{Inter} Cultural Japan

Chopsticks are one of the simplest and best inventions ever made by mankind and as August 4 is the Day of the Chopsticks in Japan this is a good opportunity pay hommage to it. The reason this day is so named by the “Waribashi Union,” the association of importers of disposable chopsticks, is onomatopoeic: hashi (chopsticks) resembles ha(chi) / shi or 8/4, being August 4 (in Japan, in calendar annotation the month always comes before the day, in contrast to Europe where it is the other way around). Despite the somewhat contrived character of the occasion, let us take another look at this ingenious utensil for picking up food.

For starters, the English word chopsticks is to my taste not very beautiful – chop is pidgin-English for “quick” (chop-chop). In China, these small even-length tapered sticks are now called kuaizi 筷子, where “kuai” is written with the bamboo radical above the character for “quick,” so there is a link with the pidgin expression. In Japan, the name is (o-)hashi 箸, written with a different character (in Chinese pronounced as zhu) that was in use in Classical Chinese. Another polite word in Japanese is “otemoto,” written in hiragana and usually printed on the wrappers of disposable chopsticks.

Chopsticks were first used in China long for the beginning of our era – the exact date is unknown. It is definitely a more civilized way of picking up food than the rather grotesque knives and forks (in fact, a kind of weapons or butcher’s tools) used in the West. [Note: I realize also chopsticks can be used as weapons - as in the violent scene in Takeshi Kitano’s film Hanabi.]

[ohashi, hashi-oki and packs of disposable chopsticks]

Types
In Japan, o-hashi are usually made of lacquered wood (cypress or willow, which is strong but light) or bamboo and occasionally plastic (mainly for children). They are short to medium in length (longer ones are used in the kitchen for cooking) and taper to a pointed end which makes it easy to eat fish.

O-hashi can be beautifully decorated and then rather pricy. It is customary in the Japanese household for each person to have a pair of o-hashi reserved for his or her exclusive use (in contrast to Western cutlery, which is never personal). Disposable chopsticks are made of bamboo or wood which has only been partially cut and are always unpainted. They are used in restaurants and are of course very hygienic as they are always new. Although tapered chopsticks are great for eating fish, I prefer blunt and unpainted ones with slippery noodles i.e. udon, soba, ramen or somen.

Chopstick etiquette
Manners are very important in using o-hashi in Japan. Here are the main do’s and don’ts:

• use them in your right hand;
• do not use them for pointing at dishes or people;
• never wave them around or play with them;
• never use the sharp end for stabbing food (practice until you can even bring mini-tomatoes to your mouth by pinching them between the sticks!);
• always place them with the pointed ends on the ceramic chopstick rest or hashioki when not using them (facing left; when there is no chopstick rest, put them horizontally at the bottom of your plate, also facing left);
• never stick them in the rice (this is how food is offered to the deceased; it also resembles a pair of incense sticks at funerals);
• never use them to pass food to the chopsticks of other people (this is how bones are passed around at a funeral in Japan);
• when taking food from a common dish (in case there are no communal chopsticks on the plate), it is polite to use the back-end of your chopsticks, i.e. the end that does not come in contact with your mouth; but do it only to transfer food to your plate, never directly to your mouth;
• pick the rice bowl up when eating rice; - in the case of soups, the solid ingredients are eaten with hashi and the stock sipped directly from the soup bowl;
• when eating in a restaurant with disposable chopsticks it is extra good manners to return them after the meal to the wrapper and put them on your empty plate.

Environmental concerns
Finally, the use of huge numbers disposable chopsticks in China and Japan (running in the tens of billions) unfortunately also poses an environmental problem. Originally, waribashi were made from wood scraps, but now the numbers are much too large to make that possible. Therefore, in April 2005, a 5% tax was imposed on disposable chopsticks in China, also affecting those exported to Japan (Japan imports more than 95% of its waribashi from China). This has led to a discussion in Japan whether it can continue to use such large amounts of disposable chopsticks also in the future.

Disposable chopsticks are associated with cleanliness as you are always the first and only person to use them; the Japanese find it distasteful to use things that intimately belong to someone else (even in families, everyone has his or her own set, recognizable by color, size and decoration, which is never used by other members – let alone using chopsticks a stranger has been eating with). In my view, plastic is not a very nice alternative and is not good for the environment, either. I would prefer bamboo from renewable forests. Or what about carrying your own hashi with you?

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