{Inter} Cultural Japan

What is the best summer food in Japan? Most people will answer: eel. Unagi is a popular food in Japan and it never sells so well as during the hottest period of summer, as it is believed to give lots of stamina to bodies freaked out by the heat. In the traditional calendar, that hottest period is called doyo, meaning the eightteen days before Risshu, the start of autumn. In this period, the day of the Ox (ushi no hi, also a designation from the traditional calendar; this year it falls on July 23) forms the peak of eel consumption, as it starts with an U sound, just like Unagi. That smacks of superstition, but in fact was a clever commercial trick: the Edo-period physicist Hiraga Gennai apparently started this costum to help a particular eel restaurant boost its flagging sales. But he was working well within the Japanese tradition: already the 8th c. Manyoshu poetry collection contains praise of the eel as wholesome summer food. Eel has indeed a high-energy nutritional value and on top of that, eaten as kabayaki (filleted, skewered, grilled and dipped in a heavy sweet sauce), unagi is simply delicious!

[Note: also read this update about the declining eel population]

Bookmark with Del.icio.us - Digg it