Sounds familiar
Test Kitchen again. Interesting interview with Bee Wilson on how food habits are developed and changed. The part about individual tastes is unsurprising: genetic tendencies plus learning through the mother's blood while in the uterus. Genes and epigenes. Grandma was right as usual.

The part about cultural tendencies was surprising. I ass-u-med that local or national tastes change slowly and gradually. Can't be forced. Nope, wrong assumption. Generally true but not universally. The Jap emperor changed national diet forcibly and abruptly when he wanted to build an empire.

Checking the truth: Here's a view through the eyes of missionaries as of 1901, right in the middle of the transition. Page 114 in this PDF.

Beef, pork and mutton were introduced a short time ago. A report from the Home Office shows a rapid increase in the slaughtering of beeves. Fish, served with soy**, is served raw or boiled, from slices of whale down to those who can scarcely afford a good mouthful.

Anything that can be washed down with o cha "honorable tea" or o sake "honorable whisky" is food. The bulbs of lilies and chrysanthemums, cherry blossoms, and bamboo sprouts are delicacies. All vegetables that grow in the US and many that do not, are common here. One too honorable to be omitted is the diakoy.

This is daikon, not diakoy. Odd error. Not a mishearing, more likely a mistranscription from someone's handwritten notes.

It corresponds to our radish. It is about two feet long and two inches in diameter. In color it is a clear white. The foreigner considers it an open foe. Three months decomposition in brine, with rice bran and ginger leaves, makes the house where it is used proof against foreign intrusion.

The missionary thought he was being snotty but he wasn't.

Many vegs are considered to be improved by being pickled a few months. A pickle shop is best viewed at a distance, for Japan is noted as much for its strange smells as for its queer sights.

Note the casual contempt, which may explain why Japs didn't take up Christianity.

Here's the most important bit:

Boiling is the common method of Japanese cookery. Cooking utensils are very modest: a large knife, three or four kettles, and a hibachi or fire box. The food is clean and beautifully arranged, but this is the most that can be said of it.

The lack of nutrition in the diet of the Japanese is sapping their power of endurance. If history is based on diet, and conquering nations have been noted for their simple habits, where is the people with vigor bred by simple habits to succeed Japan?

Though seen through a dim mirror of withering contempt, the emperor's project was well underway. Clearly the emperor had observed his weak non-vigorous people and decided to imitate the best empire-builder of the time, England. Skip the veg. Lots of beeves and other red meat, all fried. His project obviously worked. Just a few years later the expansion began, brutally snatching most of Asia and part of Russia.

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The withering contempt sounds familiar for some reason. Resonates with something more modern.... Hmm. What is this something?

Aha.

Headline:

Why Do Some People Respond to Trump? It’s Biology 101 It’s no mystery. Social science has been telling us for years. Conservatives respond to fear-inducing stimuli more than liberals do.

Or 100,000 other examples of bizarre shit containing bizarre vile blindly bigoted malassumptions about racism or birthers, written by infinitely evil monsters who live in their own tiny missionary bubble and never encounter an American. Totally missing every single fact and event of the last 30 years, casually assuming that the American "proof against foreign intrusion" is just our natural ickiness.

No, we're not icky, but we're glad that you contemptuous missionaries see us as icky. We hate you because you have been intentionally slaughtering us and grinding our souls and skills into the dust for 50 years. We hate you. We hate you. We hate you. We want to see you DEAD. DEAD. DEAD. Preferably soon and preferably in extreme pain.


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** Footnote: Was soy really so unfamiliar and foreign in 1901? Yes. From a 1907 USDA bulletin on forage crops:

In China and Japan the soy bean has been under cultivation for many centuries and has long occupied and important place ... supplying a large proportion of easily digested nitrogenous matter and largely taking the place of meat. The soy bean was first brought to this country some decades ago and received more or less attention in the warmer latitudes, being used in various ways as feed for livestock.

When did the mysterious oriental soy become naturalized as soy? Surprisingly recent and sudden, verifying Bee Wilson's point yet again:



I'm suspicious of this Ngram curve because soy sauce was thoroughly familiar in the '50s. Most middle-class families had it on the table, and it was in ordinary grocery stores, not just special Oriental stores. I'd guess the real change came just after WW2, when "Chinese-style" restaurants spread through USA. But I can't think of a way to check this.

Labels: defensible spaces, skill-estate

  ¶ 1:37 AM