines & Food Culture, itself one of 11 topics in that field and part of Agriculture & Food Systems.
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Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art
Shizuo Tsuji · 1980
Argues Japanese cooking is organised around respecting an ingredient's natural qualities of season, texture and appearance rather than transforming…
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The History and Culture of Japanese Food
Naomichi Ishige · 2001
Traces how Japanese cuisine's reputation for minimalism and purity was built gradually, through Buddhist vegetarian restriction, Portuguese and Dutch…
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Shizuo Tsuji
Argues Japanese cooking is organised around respecting an ingredient's natural qualities of season, texture and appearance rather than transforming them, and that this aesthetic has to be learned before any technique.
Felice Farina
Argues that UNESCO's 2013 listing of washoku as intangible cultural heritage was less a recognition of an existing tradition than an invented one, assembled by the Japanese state to unify a fragmented domestic diet under one brand and to promote it, and Japanese food exports, abroad.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Naomichi Ishige
Traces how Japanese cuisine's reputation for minimalism and purity was built gradually, through Buddhist vegetarian restriction, Portuguese and Dutch contact, and a comparatively late return to eating meat, rather than existing as an unbroken tradition.