Kyoto Journal – Issue 93

Kyoto Journal Issue 93 (the Food Issue) is available now from LOREM (not Ipsum). Food. It sustains us. It inspires us. It enslaves us… Kyoto Journal delves into the vibrant culinary cultures of Asia, all the while discovering what food really means to us.

Founded in 1987, Kyoto Journal (KJ) is an award-winning, volunteer-driven quarterly magazine presenting thought-provoking cultural and historical insights from Kyoto, Japan and all of Asia. Now the longest-established independent English publication in Japan, our interdisciplinary approach, high standards of journalism and stunning design have brought us several international independent press awards, including the Utne Reader and Pushcart Prize. Our Founding Editor, John Einarsen, also received the Japanese government’s Cultural Affairs Agency Award for Kyoto Journal’s long-term efforts to introduce Kyoto and Japanese culture to the English-speaking world. A journal, whether public or private, is an ongoing means of looking afresh at the inhabited world, both social and natural. In selecting material for Kyoto Journal we look for intelligent work that comes also from the heart. We are curious about society, beliefs, traditions and new developments — how people live, and live well — through the lens of Asian experience. At the same time, our name, “Kyoto Journal,” also reflects more than a physical location. Kyoto is a place of deep spiritual and cultural heritage, and has been the measure of such things here in Japan for more than a millennium. Kyoto culture has looked deeply inwards and has also drawn richly from outside, especially since the Meiji modernization. Essentially, Kyoto Journal is a community that transcends place, while respecting and celebrating regional and local identity.

Features

Beyond the cutting board
Kyoto Journal’s John Ashburne sits down with some of Japan’s veteran and Michelin-starred chefs, Narisawa Yoshihiro and Murata Yoshihiro among them, to discuss, among other things, their sense of responsibility towards the future of gastronomy and the natural world.

Tsukiji: Memories of a market
Singaporean photographer Joel Fong on Tokyo’s iconic fish market and fraught relocation to Toyosu.

Family Stories
A Chinese family makes jiaozi in their cramped Tokyo apartment to celebrate the New Year. After school, a young girl slurps her North Korean grandmother’s miyeokguk soup in a California retirement home: Writers share the ways food connects them with their heritage and the people they love.

Food from beyond the Bridge of Dreams
Anthropologist Kaori O’Connor delves into kaiseki cuisine’s premodern roots to explain why it is much more than simply beautifully-presented morsels.

An Edible Alphabet
Twenty-six letters, twenty-six writers and about that many photographers and artists: presenting a compendium of food for your delectation.

Bringing the taste of Zen to Berlin
Kyoto Journal’s director talks to Bernd Schellhorn on transplanting shojin ryori (Buddhist vegetarian cuisine) to Germany and how he applies his early training as an artisan.

Plus

Claire Liu discovers the otherworldly creations of an annual competition for kyogashi sweet design;

Siddharth Dasgupta encounters the proprietress of an Isfahan café who sings her recipes;

Robert Van Koesveld retells his experience photographing the toiling breadmakers of Leh;

Translated into English for the first time by Yukiko Naito: a chapter from Minakami Tsutomu’s Days of Eating Earth;

“Epicurean poetry” by Hayan Charara, Margaret Chula, Aaron Hames and Chitra Divakaruni;

Satish Kumar on the fascinating principles surrounding food in Jainism;

Kyoto Journal’s Rambler-at-Large Robert Brady shares some (very) simple vegetarian recipes;

and more.

Cover: Kyoto Journal – Issue 93

Hinomaru Bento. Thanks to Felicity Greenland for lending us her bento box and Hiroko Kawano for her hand-pickled ume