The Heian origins of Japan's high cuisine, 794-1185

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Content The Heian Origins of Japan's High Cuisine, 794-1185 By Emily Warren A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (HISTORY) December 2023 Copyright 2023 Emily Warren Acknowledgements As with the Heian banquet, a great many people had a hand in the creation of this dissertation. The first person who deserves credit is Joan Piggott, my advisor, who supported and encouraged this project through the long years of training and research required. She read my early drafts, taught me to analyze difficult sources created over long spans of time, and she left countless articles on food culture in my department box on everything from Japanese ice houses to dubious French traditionalism. This never would have happened without her. In my second year of the program, Sachiko Kawai spent hours with me reading passages from the Gunsho ruijū series whereupon we found the Chūjiruiki, or Notes from the Palace Kitchen. We took our best stab at the difficult text. Sachiko’s grace and patience has made me a better researcher. I am also grateful for her friendship. My journey with Notes from the Palace Kitchen led me to The University of Tokyo’s Historiographical Institute with a Japan Foundation fellowship where Takahashi Shin’ichirō and I worked through a diverse array of primary sources on Heian and Kamakura food culture. Professor Takahashi kindly guided my research; he also supported my work during the pandemic. While at the Institute, a number of scholars generously aided my project, including Onoe Yōsuke, Takahashi Toshiko, and Takahashi Noriyuki. Sasaki Takahiro of the Keio Institute of Oriental Classics introduced me to the wonderful world of Japanese books and manuscripts. And Akemi Banse, now at the University of Osaka, led an entire workshop at USC on the Daily Events and continued to introduce me to valuable sources. My research on the Engi Protocols would not have been possible without the support and patience of the whole Engi Shiki Project team at the National Museum of Japanese History. Ogura Shigeji and Kiyotake Yūji, now at the Katsushika City Museum, were always eager to ii answer questions and consider the challenges of interpretation for premodern food texts. I owe them a great deal. They truly brought the classical world alive through the Protocols. A host of people at University of Southern California have assisted in this endeavor. Rebecca Corbett not only oversaw our Japanese library collection; she also taught me about tea culture and ended up a good friend. Satoko Shimazaki, now at UCLA, taught me Classical Japanese and how to ask better research questions. Lori Meeks encouraged wider interpretations of medieval documents, and Jason Webb gave me many valuable opportunities to share my work with students. The East Asian Studies Center, the Shinso Ito Center, and the History Department funded many summers of research in Japan. I was fortunate to cross paths with people who enthusiastically encouraged this project, like Charlotte von Verschuer with whom I spent afternoons talking about pottery, fish, and edible plants. Eric Rath and Takeshi Watanabe gave wonderful feedback as I explored the meaning of sweet foods in the Heian period. My friend and senpai, Jillian Barndt, has unfailingly had my back through this long journey, and I am grateful to my friend Shirley Huang for her patient support and all our adventures. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Ōmura family, who was there for me while I was living in Tokyo through the most uncertain period of the pandemic. But most of all, thank you to my family. I want to thank my aunt Lynne for her support, especially during the final editing of this project. My parents sustained me through years of effort, uncertainty, and struggle. I am grateful to my father for introducing me to history—its challenges and delights—and to my mother for cheering me on tirelessly and arranging trips to Japan. Audrey and Jack, thank you for the years of humor and camaraderie. I am grateful to have you. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................................... ii List of Tables............................................................................................................................................... v Abstract .......................................................................................................................................................vi Introduction: The Monarch Consumes the Realm....................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Provisioning the Monarch’s Kitchen—The Ritsuryō Food System......................................22 Chapter Two: From Food System to Royal Cuisine—The Monarch’s Daily Meals...................................69 Chapter Three: Regental Banqueting—Fujiwara no Michinaga’s Appointment Banquet of 1017.............97 Chapter Four: A Pinnacle of Banqueting—Fujiwara no Yorinaga’s Ministerial Banquet of 1152 ...........122 Conclusion: The Ise Taira’s Fiftieth-day Celebration of 1179 ................................................................. 189 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................ 209 iv List of Tables 1. Provinces that Provided Honey .........................................................................................59 2. Food Item Taxes ......................................................................................................... 64-68 3. Royal Food Provinces’ Responsibilities............................................................................68 4. Tenth-century Daily Offerings to the Monarch .................................................................81 5. Notable Guests in Attendance at Yorinaga’s Ministerial Banquet in 1152 ..............187-188 v Abstract This dissertation examines food history of the Heian period (794-1185) through the banquet cuisine of different elites. One of the great achievements of Japan’s first bureaucracy, the ritsuryō system, was the ability to procure food and ingredients from all over the Japanese archipelago, bringing them to the palaces of Nara and Kyoto for banquets and elaborate offerings. The large variety of ingredients and the expertise of palace cooks created a space for specialists to build the framework for a complex, elite cuisine. This dissertation shows how aristocrats drew on the food culture of the monarch to display their power through banquets. My dissertation opens with a conflict between the Takahashi and the Azumi, ancient clans that procured and cooked food for the royal family. The Takahashi and Azumi had handled the monarch’s food before even the creation of the ritsuryō state, and their absorption into one bureaucratic entity, the Royal Meal Office (Naizenshi), as co-directors created tension. Officials from the two families fought over who should lead when presenting crucial culinary offerings to the monarch and deities. The families presented the history of their cooks and purveyors to the monarch, but no decision was reached by the court as to which side was superior until 791 when Azumi no Tsugunari stormed out of a rite in which the monarch dines with a deity, and for this crime, he was banished to the remote island of Sado, and the Takahashi became the sole hereditary directors of the Royal Meal Office. This office headed by the Takahashi was the hub for ingredients from all over the realm where cooks could produce banquets and offerings. Where did these ingredients come from, and why did this procurement matter? According to classical law codes, almost every province in the realm had to send food to the capital. The ability of the monarch’s government to collect this bounty allowed them to symbolically consume their realm. This collection and consumption was called osukuni. In my analysis of the vi tenth-century Engi Protocols (Engi shiki), I use classical tax rules to show how the provinces provisioned the palace. For instance, there were territories along the Inland Sea that provided sardines and small fish, and the chilly waters of the northwest produced native salmon and wasabi. In addition, officials oversaw dairy ranches and ice houses that provided special, elite foods to the palace. Men and women worked daily to present an elaborate, ceremonial meal for the monarch in addition to his usual meals, and he was not even expected to eat it. Such ceremonial tribute was not simply sustenance—it was a demonstration of royal authority to consume the realm. As the monarch’s meals became increasingly elaborate, powerful families of the court, like that of the Northern Fujiwara regents, began to create grand banquets in the tenth century. In my third and fourth chapters, I use case studies of appointment and ministerial banquets to show how the most powerful courtiers used food to create community as well as display their wealth. I first present the example of an appointment banquet in 1017 when Fujiwara no Michinaga served foods from the monarch’s palace, such as so cheese and sweet chestnuts, to show his close relationship with the throne, thus breaking with customary protocol in his food service. He also served dishes that were more traditionally presented in a grander celebration in order to magnify the importance of his own appointment banquet. After considering the significance of Michinaga’s banquet, I draw on the records of different appointment banquets to show how seasonality affected elite banquet menus. The spectacle of Regental Fujiwara banqueting culture reached a pinnacle in the twelfth century. In one case study of a ministerial banquet held in 1152, I show how Fujiwara no Yorinaga inherited the Fujiwara regalia, a gleaming set of red lacquer tables and dishes, from his father during political instability and then endeavored to hold an elaborate banquet. Yorinaga not vii only ate from the regalia; he used drinking and food to assert his status as a minister. Yorinaga carefully documented the courses of his banquet according to the rank of participants, showing how food was used to stratify elites. Using the resources of the government and his own estates to procure foods demonstrated economic power. In my final chapter, I present an example of a banquet that was outside of the court’s formal calendrical events that developed over the course of Regental Fujiwara supremacy. The Fujiwara held mochi-centric banquets called fiftieth-day celebrations to celebrate the birthdays of their babies to the royal family, and this celebration featured mochi. To procure the fiftieth-day banquet’s specific mochi, messengers purchased it from a marketplace shrine at great expense. Such demonstrations were so compelling that when the Ise Taira, a warrior family new to court, rose in power, they too worked to hold a mochi celebration worthy of their own crown prince. Like Yorinaga’s banquet, this fiftieth-day celebration asserted status and power through food culture and the performance of banqueting. This particular banquet was ostensibly held to feed a baby mochi, but because a baby cannot actually eat solid foods at fifty days, the true purpose of the banquet was the submission of courtiers to the Ise Taira and the conspicuous consumption of luxuries. By analyzing journal entries alongside ritual manuals, I show that food and the material culture of eating demonstrated their high status, which in turn legitimated their rule. The performance of consumption was of paramount importance. This research is best understood as a history of consuming the realm over a longue durée. This practice began with royal food services for the monarch, but gradually these practices were adopted by other groups over time. In a first stage, banquet culture was used by the Northern Fujiwara regents, and then in a second stage by warrior families like the Ise Taira. At each stage, these groups reinforced and developed Japanese food culture through food, special tableware, viii and dining practices. My research provides the foundations for understanding the early history of Japanese cuisine, as well as show how rulership was performed through food culture. ix x Prince Genji holds Kaoru on the baby’s fiftieth-day celebration. Beside Genji are six trays of banquet food. Cropped section from Genji monogatari emaki, twelfth century. The Tokugawa Art Museum via Google Arts & Culture. Introduction: The Monarch Consumes the Realm In “The Oak Tree” segment of The Tale of Genji Illustrated Scroll, from the twelfth century, an elegantly dressed Prince Genji sits beside six stands of food. On the red and black lacquer trays, the artist has dabbed paint in the bowls to show foods: green, reddish-brown, soft white. The dishes are small and carefully arranged. Some are empty, their contents presumably already eaten. In a handsome lavender robe, Prince Genji gazes into the eyes of the baby he holds. This moment is bittersweet, and it has nothing to do with the food. His household is celebrating the baby’s survival through fifty days with mochi, sake, and many courses of fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and confections. The serving staff in his consort’s apartments have outdone themselves in their eagerness to please him and the new mother, carefully preparing and arranging beautiful displays of glossy lacquerware and ceramics, seasonal fruits, and fragrant wooden trays. The beauty of the feast’s display and the women’s efforts contrast with the Prince’s inner turmoil. He knows the baby he holds, Kaoru, is not his own, but he must pretend otherwise. The celebration must continue regardless of his hidden feelings. Prince Genji must drink, eat, and follow proper protocol because as a Heian courtier, he must perform the etiquette of his station. It is the reason he exists. This dissertation seeks to transform those dabs of paint on The Tale of Genji Illustrated Scroll into actual food as I examine the food culture of elites in the Heian period (794-1185) through their provisioning and banqueting cultures. In 794, the monarch Kanmu moved the capital to Heian, now called Kyoto. At Heian began a new ritual regime that sparked the emergence of a sophisticated high food culture in banquets in and around the royal palace. This cuisine included rounds of drinking that delineated the banquet’s phases and during which specific dishes were eaten. Servers arranged foods on large tables before the diners based on 1 protocol, and diners received foods according to their courtly status. Through the diaries and ritual manuals of the period, a vocabulary of the cuisine—its categories and ingredients— emerges. As Kumakura Isao has shown, this cuisine began in the Heian court and was greatly influenced by Tang culture. Over time, it spread to nobles and warrior elites, and along with vegetarian cuisines developed in temples, it contributed to the creation of Japan’s most famous high cuisine today, kaiseki, which is eaten all over the world.1 In Chapter One, I use materials drawn from the tenth-century manual, the Engi Protocols, to articulate the complex imagined geography of the ritsuryō food system. I show how tributary networks created originally by conical clans as royal allies were integrated into a Chinese-style system of centralized administration and taxation. This food system was messy and used multiple channels and sources to provision food for the monarch and his banquets. However, through the record we can glimpse foods sent for the royal table that were representative of specific regions, like abalone and other seafoods. The food system was deliberately constructed to involve almost all of the provinces in the realm so that the monarch would rule by consuming it. Chapter Two considers the daily meals of the monarch, as well as how food was prepared for him in the palace. Through an early eleventh-century source, The Daily Events, and a late Heian culinary text, Notes of the Palace Kitchen, I show how increasingly ritualization of the monarch’s life in the tenth century resulted in more complex and symbolic daily meals. I also focus on the development of fundamental culinary categories of Heian food preparation. In Chapter Three, through an analysis of Fujiwara no Michinaga’s Appointment Banquet in 1017, I show these culinary categories being applied to a banquet menu. This appointment Kumakura, Nihon ryōri no rekishi. For a more detailed argument on the Tang origins of early Japanese 1 banquets, see Kumakura, “Nihon ryōri ni okeru kondate no keifu.” There are a few more general histories of Japanese cuisine that have less detail on the Heian period, but follow similar narratives, such as Ehara et al., Nihon shokumotsushi, and Harada, Nihon no shoku wa dō kawattekita ka. 2 banquet was held in winter, following his appointment to the position of prime minister 太政大臣 (daijō daijin). Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1028) attempted to elaborate and innovate on established appointment banquet procedure by serving foods typically eaten at the palace and other banquets to demonstrate his increasingly close relationship with the throne. In this chapter I also compare Michinaga’s menu items with those in summer appointment banquets to show how seasonality affected banquet menus. In Chapter Four, I analyze the most impressive of the banquets developed during the Heian period, the ministerial banquet, through the celebration held for Fujiwara no Yorinaga (1120-1156) in 1152. This banquet featured elaborate provisioning; seating and menus determined by status; and entertaining performances of provisioning and cooking. I draw extensively on entries from Fujiwara no Yorinaga’s journal, Taiki, which contains our most detailed depiction of this grand event. Through the banquet, we can see how Yorinaga turned food culture into spectacle to establish his court leadership during a fraught political moment. Finally, in my conclusion, I return us to the fiftieth-day celebration, where I began this dissertation. Also established in the tenth century, the fiftieth-day celebration was developed to honor a baby prince or princess through food and drink. My dissertation thus ends with the Ise Taira, a lineage of warriors and political outsiders whose role at court in the later twelfth century was founded on violence. Under their chieftain, Taira no Kiyomori (1118-1181), they wished to be more than His Majesty’s claws and fangs. They wanted to displace courtier families as court leaders. In pursuit of that ambition, they used the ritsuryō food system—it still functioned to some extent—and their own networks to provision a fiftieth-day celebration in 1179. It was a banquet stage where they could perform the courtly status they sought. After considering this 3 event and the motivations behind it, I end this dissertation at the dawn of Japan’s medieval age, as warriors sought to displace courtiers as those who would eat the realm. While my main purpose in this dissertation is to illustrate the development of Heian cuisine as it began in the palace of the Heian monarch 天皇 (tennō) and was then adopted by 2 courtly and then warrior elites from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, in my view food historians must also contend with the origin and production of key ingredients in a cuisine. Food did not simply appear on palace tables. To support palace life, officials had to familiarize themselves with the agriculture, textile-making, hunting, and fishing practices of the provinces under the monarch’s control while also deciding on taxes to be sent by locals to the capital. Cloth was important, but food dominated this tax system. Chinese-style law codes adopted at the beginning of the eighth century, ritsuryō, provided the framework officialdom used to collect food, resulting in what I call the ritsuryō food system. Provisioning from all over the realm through the food system constituted a basis of Japanese kingship. An array of dishes piled high with dozens of foods represented the ruler’s control of the realm. Then, later on, court ministers eager to create and continue grand banquets drew on estates and other personal networks to provision their own fetes. I consider this evolving provisioning process of consuming the realm in two stages. The detailed tenth-century Engi Protocols 延喜式 (Engi shiki) allow us a view of regional and provincial food production in the tenth century. Therein we see that food functioned as a symbol of region, which was why palace cuisine emphasized such a variety of dishes for the monarch’s meals. Thereafter, as ritsuryō provisioning became more uncertain, rulers and their ministers continued to serve diverse This term is also translated as “emperor.” However, this is an inappropriate translation for the rulers 2 during this period given the nature of their rule. For more on this, see Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship, pp. 8-9. 4 banquet dishes made with ingredients drawn from multiple channels, like estates and personal networks, even as provincial governors continued to provide foodstuffs from the provinces. This dissertation is a long history of the Heian ruler and his courtiers ritually consuming the food and labor of the realm, thereby demonstrating their very reason for existing. Throughout, banqueting was a primary mode of displaying the monarch’s prestige. There were two aspects to this prestige. First, it derived from material power; that of the ritsuryō food system and the later estate system, with all its provinces, islands, palace lands, and networks that made up a tangled thicket that Edward Said has called an “imagined geography.” Japanese 3 monarchs with their followers saw the realm as the means to provide food for their tables, rituals, and banquets. In myth-history and early official annals too, this realm-wide imagined geography is articulated in the stories of food offerings to the ruler on his travels to the provinces, and it served as the basis for the ritsuryō food system wherein foods were shipped into the capital for the monarch to consume. The objectification of the realm’s provinces was, quite literally, the presentation of food that symbolized submission to the monarch. Second, rulers performed their prestige by proper behavior, manners, and etiquette. By hosting proper banquets informed by precedent, His Majesty and ministers showed themselves to be well-educated members of court society. This demonstrated their authority over the realm. The process through which societies come to regulate eating behaviors has been famously analyzed by Norbert Elias in his studies of European court culture. Elias proposed that dining manners result from “the increasing inhibition of impulse” of the human body, and are a demonstration of education. Elias also articulated a conceptual framework in which elite society 4 Said, Orientalism. See also Said, “Imaginative Geography and Its Representations: Orientalizing the 3 Oriental.” Elias, The Civilizing Process, pp. 52-92. 4 5 transitioned from emphasizing hunting and sacrifice to focusing on courtesy and manners. The medical-culinary history of medieval China also provides a helpful framework. For instance, the analysis of Paul Buell and Eugene Anderson in A Soup for the Qan shows how ingredients and culinary techniques from across the Mongol Empire were integrated into a single framework as a demonstration of rulership. Although the contexts for these analyses are different from that of 5 classical 古代 (kodai) Japan, their ideas are useful to us. As we will see in this study, Japanese kings once asserted control over their realm by hunting, visiting their territories, and accepting offerings of meals from their allies and subjects. Over time, however, royal lives, and the lives of their courtier officials became increasingly ritualized as they adopted Chinese-style laws and protocols and built a more elaborate calendar of courtly events. As we will see, in terms of food culture this ritualization reached a peak in the tenth century, as Fujiwara ministers used banquets to demonstrate their own material power and connection to the throne. They performed their status as His Majesty’s ministers by hosting increasingly elaborate banquets in their own residential palaces. This pivot away from the older forms of sacrifice and tributary food offerings to banqueting is an important part of the story of Japan’s food culture. Through Heian courtiers’ journal entries and protocol handbooks, we can see an increasing concern with dining properly, not only for oneself but for one’s descendants, who needed to learn how to conduct themselves properly around the formal tables at which they dined. My sense is that humming beneath this vector of ritualization of rulership was a Heian anxiety with the human body and its impulses. Food and sex were viewed as intimacies—acts of ingesting things into one’s body were rarely articulated by Heian writers, and mainly in negative fashion if and when they were. For instance, in The Pillow Book Sei Shōnagon complains of ill- Buell and Anderson, A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era As Seen in Hu 5 Sihui's Yinshan Zhengyao. 6 mannered or unseemly people in the act of eating. In The Tale of Genji, when characters have sex the narrative cinematography fades to black, so to speak, and when servants place dishes of food in front of someone important, there is no verb to indicate their consumption. Afterwards dishes disappear from the table, just like a man was expected to leave his lover’s bed before sunrise. Rajyashree Pandey has grappled with this “elusive, shadowy” body in her analysis of the body and sex in medieval Japan. She asserts that the body is “most powerfully apprehended not through a description of its individual attributes, but rather through robes and hair, which are metonymically linked to the body and self, imbued with both the material and psychic qualities that make for personhood.” Similarly, food and tableware were objects that reflected on the 6 diner, but the physicality of consumption was not usually described. This ambiguity surrounding eating and intimacy in premodern language is reflected in debates around the Dining with the Deity 神今食 (Kan’imake, alt. Jinkonjiki), a famous semi-annual ritual where the monarch isolated himself with his tutelary deity, or kami, Amaterasu. He spent the night with her. Food 7 was served. In other words, they consumed food and slept together—a pillow and bedding was provided in the room for his consort. Scholars are still arguing today as to what really happened during the ritual and what it meant.8 Moreover, sex and food were associated with desire, and feeding the body was a manifestation of desire that in Buddhist discourse inhibited enlightenment. As Takeshi Watanabe Pandey, Perfumed Sleeves and Tangled Hair, pp. 7-8. 6 This ritual is still performed today following the enthronement of a new emperor and most recently on 7 November 14, 2019 when Emperor Naruhito entered overnight seclusion to dine with the goddess. The modern ritual does not contain “conjugal relations.” Lies, “Explainer: Symbolic night with goddess to wrap up Japan emperor's accession rites,” Reuters, 2019.11.10, www.reuters.com This debate has most recently played out in consideration of newly published documents on annual 8 events and protocol where material details are affecting how scholars interpret the rite. See Nishimoto, Nihon kodai no nenjūgyōji to shinshiryō, pp. 164-201, and Kimura, Kodai tennō saishi no kenkyū, pp. 58-61. Those interested in food culture will appreciate Kimura’s close analysis of food offerings in the Kan’imake and Niinamesai. 7 has written, in Heian literature “a good appetite demonstrates an unhealthy attachment to a vulgar world.… Heian writers shaped their identity by their transcendence over food.” This need 9 to use the discipline of manners to overcome the body’s urges was an aspect of the growing ritualization of court life and dining in the Heian period. The Historiographic Dilemma Based on what is still a thin historiography, one might think that good sources on Heian food culture are hard to find. At first glance such sources seem to resemble a court lady hidden behind screens and blinds, obscured at best and absent at worst. This view is best encapsulated by Ivan Morris, who wrote in his widely read The World of the Shining Prince, “Not much is said about food in the vernacular literature of the time and virtually nothing in the Chinese-style writings.”10 This is simply not true. We might forgive Morris, as his book was published in 1964. Sekine’s Narachō shokuseikatsu no kenkyū, which provides a quasi-encyclopedic approach to eighth-century foods in records and wooden documents, was not published until 1969. More relevant to the Heian period—and Morris’s statement—is the magisterial Kyōen no kenkyū of Kurahayashi Shōji, a four-volume work on the procedures of Heian banquets that was published from 1965 to 1987. Kurahayashi’s study remains the starting point for scholars working on banquet protocol today; however, food is not the core concern of the study. The focus is on the general program of the banquet events, which I call “procedure” 次第 (shidai). In the decades since Kyōen no kenkyū, scholars have continued to expand our understanding of banquets and food culture. In particular, Harada Nobuo has considered the roles Watanabe, “Gifting Melons to the Shining Prince” pp. 52-53. 9 Morris, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan, p. 147. 10 8 of rice and meat-eating, as well as more recently the nature of communal premodern dining. And Kumakura Isao has told the story of Japanese cuisine through the development of kaiseki. Many more scholars have considered food culture, but primarily in articles and individual chapters analyzing a specific source, or a small cluster of sources, on procedures. In particular, the work of Satō Masatoshi, Yoshinouchi Kei, and Shōji Ayako have enriched our understanding of food in and around the palace. More scholars are also deepening our understanding of hunting and meateating in the classical and medieval periods, such as Nakazawa Katsuaki and Nakamura Ikuo, who have analyzed the development of pollution, taboos, and Buddhist prohibitions against killing. Supported by a growing body of inscribed wooden documents and evolving scholarship on the Engi Protocols, there has also been a boom in food studies for the classical period, with source analysis and recreation studies by Mifune Takayuki, Kiyotake Yūji, Baba Hajime, and Ogura Shigeji. The field in English has also benefitted from recent studies by Takeshi Watanabe and Eric Rath, as well as a growing body of work on agricultural history in premodern Japan by Charlotte von Verschuer and William Wayne Farris concerning rice in premodern food culture. Charlotte von Verschuer’s book, Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan, persuasively argues that rice did not occupy the supreme position in the premodern diet, and that rice was primarily a food for elites as well as being a tax good. Commoners also cultivated grains like millet and barley in dry fields, and even elite meals and rituals involved other grains. Her work has so thoroughly considered rice and Heian agricultural history that in this dissertation I have focussed my efforts on the provisioning of fish, meat, and produce for the dishes served at banquets. Rice should not be the only way we understand premodern Japanese food culture, nor 9 should it be the sole lens through which we understand kingship, economy, and staple foods. This constantly evolving body of new scholarship has informed and inspired my own research. Despite this recent growth in the field of Japanese food history, we still do not have a comprehensive study of Heian-period food culture as displayed in banquets. Morris’s perspective has proven persistent, although the fault cannot be entirely laid at his tombstone. Ahistorical myths and errors haunt English language writing on the early stage of elite cuisine in Japan. For instance, Rachel Laudan’s Cuisine and Empire tries to argue that Japanese cuisine prior to the sixteenth century was fundamentally shaped by Buddhist ideas, a perspective that any premodern Japanese historian could easily overturn by describing the widespread presence of edible sentient beings—fish and land animals—as well as liquor, in banquets and daily meals. This persistent 11 and mistaken emphasis on Buddhism and vegetarianism in premodern food culture derives from a lopsided historiography, particularly in English, that has focussed on tea culture and food culture in medieval temples. Fortunately, there is wide interest in the development of cuisine in 12 Japan. If we do a better job tracking this development, we can contribute more to Japan’s place in the world history of cuisine. New approaches can help us make the needed corrections. A guiding light for this project has been what Leonard Barkan, a scholar of Rome and the Renaissance, calls “reading for the food.” Barkan playfully urges us to re-evaluate sources where food is present, even when it seems unimportant. Instead of merely allowing one established framework to affect our interpretation of food, we can reverse the priorities and question how the study of food can inform our understanding of an event or a work of art. By reading for the 13 Laudan, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History, pp. 127-131. 11 Newer scholarship even challenges the extent to which classical temple communities followed 12 vegetarianism. See Mifune and Baba, Kodai jiin no shoku o saigen suru. Barkan, The Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking, and European Culture from Rome to the Renaissance, pp. 13 26-27. 10 food, we can learn much more about Japan’s position in early world cuisine. For instance, while I disagree that Japan was a society of Buddhist cuisine in the premodern, Rachel Laudan proposes a number of categories of societal developments in food culture: The high cuisine of Japan’s elites shares numerous commonalities with her framework for a cuisine that emphasizes sacrifice. Rulers in Japan collected provisions from around the realm and sacrificed the food as ritual offerings to deities, great kings, and monarchs. In this way, classical Japan can be considered in the same category as Laudan’s barley and millet sacrificial societies, such as China or Rome.14 If we read for the food in classical Japanese sources, what will we find? I have been guided by sources that consider food in particular detail. To better understand Heian provisioning, I have turned to tax and household accounting records. For banquet culture, food service is best described in ritual manuals and journals, as well as in literary texts for their glimpses of banquets. Furthermore, since the provisioning and banquet records overlap, we need to consider provisioning together with ritual. Feeding the Monarch To set the stage for this dissertation, an eighth-century story of the two clans, the Takahashi and Azumi, provides important clues for the process of feeding the monarch in the early ritsuryō age. Our account begins in the Eleventh Month of the year 716. Azumi Sukune no Katana 安曇宿禰刀 was frustrated. He must have known that the Dining with the Deity was not the place for his anger. The Dining with the Deity was held twice a year, in the Sixth Month and the Twelfth Month, and it was one of the magnificent rituals that Laudan, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History, pp. 56-101. 14 11 helped maintain the stability of the realm. Preparations had begun days before, and as a steward of the Royal Meal Office, Katana had been involved with provisioning, cooking, and plating the foods for both the monarch and deity to consume. Managing the necessary ingredients sent to the palace kitchens was a particularly complex job in the early eighth century—it had only grown more complex for families preparing food and drink in the palace. Ingredients flowed from multiple channels: They included provincial taxation, royal tributary properties, lands affiliated with the Royal Meal Office, and fields and orchards affiliated with the Gardens and Ponds Office 園池司 (Enchishi). Provinces were expected to provide specific goods, particularly food and cloth. Ingredients came to the palace storehouses, directly to the Royal Meal Office, or to the Offerings Station 進物所 (Shinmotsudokoro), under the Office’s purview. The Royal Meal Office officials also had to coordinate with the Banquet Agency 大膳職 (Daizenshiki) to make sure that all non-royals were also provided a feast suitable to the grand occasion. It was a complicated state of affairs for Azumi no Katana and his helpers. It had been simpler in earlier times. Those who fed the monarch, including the Takahashi and Azumi, had worked for great kings in the days before the tax system, using their own networks as well as special provisions 贄 (nie) provided by local elites for the royal table. Now under the new ritsuryō administrative regime of the eighth century, the Royal Meal Office had accumulated authority over all tributary properties in the Kinai region that provided food for royal banquets. Its purview had therefore expanded and became more complex. The staff and duties of the Royal Meal Office, a unit of the Royal Household Ministry 宮内省 (Kunaishō), is outlined in the ritsuryō codes, allowing us to imagine the place where Katana spent his days overseeing the preparation of food for the monarch. There were two 12 directors called royal stewards (buzen 奉膳), of which he was one. They oversaw food preparation and tested it for poison. Below them were six assistant directors (tenzen 典膳 or associate royal stewards); and one secretary (sakan 令史). There were also forty cooks (kashiwade 膳部) who prepared the food, as well as clerks, various servants, supervisors, and helpers. All of them worked with men and women from other offices involved in food 15 preparation and presentation. Then there was the challenge of preparing the right foods for the right moment. There was a specific menu for the Dining with the Deity, which required foods from the mountains, seas, and rivers: abalone from the eastern provinces, bonito, sea bream, fermented crucian carp, dried horse mackerel, and sweetfish treated with salt. There were to be bowls of codium seaweed and wakame. As steward, Katana would have overseen the preparation of jujubes, chestnuts, and fragrant tachibana oranges, as they were the proper fruits to be served in the cold days of the Twelfth Month. The Brewery Office 造酒司 (Zōshushi) supplied sake and vinegar. Workers 16 from the Hishio Shop 醤院 (Hishioin), which specialized in fermentation, brought hishio, a paste of fermented soybeans similar to miso. The Grains Bureau 大炊寮 (Ōiryō) provided the rice. Female attendants from the Uneme Office 采女司 (Unemeshi) and Female Chamberlains Office 内侍司 (Naishishi) bustled about to handle plating and service with other palace ritualists. They prepared servings of a special salt from Awaji. Only then was the meal ready for both the kami and the monarch. Inoue et al., Ritsuryō, p.182. 15 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 484-485 (39-2:6). For ease of reference, all Engi Protocols notes will contain 16 scroll (or book) number followed by a colon and the clause number. In some cases, there are multiple protocols in a single scroll. For instance, the Royal Meal Protocols 内膳式 are the second group of protocols included in Scroll 39, so this is indicated with a dash, then 2. 13 Despite all the work and bureaucratic coordination needed for the ritual, Azumi no Katana was angry not about the food but rather about an issue of protocol. He was the steward of the Royal Meal Office, its director. And yet, he was finding himself pushed aside by a rival, Lord Takahashi no Ogusubi 高橋朝臣乎具須比, who was technically his subordinate. As the officialdom of the entire Nara court assembled for the grand ritual, Takahashi no Ogusubi was insisting that he should line up in front of Azumi no Katana to serve his bowl of abalone soup first. Azumi no Katana was having none of it. He was older, he pointed out, and of higher rank 17 in the Royal Meal Office. He was supposed to be the one to serve his bowl of wakame seaweed soup first.18 Takahashi no Ogusubi did not back down: “Serving the royal meal on the days of rituals is handled by the Kashiwade,” he insisted. The Kashiwade were the ancestors of his own Takahashi family. “This is not something another clan can do.” Technically, Azumi no Katana was correct. An official of higher rank and age was supposed to process ahead of another official if all other things were equal. But this was not 19 just a matter of risturyō protocol. This was something ancient. The debate went all the way up to This passage comes from the third section of the Takahashi ujibumi. In English, see Bentley, 17 Historiographical Trends in Early Japan, p. 93-102 for the entire text. For a Japanese kundoku and original text, see Okimori et al., Kodai ujibumishū, pp. 277-298. This passage is on p. 281. I have referred to Bentley, but there are times I have sought to emphasize parts of the original text in my translation that are absent in Bentley’s, so these interpretations are my own. There is also an older English translation, Mills, “The Takahashi Ujibumi,” from 1954. Both of these English translations are based on little annotated Edo-period texts, so I have consulted with the more recent Kodai ujibumishū Japanese edition and deferred to its newer interpretations. The ninth-century ritual manual Gishiki tells us the procession order—Takahashi prior to Azumi—as 18 well as the soup types. The procession order noted here likely came as a consequence of the eighthcentury deliberations. Gishiki, p. 30. Gotō, “Naizen buzen ni tsuite,” pp. 26-27. 19 14 the monarch, Genshō 元正, for judgment. She acknowledged what seemed to be precedent in the matter of the ritual, and ordered that the Takahashi should present soup before the Azumi.20 Crucial to Genshō’s decision was likely the ancient lore of the families. The Takahashi presented their founding legend to support their case. They told how an early Yamato ruler known as Keikō 景行 went on a tour to visit provinces to the east. Specifically, he went hunting in Awa, where an ancestor of the Takahashi, Iwaga Mutsukari 磐鹿六鴈, attended him. A royal 21 consort sent Mutsukari out to investigate the call of a strange bird. He failed to catch a bird, but as he rowed back to shore, he saw a school of fish, and he used his bow to catch some bonito. And when his boat became caught on a sandbar, he dug out the boat and discovered a giant surf clam. Carrying back the fish and the giant clam, he presented them as offerings to the royal consort. She was delighted. “I want you to prepare these delicious, fresh foods as the royal meal and serve them.” Iwaga Mutsukari agreed to do so, and marshaling the help of other officials, 22 he prepared the seafood in a variety of ways: grilling it, dressing the raw seafood in vinegar, and boiling it. He prepared stands from wood and leaves and plated the different preparations of bonito and clam. The king Keikō was so delighted with the meal that he declared it “the work of a kami in the heavens,” not that of a mere mortal. The deliciousness and presentation of the meal prompted the king to give Mutsukari the surname Kashiwade, which means cook, and declared Okimori et al., Kodai ujibumishū, p. 281. 20 As the heads of the Royal Meal Office, the Takahashi came to worship the Great Deity of Awa as a 21 royal meal kami and the deity of the Banquet Agency. This deity seems to have connected with local food production in Awa, as in 731, official records tell us that a group of female worshippers in Awa province performed rituals to the royal meal kami. A regional cult around this deity and a pre-ritsuryō royal provisioning seems to have long existed in Awa. In the Banquet Agency Protocols 大膳式 (Daizenshiki) of the tenth century, compilers wrote of required sacrifices for the Eight Kami of the Royal Meal 御膳神八座 (Miketsushin hachiza). See Ruijū sandai kyaku, Tenpyō 天平 3(731).9.12 (p. 357), and Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 178-179 (32:1). Okimori et al., Kodai ujibumishū, p. 278. 22 15 that his descendants would long continue to prepare food for the Yamato kings. And that is how 23 one lineage of the Kashiwade called the Takahashi came to hold prominent positions in the Royal Meal Office.24 If the Azumi and the Takahashi had not made such a fuss over protocol in the eighth century, today we would know painfully little about who prepared food in the palace. The Takahashi and the Azumi families were not of high rank. Their scions would never lead the court like the Northern Fujiwara, nor amass wealth and warriors like the Ise Taira, both families that are considered in this dissertation. The Takahashi and the Azumi had long been involved in procuring and preparing food. They had posts in the Royal Meal Office wherein the steward, or director, was rarely an official of the fifth rank. Despite leading the office that fed the monarch, their doings do not appear much in the written record. They appear in the record here only because things went wrong with food and ritual, when their quarrels forced them into the written record. The acrimony of these two clans lasted decades and makes clear how feeding the monarch changed. In 768, half a century after 716, it was decreed that when a Takahashi or Azumi served in the top position of the Royal Meal Office, he would be called “steward.” When a member of any other family occupied the post, however, they would be called “director,” revealing the ancient privilege of the Takahashi and the Azumi. In 768, princes were appointed to serve as directors, 25 and the Takahashi and Azumi as stewards, likely as a diplomatic management strategy.26 Okimori et al., Kodai ujibumishū, p. 279. 23 Itagaki, “Kodai ōken saishi no shokuzen o meguru kashiwade uji no denshō,” pp. 6-7. 24 Ujitani, Shoku nihongi, vol. 2, p. 422. 25 See Gotō, “Naizen buzen ni tsuite,” and Kobayashi, “Takahashi, Azumi nishi to naizen no buzen: Jingo 26 keiun ninen nigatsu jūhachinichi no choku no kaishaku.” 16 Political alliances likely complicated affairs in the Royal Meal Office as well. Azumi and Takahashi had served as officials and governors in provinces historically associated with provisioning, like Wakasa, Echizen, and Shima, among others. After analyzing appointment patterns for the 760s, Asano Shin’ichirō has proposed that the Takahashi and Azumi were aligned with different factions. The Takahashi seemed to have aligned with Fujiwara no Nakamaro. When Nakamaro led a failed rebellion against Her Majesty Kōken-Shōtoku in 764, the victors favored the Azumi, who then enjoyed a stronger position at the palace and in provisioning provinces than the Takahashi.27 There were more complaints in the Sixth Month of 775, at another Dining with the Deity. This time, the steward Azumi no Hiroyoshi 安曇宿禰広吉 refused to let his subordinate, Lord Takahashi no Hamaro 高橋朝臣波麻呂, have the glory of presenting food first. Hiroyoshi even shoved his way to the front to serve his dish first. Takahashi no Hamaro, enraged, grabbed him and yanked him back. This kind of unseemly behavior led to demands that the two men perform purifications to banish the pollution they had caused. Filled with righteousness, Takahashi no Hamaro refused. He maintained that he had done nothing wrong. Before another royal deliberation could take place, the Azumi decided that if precedent was the way that their position was to be assured, they had better get their family history and documents in order.28 What followed was a process of dueling mythologies being presented to the monarch, Kōnin Tennō. Questions to be answered included, how had they come to serve food to kings of old? Where had their foods come from? What cooks had delighted the rulers? For these two relatively lowly clans with ancient claims in a society that had recently adopted Chinese-style See Asano, “Fujiwara Nakamaro no ran zengo no Takahashi uji no kōdō: Takahashi, Azumi ryōushi 27 tairitsu no haikei.” Okimori et al., Kodai ujibumishū, p. 281. 28 17 ritsuryō laws with bureaucratic structures and tax systems that might render them obsolete, the stakes were high. For the historian, one of the great things about such a dispute is that it generated documents. The collected extant documents for the Takahashi are called The Clan Records of the Takahashi 高橋氏文 (Takahashi ujibumi), and the narrative therein, recounted above, has fascinated scholars for hundreds of years, since a Nativist scholar, Ban Nobutomo 伴信友 (1773-1846), combined the three Takahashi documents from the Honchō getsuryō 本朝月令 and Seiji yōryaku 政事要略. What about the Azumi? The Clan Records of the Takahashi tell us that when called on to present their history, the Azumi pointed to their distant ancestor, Ōtakunari 大栲成, claiming that he began the sacred cooking fire for the royal meal during the reign of Sūjin, whom historians place in the third or fourth century. Then, during the reign of the still quasi-mythical King Ōjin of the early fifth century, communities of sea people who navigated fishing boats and worked along the coast in western Japan had refused to be ruled by the great king, so an Azumi ancestor went out and pacified them. This led to the great king “receiving the bounties of the sea.” These two 29 stories imply that the Azumi were active in provisioning and food preparation, especially in the western archipelago. In his survey of pre-Taika accounts in the early court chronicles, Gotō Shirō has indeed argued that the Azumi were based in northern Kyushu and controlled the strait between the island and Tsushima. That meant their fortunes were deeply intertwined with wars on the Korean peninsula. Given that geography, they were engaged in diplomatic and military activities, and Gotō has concluded that they forged a working relationship with the powerful Soga clan of the Okimori et al, Kodai ujibumishū, p. 283. 29 18 Yamato court in the sixth century. It is possible that their service as diplomats gained them 30 knowledge of continental food culture that the Yamato court began to adopt. Whatever history the Azumi called on in 775, it seems to have been persuasive. Kōnin Tennō decided that the Azumi would receive status equal to the Takahashi. Needless to say, the 31 Takahashi were displeased. They protested that the Azumi were presenting false histories and documents that had been doctored to make them seen more important. Historians today, however, believe that the second section of the Takahashi record was likely created to support the Takahashi’s arguments in the protocol debates. Eagle-eyed classical scholars have caught errors in language and terminology, and noted the strangeness of some of the details. In 789, the topic 32 was raised once more. The monarch, now Kanmu, tried another compromise. The Takahashi and Azumi would alternate positions in the rituals they attended. He hoped to finally calm the ill feelings between the two clans. He did not. Bickering continued. Why did it matter so much? The Takahashi and Azumi had served pre-ritsuryō Yamato monarchs as provisioners. Their legends explained their ancestral relationships to kings of yore. What is more, their ages-long service had connected local elites in the east and the west with the monarch’s base of power in the Kinai. Provisioning was not simply acquiring foodstuffs, and eating the foods taken from a place was not simply consumption. Like the Azumi subjugating the difficult coastal peoples, thereby securing the bounty of the sea, provisioning expressed a form of control of a place. Here were origins of the imagined geography of the Yamato realm and later kingship. For more detail, see Gotō, “Taika zengo ni okeru Azumi no katsudō.” Gotō also spots a large, strange 30 gap concerning the Azumi in the chronicles. He suggests that the Takahashi were closely connected with the chronicle compilations and that alliance with the compilers led to the Azumi omissions. Okimori et al., Kodai ujibumishū, p. 281. 31 32 Kageyama, “Kaidai ‘Takahashi ujibumi.’” 19 When an eighth-century monarch ascended the throne or held the annual Great Harvest Rite 新嘗祭 (Niinamesai), he or she called for royal provisions from all over the realm to be consumed in performing the rite. The phrase in the norito prayers and poetry for this “consuming of the realm” is osukuni 食国. For events like Dining with the Deity, the monarch received foods from the provinces, offered it as a banquet repast to the kami, and the two—the monarch and kami—consumed the dishes to celebrate his reign, his control, and his power. The monarch also used these provisions to host foreign visitors. Itagaki Shin’ichi has noted that the character for banquet, kyō 饗, also means food offerings, ae 贄, and that when provisions were offered and consumed, that was a banquet. Here is the original meaning of banqueting in Japanese, and it includes the provisioning, presentation, and consumption by hosts and guests.33 In mythology and early verse, relationships between a monarch’s ancestors and local chieftains were established and reaffirmed through visiting, hunting, and the presentation of provisions as tribute to the ruler and the ruler’s deities. Eating the food of the land was an 34 expression of control over the land. Analyzing wooden shipping tags and documents found at palace sites, Miyahara Takeo has provided concrete evidence to show how provisioning great amounts of food for the monarch’s court and rituals, as the Takahashi and Azumi did, expressed control over people and territory by the great king and tennō in the Kinai at the core of the Yamato realm. Itagaki, “Kodai ōken saishi no shokuzen o meguru kashiwade uji no denshō,” pp. 7-8. For more 33 information on the Chinese origins and interpretation of the osukuni concept, see Murakami, “Kodai nihon ni okeru ‘osukuni’ no shishō.” See also Ōtsu, Kodai no tennōsei, pp. 243-251. For a useful periodization and analysis of miyuki, see Nitō, Kodai ōken to kanryōsei, pp. 81-152. Nitō’s 34 work also addresses the presentation of nie to Yamato kings and tennō while they were traveling and hunting. The best overview of kingship, hunting, and source materials on those themes for the classical period is Miho, Takagari to ōchō bungaku. 20 In the eighth century, however, the Takahashi and the Azumi were no longer the main provisioners facilitating royal consumption of the realm. Ritsuryō officials whose tasks were defined by the new codal law determined tax obligations for provinces. They mapped the provinces, creating schedules for foods to be sent to the palace. While the progeny of ancient provisioners, the Takahashi and Azumi, continued serving in this new system, their prestige and power was waning. After Kanmu’s attempt at compromise, at the Great Harvest Rite in 791 Azumi no Tsugunari refused to alternate with his Takahashi counterpart. In the middle of one of the most important rites of the calendar, he stormed out of the hall. This display of anger was disastrous. By disrupting the sacred rite and conveying great disrespect to the monarch, he could have received a death sentence. Instead he was stripped of his office and banished to the remote island of Sado. The Azumi never again held a post in the Royal Meal Office. Thus the Takahashi came to control the Royal Meal Office. A few years after Azumi no Tsugunari’s banishment, the Takahashi followed His Majesty Kanmu to the new capital at Heian, which we now call Kyoto. New rituals developed, together with new protocols, and new provisioning methods atop the foundation built by Yamato kings served by the Takahashi and Azumi. This dissertation is about the food culture that Heian elites came to create in Kyoto. 21 Chapter One: Provisioning the Monarch’s Kitchen — The Ritsuryō Food System How did one feed a Japanese monarch so that he could consume his realm in the ninth and tenth centuries? His Majesty’s daily meals were complex affairs that were not simply for the nourishment of the royal body. Most importantly they offered food as a symbolic representation of his rulership over the realm. There were two features of this royal consumption: the collection of foods, or provisioning, from his subjects across the realm; and the processes of preparation and then eating it in the palace. While it might be tempting to focus solely on the eating aspect of Heian food culture, such as the officials designing a menu, the cooks presenting it for plating, and the courtly officials dining according to etiquette, His Majesty’s consumption of his meals takes on new meanings when we consider the elaborate food system that supported it. In fact, when we consider the provisioning networks, the offering of food—both for daily meals and for courtly events—proves to be an important feature of kingship. It is through the offerings of food to His Majesty’s table that his mastery of the realm and its resources was manifested. The food system supplied the ritual, and the ritual in turn celebrated and maintained the food system. In the next two chapters, I will be addressing both of these features. In this chapter, I will illustrate the main channels through which food moved from the provinces to the palace; the main foods shipped to the palace; and how foods from many regions represented the entire realm on the ruler’s table. And at the end of the chapter, I provide charts detailing the foods sent from the provinces through taxation. To begin, however, we need to consider some fundamental questions. What is a food system? The phrase “food system” is most commonly used in contemporary policy discussions about agriculture, resource scarcity, and environmental issues caused by food production. Instead of focusing on one aspect of the food supply, scholars and policymakers consider the networked 22 nature of feeding human beings, and how different factors impact the food supply. Anthropologists use the term “food system” to analyze the production, distribution, consumption, and waste management associated with food culture. For historians, considering the ways food 35 is produced and how such systems have changed over time can help us better understand why food culture changes over time. Developments in food culture are often ascribed to amorphous 36 concepts such as taste, but ultimately, palate and taste are constructed over a person’s lifetime based on what foods are available in their community and one’s genetics. Of course, more 37 factors affect what we eat than simple availability. But something first has to be present in order to be consumed, and the presence of foods in a community depends on agriculture, ecology, food processing, and trade. In the early Heian period, food was provisioned for the royal palace through three main channels: as tax goods, royal provisions 贄 (nie), and ingredients from lands affiliated with the Royal Meal Office. In particular, tax goods and royal provisions came from diverse locations, bringing parts of the realm to His Majesty’s table. By analyzing the ritsuryō food system, we can better understand this material expression of royal authority. Key to understanding this food system is the Engi Protocols, a manual of governmental processes created at the turn of the tenth This explanation of the food system in anthropology is clearly articulated in West, From Modern 35 Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea, pp. 18-26. I was inspired to use the food system concept to analyze Heian records after reading the work of E.N. 36 Anderson, particularly Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China. Anderson analyzes trade and agriculture networks and how they affected food culture in premodern China. See Birch, “Development of Food Preferences.” Birch considers how genetics and childhood 37 development affect reflexive reactions to different tastes. Babies are willing to learn to prefer new foods when presented to them, but toddlers and older children develop neophobic traits (or a fear of trying new foods) that many lose in adulthood; adults are the more adventurous eaters. There is a genetic component to taste as well, and one famous example of this is people who taste soap when eating cilantro, for instance. There are also rotten smells that are reflexively avoided by human beings in food. But much of our taste preferences are formed in childhood. For the food historian, this reinforces the importance of learning what foods were available in a community at a specific point in time, not relying on our contemporary ideas of what constitutes deliciousness. 23 century. In what follows, I will first address the lengthy manual’s compilation. Then, I will draw on the Protocols to describe the three main channels of the food system. In the Protocols, we can glimpse communities far from the capital drying fish, fermenting seafoods, harvesting seaweeds, and hunting for game, shellfish, and honey for serving at His Majesty’s meals.38 While drawing on the Engi Protocols to articulate the food system, I will also consider the degree to which foods represented regional production. Felicia Bock’s analysis of the Great Harvest Rite has explained that rice cultivated in yuki and suki districts were symbolic representations of two halves of the realm. Recent scholarship has also begun to explore the 39 regionality and symbolism of certain foods, like abalone. But I would argue too that the inclusion of much of the archipelago in this food system demonstrates the importance of provinces near and far that provided food for the monarch. The monarch did not need much of the realm to provide provisions. He could have eaten quite well off of the produce, seafoods, hunted game, and pottery provided from the Kinai near the capital. This is quite clear from the tax and provisioning records in the Engi Protocols. However, because realm-wide provisioning— consuming the realm—was an expression of kingship, it was integrated into the ritsuryō food system. That is to say, while the monarch might have eaten extraordinarily well off of food brought in from just the Kinai, by eating foods from all over, he consumed the realm as a king. Towards the end of this chapter I will also consider unusual foods and special structures created for the monarch’s benefit. Specifically, lands affiliated with the palace food offices were largely located in the provinces around the capital. These lands held fields, orchards, and paddies where farmers grew fresh produce for the palace kitchens. Designated ranches also specialized in In Japanese, we have an excellent introduction to many of the classical foods mentioned in the Engi 38 Protocols by Ogura Shigeji in Mifune, Kodai no shoku o saigen suru, pp. 16-25. See Bock, “The Great Feast of the Enthronement.” 39 24 dairy production, creating a fresh cheese that was only enjoyed by elites and that came to be closely associated with the monarch when it was served at banquets beyond the palace. Ice houses owned by the Water Office also stored blocks of ice to be used in the warmer months. A sweet syrup made of the amazura vine was also important—it required production across many provinces to make enough for the palace. Through the production of these special foods, we will see how the palace created a distinct and prestigious food culture that other elites wanted for their own use. Fujiwara Tadahira and the Compilation of the Engi Protocols The Engi Protocols 延喜式 (Engi shiki) are the greatest source we historians have for understanding Heian food culture. This manual, which is fifty scrolls long, was compiled at the turn of the tenth century, but its lists of goods and directives continued be a reference point for officials for hundreds of years. To best understand the Protocols, however, we need some context on its compilation and time. In several ways, the tenth century during the reign of Daigo Tennō 醍醐天皇 (r. 897-930) when the Protocols were compiled can be considered the end of one phase of ritsuryō governance. The last of the royally mandated court histories was completed in the Engi era (901-923), the Nihon sandai jitsuroku 日本三代実録. Plans to continue the series of official court annals fell by the wayside. The ninth century had seen the decline of the handen system, which distributed land to farmers based on the number of people in their households and determined what they would pay in taxes based on their paddy holdings. This fundamental land administration policy was beginning to break down at the beginning of the ninth century, and the last evidence of its use is from the same era that produced the Engi Protocols. That means 40 Torao, Nihon rekishi sōsho: Engi shiki, p. 54. 40 25 when compilers were putting brush to paper on the Engi Protocols, in many ways they were documenting a form of governance that was in transition. In fact, the very existence of the Engi Protocols is a powerful demonstration of ritsuryō governance. Its shiki, or protocols, contain the details of how government was conducted. Over time, they had to be updated. There had been two protocol compilations prior to the Engi era. The Kōnin Protocols 弘仁式 were compiled in 820, along with supplementary laws 格 (kyaku), and promulgated in 830. The next update came with the Jōgan Protocols 貞観式, which were 41 presented to the monarch and enacted in 871. Eight men from the elite families of the court corrected and revised the Kōnin Protocols, synthesizing the content so that readers could understand the previous protocols as precedent and the updates made in the Jōgan era. The 42 Jōgan Protocols exist only fragmentarily, but we currently have complete chapter titles, which allows us to know the general contents of the twenty-chapter text. Scholars have been able to 43 determine Jōgan excerpts that were included in the Engi Protocols. Daigo Tennō worked to maintain the ritsuryō system and, by extension, the supremacy of the monarch in the realm. He had two ministers to help him: Fujiwara no Tokihira 藤原時平 (871-909) and Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真, instead of a single minister from the Northern Today these protocols only exist in fragments. We know that the Kōnin Protocols were forty chapters 41 long, and thanks to the existence of the Kōnin kyaku shikijō 弘仁格式序, we have an understanding of the compiler’s plans. Compilers were to assemble protocols that were not easily sorted between offices and put them in a miscellany category; to write down new details of administration that had been promulgated, as well as notes that might be needed in the future; to evaluate longstanding practices that might be troublesome; and to refrain from including details on ceremony, as those instructions had been amply documented elsewhere. See Okazaki and Hirano, Kodai no Nihon, p. 311. Torao, Nihon rekishi sōsho: Engi shiki, p. 58. The members of the committee were Fujiwara no 42 Ujimune 藤原氏宗, Minabuchi no Toshina 南淵年名, Ōe no Otondo 大江音人, Sugawara no Koreyoshi 菅原是善, Ki no Yasuo 紀安雄, Ōkasuga no Yasunaga 大春日安永, Furu no Michinaga 布瑠道永, and Yamada no Hiromune 山田弘宗. The Honchō hōka monjo mokuroku 本朝法家文書目録, which contains the aforementioned chapter 43 titles, is a mid-Heian catalogue of legal texts up to the time of the Ruijū sandaikyaku 類聚三代格. It is valuable for notes on the contents and headings of legal texts, some of which are no longer extant. 26 Fujiwara family. Sugawara had served Daigo’s father, Uda Tennō (866-931). Sugawara 44 Michizane helped write the official history Nihon sandai jitsuroku prior to his exile, and the Kokinshū 古今集 poetic anthology was completed during Daigo’s reign as well. On the other 45 hand, the privately held estates 荘園 (shōen) were developing and that was complicating government finances and provisioning. Their holders, temples and members of the nobility, benefitted from land that was often tax-exempt. Daigo tried, unsuccessfully, in 902 to limit their spread. As we will see, the decline of the ritsuryō food system described in this chapter was deeply affected by the growth of estates over the Heian period. It was in this wider context of court annals, poetic anthologies, and aspirations for improving taxation and court finances that we should remember the Engi Protocols. The Protocols did not mark an ending, but rather a documenting of worthy systems. In 905, Daigo commanded Fujiwara no Tokihira and others to form a committee to compile new protocols by 46 synthesizing and editing the Kōnin and Jōgan protocols with relevant subsequent legislation in the style of the Rites of the Kaiyuan Era 大唐開元礼 (Jpn. Daitō kaigenrei, Ch. Da Tang For the story of Sugawara and his era in English, see Borgen’s acclaimed, Sugawara No Michizane and 44 the Early Heian Court. Even being appointed minister of the right was not enough to protect Sugawara when Fujiwara leaders accused him of treason and had him exiled to the Dazaifu. Sugawara died in exile in 903. For more on the intersection of poetry and banquet settings during this period, as well as monarchs’ 45 uses of poetry compilations, see Heldt, The Pursuit of Harmony: Poetry and Power in Early Heian Japan. 46 DNS 1:3, Engi 延喜 5 (905).8 (pp. 580-1). The committee consisted of Fujiwara no Sadakuni 藤原定国, Fujiwara no Ariho 藤原有穂, Taira no Korenori 平惟範, Ki no Haseo 紀長谷雄, Fujiwara no Sugane 藤原菅根, Miyoshi Kiyoyuki 三善清行, Ōkura no Yoshiyuki 大蔵善行, Fujiwara no Michiaki 藤原道明, Ōnakatomi no Yasunori 大中臣安則, Mimune no Masahira 三統理平, Koremune no Yoshitsune 惟宗善経. With the exception of Ki no Haseo, all were senior nobles 公卿 (kugyō) who held the third rank or higher. The seven men listed after Fujiwara no Sugane were probably the main working members of the committee. 27 kaiyuan li). Six of the men had worked on the Kōnin Protocols, and eight had worked on the 47 Jōgan Protocols, which meant that many were deeply familiar with the workings of the ritsuryō government. Despite all their rank and experience, the compilation process moved in fits and 48 starts. In the Second Month of 912, Daigo commanded Tokihira’s younger brother Fujiwara no 49 Tadahira 藤原忠平 and Tachibana no Kiyozumi 橘清澄 to join the work. Torao Toshiya 50 believes that Tadahira’s appointment was when real progress on the protocols began. As far as 51 we know, Tadahira did not note the assignment in his own journal; the big event of the first day’s meeting seemed rather to have been the Benevolent Kings Assembly 仁王会, a realm-protecting rite that consisted of lectures and recitations on the Benevolent Kings Sutra to call on the power of the multitude of buddhas and bodhisattvas. Hundreds of torches would have been burned, with offerings of flowers and incense made at the palace. One wonders if Tadahira was called aside from the grand events to discuss the Protocols project. After his brother Tokihira’s death in 909, Tadahira had become an especially busy court leader. In 909, he had become chieftain 氏長者 (uji no chōja) of his branch of the Fujiwara family, the Northern Fujiwara, and made director of Furuse Natsuko points out that this text did not simply come to Japan but that it was energetically 47 adopted in the late Nara and early Heian periods. Earlier in the Nara period, Furuse says that there was not necessarily pressure from the center to enact Chinese-style rites in a standard fashion. However, during this second period of Tangification in the ninth century, mokkan and records tell us that the Daitō kaigenrei was actually being used by provincial officials, which shows that the text was being used in the provinces. See Furuse, “Tōrei keiju ni kansuru oboegaki: chihō ni okeru gishiki, girei.” The fact that it was being referenced at the beginning of the Protocols speaks to the influence of these Chinese ritual and administrative texts. Officials viewed them as guides for improving governance. Torao, Nihon rekishi sōsho: Engi shiki, p. 58. 48 They were able to pull together the Engi supplemental laws (kyaku) rather quickly, finishing by the 49 Eleventh Month of 907. By the time they completed the supplemental laws, they had lost two of their committee members, Fujiwara no Sadakuni and Fujiwara no Ariho. Once they had moved onto the Protocols, Taira no Korenori had passed away, and more importantly, Fujiwara Tokihira passed away as well. DNS 1:4, Engi 延喜 12 (912).2.29 (p. 423). 50 Torao, Nihon rekishi sōsho: Engi shiki, p. 59. 51 28 the Royal Secretariat 蔵人別当 (kurōdō no bettō). In 911, Tadahira was named senior counselor 大納言 (dainagon).52 Fujiwara no Tadahira was thirty-three when he put his brush to paper to mention the project’s efforts in his journal, Teishinkōki 貞信公記. “Deliberating on the protocols with 53 palace agency administrators,” he writes in 913. In order to ensure that information in the 54 updated protocols was accurate, Tadahira and the other members of the committee would not only have to confer with each other on how to run the government, but check with more middling officials who would know the details on things below their purview. These lower level men and women would have the protocol records specific to their offices. All kinds of information was needed for the protocols, which required input from many kinds of officials. For example, it seems natural that a committee member would have had to consult with a steward or representative from the Royal Meal Office, the brewery, and the various kitchen offices.55 From Tadahira’s journal, we can tell that there was a flurry of protocols work from the autumn of 924 to the winter of 925. “I took powdered medicine to calm myself,” Tadahira writes, “and the powder had two ryō [or about 84 grams] of cave rock in it. I deliberated on the protocols.” Despite the numerous responsibilities, the committee was making progress: 56 52 Piggott, “Court and Provinces under Fujiwara no Tadahira,” p. 40 For more on Tadahira’s background and the numerous obligations that consumed his working hours, we 53 have an English translation of an entire year from Teishinkōki. See Piggott and Yoshida, Teishinkōki: The Year 939 in the Journal of Regent Fujiwara no Tadahira. See the entry for Fujiwara no Tadahira, Teishinkōki, Engi 延喜 12.11.27 (p. 38). 54 Tadahira’s efforts were likely not helped by the deaths of more committee members—Ki no Haseo, 55 Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki, and Fujiwara no Michiaki had all passed away by 915. More men were ordered to join the project: Fujiwara no Kiyotsura 藤原清貫, Tomo no Hisanaga 伴久永, and Ato no Tadayuki 阿刀忠行. Teishinkōki, p. 90. This is the entry for Enchō 延長 2.9.12. Tadahira was consuming a type of cave rock 56 called tsura 鐘乳 for medicinal purposes. This does seem like a lot of powdered rock or mineral to have at one time, so perhaps Tadahira is referring to an entire batch of the medicine instead of his dose. 29 “Deliberated on the protocols,” writes Tadahira on a snowy day in 924, which also had the rumblings of an earthquake. “Today we finished deliberations on compiling the new protocols; however, there are things that should be decided on.” In 927, the committee finally presented 57 the completed protocols to Daigo Tennō.58 Still, the manuscript continued to be revised. Under royal command, a secretary was sent to work on the copying and editing of the text in 965. In 967, the completed protocols were ordered to be sent to the provinces, and the following year, the original was formally stamped 59 with the seal of the Council of the State, marking the text’s completion. The long project of the 60 Engi Protocols was finally over. The text covered fifty scrolls and was organized according to the government’s ritual calendar, taxation systems, ministries, bureaus, agencies, and offices, as well as including multiple chapters specifically on shrines and kami worship. While the Engi Protocols are mostly organized by governmental office, since offices worked cooperatively, it is more productive to understand the texts’ procedures and regulations as interlocking, three-dimensional puzzle pieces. I will be using information from the Engi Protocols to discuss the interlocking systems that supported the palace food supply. By considering the wide networks of provisioning, we can see how His Majesty was able literally and metaphorically to consume his realm. Tax Goods in the Classical Food System The Accounting Protocols 主計式 (Shūkei shiki) in the Engi Protocols provides us with concrete details of the tax-food system. It is abundantly clear that provinces from all over the Fujiwara no Tadahira, Teishinkōki, Enchō 延長 2.10.15 (p. 93). 57 DNS 1:6, Enchō 延長 5 (927).12.26 (pp. 31-2). See also Torao, Nihon rekishi sōsho: Engi shiki, p. 60. 58 DNS 1:12, Kōhō 康保 4 (967). 7.9 (p. 48). 59 DNS 1:12, Anna 安和 1 (968). 1.17 (p. 164). 60 30 realm supported His Majesty’s dining, albeit in different ways. For instance, provinces in the 61 central core around the capital, the Kinai region, provided much of the dishes, dining furniture, vessels, stoves, tubs, and containers necessary for the monarch’s elaborate daily dining and banquets. Yamashiro, Yamato, Kawachi, Settsu, and Izumi provided thousands of dishes and vessels annually for the palace: mats for dining and food preparation; pots; jars; square-shaped dishes; dishes on little stands; sake cups; boards for holding and preparing food; food chests; and many kinds of jugs for carrying water and sake. There are a number of practical reasons why 62 this part of the country bore this tax burden. The five provinces of the Kinai were the closest to the capital, which made them best-suited for shipping heavy ceramics, earthenware, and furniture. For more delicate items, like dishes on stands that could be easily broken in transit, a shorter journey meant that the tax item had a better chance of making it to the palace intact. Proper storage containers for food were also vital. An official in the Royal Meal Office would have noted to an Engi Protocols compiler that earthenware pots with lids were required for making miso or hishio and that only the right kind of ceramic allowed the kōji spores to breathe and ferment the soybeans. Brewery officials would have requested tubs for mashing kōji with cooked rice as well as different water-tight vessels for making sake. All the offices and departments would recognize the value of cheap, easily made earthenware that could be thrown away after a single use. Providing the palace with vessels and containers was one important part Officials determined tax goods and what provinces would provide them, drawing more of the realm 61 closer to His Majesty through ritsuryō governance. There were three main categories of goods submitted for taxation: chō 調 tax goods, yō 庸 tax goods, and men’s tax items 中男作物 (chūnan sakumotsu). Of course, rice and cloth were important items of exchange that were paid; but regions also sent prepared foods and ingredients, often under the category of men’s tax items, which were levied on men aged eighteen to twenty-one, and chō tax goods. Engi shiki, vol. 2, pp. 854-858 (24:7-12). 62 31 32 The five provinces of the Kinai around the capital, marked here in yellow, provided vessels, tableware, and furniture to the palace. Emily Warren, 2023. The Kinai 33 Provinces along the Japan Sea Coast provided salmon and wasabi, marked here with pink fish for salmon and green dots for wasabi. Salmon and Wasabi Provinces Inland Sea provinces sent sardines, marked here with gray fish. “The Sardine Belt” of the food system. Without them, the banquets, rituals, and complex daily meals of the monarch would be impossible. Officials in the capital knew that they could rely on Kinai networks, a fact visible in the specificity of the Accounting Protocols—compilers recorded specific amounts of each dish or vessel: for example, 148 little boxes from Settsu or 270 lidded containers for royal provisions from Kawachi. This is notable, as many provinces have tax item obligations, but the Protocols 63 contain no specific amount for the vast majority of listed items. For the Kinai, however, officials could expect specific amounts, and this was important for effectively running the palace. Chests and vessels were crucial not only for storing and serving food but also for moving it around the palace and preserving it properly.64 Once foods from other provinces had arrived, they would have been organized in storehouses and possibly stored in a vessel more suitable than the pottery, basket, or chest in which they arrived. Interestingly, besides rice payment obligations, the Accounting Protocols show that the Kinai did not have to pay any edible foodstuffs as tax items—within the tax system, the Kinai served a crucial role for providing items for storing, serving, and organizing foods. Now, this is not to say that the Kinai provinces did not provide food for the monarch—far from it! In fact, these provinces were an integral region of sourcing for fresh ingredients. But these food items were not categorized as tax items, nor handled by the bureaus concerned with tax-collection and organization. They were handled by the Royal Meal Office and treated as royal provisions, as we will see later in this chapter. Engi shiki, vol. 2, p. 856 (24:10-11). 63 For more on the vessels and earthenware in the Engi Protocols, as well as useful diagrams, see Arai 64 Hideki’s pair of articles, “Engi shukei shiki no doki ni tsuite.” 34 Important Tax Food Items Lists of the expected tax items reveal patterns in the food system. In this section, we 65 will look at the main food items provided for the palace, noting the regions that produced them. For many provinces, seafoods—fish, shellfish, and seaweeds—were essential contributions to the monarch’s table. For some provinces, hunted game and gathered fruits and nuts was another option. Many of the most common fish that appear in the tax lists of the Engi Protocols— sweetfish, salmon, trout, carp (or common carp), and crucian carp—are primarily freshwater fish in Japan. Such fish appear repeatedly because river and lake fishing were relatively easier with nets, lines, and simple boats. The prevalence of these fish in the record reminds us that deep sea fishing, even many types of coastal fishing, are early modern and modern developments. Another important reason for these types of fish is that freshwater sources, like Lake Biwa and the rivers of the Kinai in particular, were a convenient resource for people living in the capital. These freshwater sources were more accessible than the distant coast, and they were full of delicious fish. One fish that appears again and again in the Engi Protocols is sweetfish 鮎 (Jpn. ayu, Plecoglossus altivelis). Sweetfish can migrate from coastal waters to freshwater rivers and lakes. In Japan, many sweetfish populations spend their entire lifecycles in fresh water. They mature in the summer months and are prized for their taste in that season. They reproduce in the winter, and female sweetfish caught in September through December might be carrying eggs. Cormorant fishing was, and still is today, a method used to catch sweetfish, particularly around the capital. Sweetfish were prepared in a number of ways before being shipping to the palace. People living This section draws extensively from the Accounting Protocols to document the main ingredients sent to 65 the palace. The relevant lists are in Engi shiki, vol. 2, pp. 854-904 (24:7-76). 35 along the rivers and lakes where the sweetfish were plentiful caught them, cleaned them, and often boiled them in salt water, as shown by the name “salt-boiled” in the Protocols. After that, it is likely that the small fish were dried. Or people pierced the fish and roasted them over a fire to dry them out, serving them as fire-dried sweetfish. In some provinces, locals used lactofermentation (or lactic acid fermentation) to preserve sweetfish. Although technically not a tax item, salt-pressed sweetfish appears in lists of royal provisions. It is hard to say how this was prepared—most likely it was coated in salt, pressed to remove moisture, and then dried out.66 Both carp 鯉 (Jpn. koi, Cyprinus carpio) and crucian carp 鮒 (Jpn. funa, Carassius sp.) feature in the tax and royal provisions records in three main preparations. It seems that Mino locals might have sent fresh carp to the palace, but most people provided carp and crucian carp in fermented forms. The first fermentation method was a lacto-fermentation. The second was a method that is called “salty-spicy” 塩辛 (shiokara) in modern Japanese. This refers to taking fish or shellfish, or their viscera, and fermenting it with salt until it turns, as the translation says, spicy and salty. Heian compilers used the term hishio to refer to this preparation method, but we need to distinguish it from “classic hishio” made from fermented soybeans. Protocols compilers used “hishio” to mean a fermented food generally, and in this case, fermented fish. At the same time, there was an important linguistic difference between the more sour-salty fermented fish produced by lacto-fermentation and the salty-spicy fermented fish products. Lacto-fermented fish was the earliest form of sushi in Japan, and carp continues to be prepared with lactofermentation today around Lake Biwa, where makers have passed down recipes and innovated For more on sweetfish and its classical preparations, see Mifune, Kodai no shoku o saigen suru, pp. 66 185-198. 36 on its preparation. As Eric Rath has written, this early form of sushi “made with rice in the 67 ancient period would have been a prestige food meant for the consumption of the elite.” Many 68 other fish in the tax records were also fermented by lactic acid, but carp and crucian carp deserve special attention for being fish that were served fresh and fermented but not dried. The tax records reveal regional sourcing for salmon. But, when we read “salmon” 鮭 (sake) in these Heian texts, to what fish were compilers referring? It was likely white salmon 白鮭 (Jpn. shirozake, Onrochynchus keta). White salmon spawn in small streams, and their fry 69 migrate out to sea in the spring and summer months. They then return to freshwater to spawn in the late fall and through the winter months. Likely caught in freshwater during the colder months of the year, white salmon have the alternative name, “autumn salmon” 秋鮭 (aki sake). While white salmon (or chum salmon) is of relatively low value today, premodern fishermen with limited boating and catching technologies no doubt appreciated this plentiful fish that they could catch in shallow, familiar waters. The autumn and winter was white salmon season, and local fishermen could pack up a portion of their catch, process it as necessary, send it to the local See Rath, Oishii: The History of Sushi, particularly pp. 28-49. Rath shows that lacto-fermenting 67 methods were first mentioned in Chinese sources. Some Japanese historians argue that this early form of sushi came with rice agriculture from Southeast Asia, largely as a part of rice-centric nationalistic narratives that seek to separate Japan’s from China. Rath, Oishii: The History of Sushi, p. 37. 68 This salmon is also referred to in early modern and premodern texts as the stone katsura (or Judas tree) 69 fish 石桂魚. It has two other names based on when it is caught: 時鱒 (tokimasu) and 鮭児 (keiji). 37 authorities, who in turn shipped it off to the palace. As far as the tax collectors were concerned, 70 salmon was to be shipped from three provinces: Etchū, Echigo, and Shinano. However, as we will see later, many other northwestern provinces along the Japan Sea provided salmon products as royal provisions—salmon tax goods supplemented the salmon that came in as royal provisions. Baba Hajime has proposed that salmon was a notable food for rituals, mentioned both in wooden documents and in records like the Engi Protocols. Despite being overshadowed by other favored fish like bonito or abalone, its prevalence makes it seem an ideal item for royal consumption of the realm.71 Coastal peoples and those living along rivers caught the salmon. They scaled it, and they removed the flesh from the bones, drying it on racks so that it would last for many months. They packed salmon flesh with rice and salt, weighting it down with clean stones, and then tucked it away out of the sun so that lacto-fermentation would preserve the fish. The ensuing product would be sour and funky, and most importantly, relatively shelf-stable. The people in these provinces let nothing go to waste, even in what they sent as tax goods. Taking the salmon heads in hand, they carved out the cartilage flesh and prepped it for shipping, as well as the bloody Reconciling premodern animal classifications with our modern naming and classification systems is a 70 challenge. For instance, there are a number of fish that we classify scientifically as salmon today, but which historically have the name “masu,” which is typically translated as “trout.” The differentiation in the Japanese language between a sake (salmon) or a masu (trout) is based on a misunderstanding, or a limited understanding of the fish, further compounding translation difficulties. Sake were fish understood to go to the ocean, and fish that remained in the rivers were called masu. However, there are a number of fish that do not remain in rivers that have been labeled as masu, such as the pink salmon (Jpn. Karafuto masu, Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) and the sakura salmon 鱒, 桜鱒(Jpn. masu, sakura masu, Oncorhynchus masou). Modern salmon classifications acknowledge that there are landlocked salmon varieties, even while they are still called masu. For instance, in Japan, the black kokanee 国鱒 (Jpn. kunimasu, Oncorhynchus kawamurae) is a landlocked variety native to today’s Akita prefecture that is considered a masu. (Interestingly, this species was thought to be extinct until researchers re-discovered the fish in 2010.) All this is to say, these native fish that blur the line between sake and masu would have been relatively rare in the capital. Pink salmon live in the northernmost regions of Honshū and Hokkaidō, and the black kokanee appears to have been limited to Akita. Another fish, sakura salmon—also confusingly named masu salmon—might be understood technically as a member of the salmon family today, but premodern people in Japan viewed it as a type of masu. So, it is possible that Heian records referring to a trout, or masu, might be referring to sakura salmon. See Mifune, Kodai no shoku o saigen suru, pp. 35-49. 71 38 back flesh of the salmon that runs along the spine. When they caught salmon with roe, they cured the roe, or sent the prepared salmon whole with the roe still inside. There are exceptions to the emphasis on freshwater fish in the record: the red sea bream 鯛 (Jpn. tai or madai, Pagrus major), mackerel 鯖 (saba),72 sardines 鰯 (iwashi), and bonito 鰹 (Jpn. katsuo, Katsuwonus pelamis). And beyond fish, provinces also provided dried octopus and squid. To begin with the sea bream, locals prepared it for more longterm consumption rather than just sending the fish fresh. They cut the sea bream into strips and dried it, or they cut it in other shapes for drying. These drying preparations were done on all sea bream sent to the palace as a tax item. Red sea bream adults live near the ocean bottom, particularly in reefs, but juveniles live closer to the coast. As for mackerel, this plentiful fish can be caught year-round in the oceans around the Japanese archipelago, but they are especially abundant in the autumn. Interestingly, the Accounting Protocols do not specify a preparation method for the mackerel. It is simply listed as “mackerel,” which means that depending on the time of year when it was caught, if the fish had a low enough fat content, it might have been sent in fresh. In the Engi Protocols, mackerel was sent in from Sanuki, Iyo, Tosa, Noto, and Suō. As for sardines, the provinces of Bitchū, Bingo, Aki, Suō, Kii, and Sanuki formed a sardine belt along the Inland Sea. The Accounting Protocols reveal that not only were provinces expected to provide sardines, but that different provinces could provide fish of different sizes. For instance, locals in Aki and Suō provinces caught small sardines and fermented them with salt before sending off jars of the salty-spicy mixture, while Bingo and Kii provinces only sent “large sardines.” These large sardines might have been dried. Sanuki sent lacto-fermented large This is also often translated as Spanish mackerel in English. This mackerel, saba, should not be 72 confused with horse mackerel 鯵 (aji). Three main varieties of mackerel can be caught in Japanese waters: Scomber, Rastrelliger, and Grammatorcynus. 39 sardines. In addition, coastal peoples in a few provinces around the sardine belt—Bizen, Bitchū, Bingo, Kii, and then in Higo in Kyushu, provided shark for the palace. Tax requirements for Higo province specifically note that they were to provide “dried strips of shark.” Perhaps others also dried the shark, or perhaps it was a fermented or fresh product. The last of our notable ocean-caught fish is the bonito, which featured heavily in soup preparations and still does today. Of course, bonito is a delicious fish served fresh, but its prevalence in the premodern food record comes from the fact that the fish dries out beautifully and imparts umami to soup bases. Bonito dries out hard, to a wood-like state, and thus katsuo received its name, “the hard fish,” represented with a kanji character to match, 鰹. After the bonito is dried out, it can be cut into slivers or shaved into flakes and added to soups and dishes. The Accounting Protocols imply that different local people prepared it in different ways before shipping it off to the capital. People in Izu and Suruga provided a type of bonito specifically for infusing soups. Suruga also provided “boiled bonito” and just “bonito.” These three types imply that Suruga was a special province for diverse bonito preparations. No other province provided so many types of bonito to the palace. Notably Suruga Province continued to provide bonito to palaces and marketplaces for hundreds of years to come. In the Edo period, the coasts of Izu, Sagami, and Suruga were famous as catching sites for the first bonito of the season 初鰹 (hatsugatsuo).73 Finally, in this overview of His Majesty’s food in the tax lists, there are a few more important products of note. Over half of the provinces and islands of the realm provided edible oils: sesame oil, camellia oil, walnut oil, peppercorn oil, Japanese snowball oil, and perilla oil. The provinces shared the burden of pressing the nuts, seeds, and plants for the palace’s oil, Shirane, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts, pp. 184-185. 73 40 needed for frying, cooking, and finishing dishes, in addition to using oils for light fixtures. Nut and seed oils were key in Heian cooking, especially sesame and perilla oils. Without a culture of animal husbandry to produce lard or a corresponding widespread dairy culture to supply butterfat, cooks had to rely on plants for their main oil sources. That said, meat and fats from hunted animals were also ways for mountainous and landlocked communities to contribute to the monarch’s table. Landlocked Kai and Shinano provinces provided boar fat. Shinano hunters killed and processed boar, venison, and pheasant for the palace. Numerous provinces sent dried venison: Kii, Chikuzen, Kai, Shinano, Higo, and Bungo. Some of these provinces also sent lacto-fermented venison and boar. Only Awa province sent dried boar to the palace. Meat and fat from hunting were one aspect of the food culture. As we can see from the food tax items charts at the end of this chapter, most provinces provided tax foods to the palace. All over the realm, officials on the ground in the provinces arranged for local workers to transport their tax payments to the capital. In the tax records, all provinces and islands provided food with the exception of Hida, Kōzuke, Ōsumi, and Tsushima. Nor did these provinces provide royal provisions. As far as palace accountants were concerned, these few provinces were quite distinct as providers of metal and cloth. The Royal Food Provinces and a Legacy of Provisioning There were three main channels through which the monarch’s foods were provisioned: taxation, royal provisions, and through lands connected with the Royal Meal Office. The incorporation of the older pre-ritsuryō provisioning network into that of the ritsuryō government and its palace administration made for a complicated food system. The combination of the royal provisions network with the new provincial tax obligations created the basis for the ritsuryō food system. This very complicated food system with its multiple channels that blur and overlap over 41 time might have been more distinct prior to the eighth century. Initially at least, royal provisions from the Royal Food Provinces and elsewhere existed separately from other ritsuryō tax item categories—like chō tax goods 調. Katsuura Noriko proposes that chō tax foodstuffs were not present in the Tang codes because the Chinese economy and marketplaces were more advanced. But this was not the case in Japan. The monarch had to maintain his own provisioning system 74 independent of the marketplace. The natural move was to incorporate the pre-exiting system of food offerings into the new ritsuryō tax system, which focused on collecting rice and cloth. By incorporating the royal provisions network into ritsuryō, those running the palace would ensure that there would be plenty of food and variety for the monarch’s table and that old relations were preserved. And, the ingredients and products also functioned as representations of the regions’ submission to royal authority. Not all provinces bore the food burden equally. In particular, seven provinces including Shima, Wakasa, Kii, Awa (on the Nankaidō) , Chikuzen, Higo, and Bungo draw the eye for the 75 length of their food tax lists. Higo is perhaps not surprising—this Kyūshū province was recognized by the ritsuryō government as a very prosperous “great producing province” 大国 (taikoku). Bungo province, also in Kyūshū, was a “high producing province” 上国 (jōkoku), as was Chikuzen, home to the Kyushu headquarters, the Dazaifu. All of these provinces were coastal, allowing them to effectively acquire and process the seafoods that made up the majority of necessary food tax items. Neither is Kii province’s contribution surprising—this high producing province curved around the now-called the Kii Peninsula. Awa (Nankaikō) on the Katsuura, “Ritsuryō seika kōnō no hensen,” p. 22. 74 I will be distinguishing the two Awa provinces by their circuits in the east and the west. 75 42 island of Shikoku was also a high producing province. In other words, five of of the above provinces were recognized for their populations, rice production, and wealth.76 However, Shima and Wakasa were not big and prosperous. Why did they provide so much food for His Majesty’s table? These provinces were called on to provide seafoods to the palace because of old relationships that the Royal Meal Office had with the local people, dating back to before the ritsuryō code and its tax provisions were written. In addition to Awa (on the Tōkaidō), Kii, Yamato and Awaji, these provinces were known as Royal Food Provinces 御食国 (miketsu no kuni). They had historic provisioning roles for the Yamato monarch. Ishigami Eiichi has shown that local chieftains and elites held special rights to hunt and provide their quarry as provisions for the monarch. The foods they provided for royal meals and offerings were 77 representative of their control, at the behest of the monarch, of central Japan. Royal Food Provinces that were notable providers were networked with others to support their specialized fishing and hunting. Iyanaga Teizō has shown how tiny Shima province existed as a political unit solely because of its historic designation as a Royal Food Province. Shima could not provide even the usual rice payments expected of the most agriculturally inferior province. Its value lay in providing seafood to the royal table, and other neighboring provinces were expected to support the people of Shima in their mission to provision His Majesty’s meals. Provinces were not lone agents in the food system. They existed in the larger realm that fed His Majesty. In Kano Hisaishi’s analysis of the Royal Food Provinces he persuasively illustrates 78 that these locations were tied with the Royal Meal Office through appointments of members of Engi shiki, vol. 2, pp. 742-756 (22:1-9). These clauses list the provinces by productivity and distance 76 from the capital. Ishigami, Ritsuryō kokka to shakai kōzō, pp. 162-244. 77 See Iyanaga, “Kodai Shima no kuni to sono jōri.” 78 43 the Takahashi family, discussed in the Introduction, to governorships, and through other connections with local elites. As we have seen, the Takahashi family’s founding mythology was based in Awa in the east, and the family also had connections in Wakasa, another Royal Food Province. Meanwhile, the Azumi drew on provisioning networks in western Japan, such as in 79 Awaji and Kii. Such foodstuffs sent from all over the archipelago arrived at the palace with wooden shipping tags that denoted the object and where it came from. As modern archaeologists have continued to unearth wooden documents and shipping tags, scholars have developed a better picture of the seventh- and eighth-century tax systems. Naoki Kōjirō, for example, has shown in his study of wooden documents unearthed at the Heijō Palace in Nara how royal provisions became a fixed payment levied on people in specific locations and provinces but still remained distinct from chō tax goods. How were the royal provisions treated differently? On the shipping tags for royal provisions, for instance, officials only noted the province, district, and village. Tags for chō tax goods, however, contained information on the specific households sending goods.80 This was because royal provisions were important as representative of the monarch’s control of a region, not a single household tax-payer, in the case with chō tax goods. However, as the Nara period ended in the late eighth century, the system changed. Officials designated specific households to provide royal provisions on a monthly schedule. In addition, the court created another channel in the food system: They designated royal tributary properties 御厨 (mikuriya) to provide specific foods for His Majesty. These lands were managed by the Royal Meal Office and had historically provided certain foods for the palace. The Kano, Nihon kodai no kokka to tojō, pp. 51-72. 79 80 Naoki, “Heijōkyūseki shutsudo no mokkan to daizenshiki.” 44 tributary lands regularly sent food to the palace under the guidance of a manager or custodian who was appointed to oversee a province’s royal provisions production. He was recommended to the government by a provincial governor, and he must have had local experience with the people growing, catching, and making the food. At the Tsukuma royal tributary property, the head was chosen from the palace cooks. Locations in Wakasa, Kii, and Awaji were listed as royal 81 tributary properties. There was a day-by-day schedule for Izumi, Kii, Awaji, Ōmi, and Wakasa.82 While the vast majority of provinces that sent royal provisions only sent goods on a seasonal or annual basis, meaning that they provided seasonal food or ingredients for feasts, the royal tributary properties provided provisions more frequently. And more provinces were called on to provide foodstuffs for the palace. The ninth century saw not only an increase in the number of provinces serving as royal tributary properties, but also in the kinds of foods to be provided. This was likely occurring because of the 83 decreasing efficacy of taxation. As one channel of the tax system was being challenged, officials turned to other more reliable channels, such as the royal provisions network, royal tributary properties, and specific lands associated with the Royal Meal Office. The Royal Food Provinces’ roles in the tenth-century record reveal the importance of the older familial relationships that had been integrated into the ritsuryō food system. Even as the Takahashi and Azumi were bitterly fighting over their shrinking status in the eighth century, the networks that their ancestors built continued to serve His Majesty’s table. The food system in the Engi Protocols reveals networks that drew ingredients from all over the realm as a symbol of His Majesty’s power over the realm, but ultimately the most reliable and practical provisioning came Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 524 (39-2:54). 81 Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 522 (39-2:47). 82 Katsuura, “Ritsuryō seika kōnō no hensen,” p. 36-37. 83 45 from longstanding local relationships, like the Royal Food Provinces, and from farms and fishing communities in the Kinai associated with the Royal Meal Office. That meant that the provisioning burden was not spread equally across the realm. Interestingly, if we consider the food item taxes alongside the royal provision obligations, we can see that minor provinces were actually doing double-duty in feeding the palace and His Majesty. By other metrics, these provinces seem insignificant; but their usefulness—and indeed, for Shima and Awa (Tōkaidō), their very political existence—derived from their provisioning power. The royal provisions channel supplying His Majesty’s table was an important device for consuming the realm. The Royal Provisions Channel Royal provisions, which were non-tax foodstuffs provided from the provinces for the monarch’s meals, can be divided into two general categories: provisions provided on an annual basis and those provided on a regular basis. Those provided on a regular basis were sent from royal tributary properties every ten days during extended periods. For instance, the Yoshino royal tributary property in Yamato province provided fermented and fire-dried sweetfish caught from the rivers; libertina snails, and big-scaled redfin gelatin. People on this property also provided pigeon, which would have been used in daily meals, if not for the morning fish offering. The royal tributary property in Shima province sent in fresh abalone and sazae sea snails. The tiny Shima province also seems to have been a site for abalone harvesting, with seaside communities providing preserved—or fermented—abalone and the fermented innards of the shellfish that were removed when cleaning it. Residents steamed the abalone and then cut it into short pieces, long dried strips, or winding spirals, which were easy to dry out and ship. Such dried abalone would be safe to eat for a long time. The residents would also send “various fish,” packed on the 46 backs of thirteen people, and this fish was measured by the amount that officials believed the thirteen corvée laborers could carry. As for provinces sending royal provisions, Kii and Awaji provided fish. Wakasa provided various kinds of fish as well, about half as much as little Shima, but compilers noted that Wakasa was to exchange their chō tax items for additional fresh foods. This implies that those responsible for provisioning were using tax proceeds to purchase fresh foods for royal provisions from a growing Kyoto marketplace.84 An extraordinary number of provinces—thirty-three provinces and the Dazaifu— provided for the monarch’s table through the royal provisions system, separate from the tax system. Broadly speaking, the periodic royal provisions mentioned above and the provisions provided on an annual basis included seafoods: fish, shellfish, and seaweeds. When goods arrived from the provinces, officials from the Accounting Bureau 主計寮 (Shūkeiryō) conducted a check of the items and had it sent to suitable storage or prepared for use. An office like the Banquet Agency might send its workers to fetch the ingredients, and any tags, like wooden documents affixed to the basket or packaging, that would help officials sort the foods. There were some royal provisions unique to the province providing them. For instance, 85 only Yamashiro provided sea bass. Officials in Settsu bundled-up baskets of kawatake mushrooms and packed crabs into jars. From Izumi, they shipped horse mackerel. Unlike today, the leaner cuts of fish would have been prized for lasting longer, since fattier fish turns rancid quickly. From across the mountains, Ise sent oysters. These provinces were close enough that 86 with quick and mindful transport, fish could have been sent fresh to Kyoto. Further north, Owari residents sent the bounty of their shores: fat innkeeper worms, which are a marine spoon worm Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 516-518 (39-2:40). 84 Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 518-522 (39-2:42). 85 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 518-519 (39-2:42). 86 47 dug up from the mud; saltwater clams; and hermit crabs. Bizen sent jars of jellyfish. The further away from the capital, the harder this provisioning of fresh goods became, and the more likely that seafood would be dried or fermented.87 Further inland, Shinano distinguished itself by sending an unusually precise volume of fruits and nuts: pears, large dried jujubes, and nuts, carefully arranged in baskets and scheduled to arrive in the Eleventh Month. Of course, the palace owned gardens that might provide such 88 things, but Shinano was the only province to send them and thus stands out. Some provinces supplemented their seafood offerings with items from the mountains. Owari and Etchū, for example, provided pheasant, both as wings and “dried whole” 雉腊納, although one wonders how a cook might achieve such a thing without the innards rotting. A few provinces were noted 89 for providing wasabi, which surely would have added an additional spicy flavoring to palace foods. Wasabi is a finicky crop, difficult to grow even today, so multiple provinces provided it: Wakasa, Echizen, Tango, Tajima, and Inaba formed a chain of wasabi provinces along the Sea of Japan coast. The Kyushu Headquarters known as the Dazaifu was the most impressive of the bureaucratic units that provided royal provisions. It sent abalone preparations available nowhere else: mitori abalone, kage abalone, hawari abalone, grilled abalone, and kuchimimi abalone. The Protocols compilers noted that the Dazaifu sent “pillar-caught” sweetfish, which referred to fishermen arranging webs of stakes in the water to track the fish and slow down schools swimming through. They packed up pickled chive stems and sea bream in hishio, or fermented Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 518-520 (39-2:42). 87 Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 518 (39-2:42). 88 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 518-520 (39-2:42). 89 48 sea bream, and sent the jars off to the capital. Historically, the Dazaifu hosted foreign visitors, 90 and it seems that the hishio items were distinctive products there.91 Abalone and Regional Representation in Ritual Of all the seafoods, abalone seemed to have been particularly prized for the monarch’s table. And the shellfish is still prized as a luxury food item today. As Kiyotake Yūji’s research has shown, abalone was used as a regionally representative food in ritual, banquet culture, and the monarch’s meals. Compared to other ingredients, the variety and volume of abalone in the record is striking. Engi Protocols compilers labeled abalone as either coming from a specific location or by its method of preparation. Place-named abalone came from Azuma, Tsukushi, Shima, Sado, Izumo, Oki, Nagato, Awa (Tōkaidō), and Awa (Nankaidō). As for ways to prepare it, cooks steamed and then cut it into strips to be dried; grilled it over a fire; made it into narezushi by lacto-fermenting it with rice and salt; and treated the innards with salt to preserve them. There were dishes made from abalone and shipped to the palace as tax products: abalone in soup; mixed abalone; hishio abalone; and abalone with seaweed. Sometimes compilers just wrote “abalone” or “various abalone.” There are also a number of abalone preparations that we can guess at, based on local traditions: tori no ko abalone was dried in a round, egg-like shape; tsutsuki abalone was small and dried knotted in string; kuchimimi abalone was dried with the flaps normally cut off the shellfish still attached.92 Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 520 (39-2:42). 90 See the note, Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 1068. 91 Kiyotake, Awabi to kodai kokka, p. 34. 92 49 50 Abalone was shipped to the capital from all over the realm. The provinces that provided abalone are marked here with a black dot. Emily Warren, 2023. Abalone-providing Provinces in the Protocols Kiyotake explains that location-specific abalone appears only in protocols concerning offerings made to the deities, His Majesty’s table, and palace banquets. This means that the source of the abalone was particularly important in ritualistic settings. This distinction implies 93 that the abalone was more than simply a food item. In fact, the location of the abalone’s source might have been the most important thing that the Royal Meal Office or Banquet Agency would note. Offices like the Royal Meal Office, the Banquet Agency, the storehouses, and the 94 Accounting Bureau had to work together to make sure that the proper ingredients from the right locations were being served at events. For instance, as Kiyotake has shown, abalone from Sado and Awa were used for the enthronement rites, and Izumo and Nagato provided for the Fifth Month Fifth Day Royal Banquet. Provinces along the Saikaidō 西海道 sent their own preparations of abalone, likely pierced and dried on sticks or knotted up with kudzu vine. These 95 were dried and shipped in their own unique shapes, and certain abalone products from this part of the country were used in specific rites, like the Memorial to Confucius 釈奠 (Sekiten).96 The place-named abalone should be understood as regional preparations and provisioning. For instance, the “Azuma” of Azuma abalone referred to eastern provinces generally, not a specific province. In this case, Azuma abalone came from Awa and Kazusa provinces and likely referred to long, thin strips of dried abalone. It was often served in 97 banquets. Oki abalone from the Oki Islands was used as an offering in important rites and had Kiyotake, Awabi to kodai kokka, p. 18-19. 93 Kiyotake guesses that locations are emphasized more than preparations in the various food lists in the 94 Protocols because officials in the food offices would have known the expected preparations for a region. For products where provenance was unclear, they might have been labeled with the preparation so that they would not be used incorrectly. Kiyotake, Awabi to kodai kokka, pp. 22-24. Engi shiki, vol. 2, pp. 846-848 (24:2). 95 Kiyotake, Awabi to kodai kokka, p. 45. For more on the Memorial to Confucius in East Asia and its 96 adoption in Japan, see McMullen, The Worship of Confucius in Japan. Engi shiki, vol. 1, pp. 342-344 (5:78). 97 51 more cachet. Even after the Azumi lost their position in the Royal Meal Office, people from Oki continued to submit abalone in the mitori style and abalone cut into short strips. In a way, this 98 continued provisioning seems a sad confirmation of the Azumi’s redundancy; the family did not have to be in charge of the office for their coastal provisioning network to continue contributing. The system was in place and functioning without them. Shima was another province with a long history with the Royal Meal Office that provided abalone. Abalone can live for some days after being fished, so it is possible that fresh abalone could have shipped from Shima to Nara or Kyoto. In fact, in the colder months, it seems that the monarch’s cooks expected fresh abalone sent from Shima as royal provisions. People in Shima 99 also seemed to have often used the mitori and tamanuki abalone preparation methods. There were a few foods besides abalone that actually had place names directly affixed to them. There was Noto mackerel; Kii salt; Awaji salt; and Ikuji salt. By 844, Ikuji salt 100 101 102 103 was being provided for memorial services 供養 (kuyō) at Tōji, a major official temple in Kyoto, and by the following century, there was also salt sent as a tax good from Owari province.104 The Limits of Regionality and Widespread Participation in Provisioning While location names certainly re-affirmed the regionality of a food item, other foods without such a designation represented their source place in the realm too. A few specific foods Engi shiki, vol. 2, p. 884 (24:50). 98 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 516-518 (39-2:40). 99 See Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 494-496 (39-2:19) and p. 710 (42-2:2). 100 Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 220 (33:16). 101 Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 484 (39-2:6). 102 Engi shiki, vol. 2, p. 862 (24:16), and vol. 3, p. 206 (33:1). These site-specific goods are also discussed 103 in Kiyotake, Awabi to kodai kokka, pp. 25-26. See Nishimiya, “Kodai Owari no kuni to Mikawa no kuni: bunken shiryō to mokkan ni mieru buppin, 104 tokusanbutsu kara mita tokushoku.” 52 with a regional character even had their own special clauses in the Royal Meal Protocols. For instance, Yamashiro and Ōmi provinces sent whitebait. These tiny fish were likely sardines. Fishermen with the knowledge of catching the little fish would ship them off to the palace late in the year. Mikawa and Tosa provinces sent jars packed with preserved seafood: sea squirts, abalone and fermented abalone innards. In Izu Province, coastal people caught and preserved bonito used for making infused soups: shards of the preserved fish would be steeped in hot water in an early form of the dashi soup broth still enjoyed today. Still other geographical patterns 105 emerge in the protocols of the Royal Meal Office for royal provisions. For instance, provinces along the northwestern coast—like Echigo, Tanba, Tango, Tajima, and Echizen—provided native salmon products. Every part of the fish was used. Coastal people shipped out salmon roe, fresh 106 salmon, and dried salmon, which are not surprising, but compilers also noted different kinds of organ meat, cartilage, and specific cuts of fish. As previously mentioned, a block of provinces along the Sea of Japan coast provided wasabi. Even if one’s province did not produce a special regional product, it was still expected to provide for the royal table. For the royal provisions, many provinces only provided wakame seaweed. Wakame seaweed dries well and is easily reconstituted to be eaten with vinegar, included in soups, or added to side dishes. Around the palace and in banquets, wakame often appeared mixed with soybeans in a condiment-like preparation. Provinces that provided only wakame seaweed included Mikawa, Tōtōmi, Shimōsa, Hitachi, Noto, Sado, Hōki, and Nagato.107 All of these coastal provinces could have easily provided at least dried wakame. Many provinces provided various preparations of sweetfish. In this fashion, distant coastal provinces without a Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 522 (39-2:43-46). 105 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 518-522 (39-2:42). 106 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 518-522 (39-2:42). 107 53 notable (or shippable) seafood might be included in the daily and feast day meals of the monarch through the royal provision system. Within this system, there were also royal provisioning households 贄戸 (nieko). These local sites in Yamashiro, Kawachi, Settsu, and Izumi caught and produced specific foods for the monarch too. They were affiliated with the Royal Meal Office and provided pigeon from Yoshino, fermented fish from Kawachi, seafood from Yamashiro; and salt-preserved fish from the Amibiki Tributary Land in Izumi. Again we see an emphasis on seafood. 108 To conclude, foods that went to the palace through the royal provisions channel together with tax goods came from all over, making it possible for the Heian monarch to consume the realm. Many provinces provided seafoods—fish, shellfish, seaweed, and such—with only a few providing game and produce. For other provinces, wakame seaweed was a way for them to present offerings for the monarch’s table. And abalone represented particular regions or provinces. Salmon products and wasabi came from blocks of provinces. The regional provisioning of seafoods in particular was tied in with older provisioning networks overseen by the Takahashi and the Azumi that were incorporated into the ritsuryō provisioning system of the late seventh and eighth centuries. All that said, this regional representation of provinces through foods was not comprehensive. While most provinces provided foods as tax goods or royal provisions, not every province provided a unique item. We should not understand these provisions in the same way as contemporary meibutsu prefectural products. It would be more accurate to view these items as The Yamashiro, Kawachi, and Settsu tributary lands were called E 江, which means inlet. The tributary 108 land in Izumi was Amibiki or Abiko 網曳. See 39-2:40, 39-2:38, 39-2:43, 39-2:37 For an useful analysis of these tributary units in the context of palace food, see Satō, Heian jidai no tennō to kanryōsei, p. 347. 54 regionally representative in a broader sense. Tax goods and royal provisions served as a material and symbolic connection between the monarch in Kyoto and the provinces. Produce and Special Foods: Ice, Syrup, and Cheese Amidst these records of fish and meat and bales of rice, one might wonder, where are the fruits and vegetables? Did the monarch eat dairy? And were there other kinds foods eaten in the palace? In chapters to come, we will see ice, cheese, and syrup being used in elite banquets outside of the palace. Many of these special foods were originally produced for the monarch’s meals, medicine, and banquets, and foods like so cheese or sweet chestnuts came to be used outside the palace as sign of royal approval. And we will see that for items like so cheese and ice, the infrastructure created through the ritsuryō food system was inspired by continental models. Food was one more way for the Yamato monarch to demonstrate his sophisticated knowledge of continental culture. First, what were the sources of fresh produce for the palace? Produce too required its own special network. The ritsuryō bureaucracy originally had a network of fields and orchards located around the capital. They created the Gardens and Ponds Office 園池司 (Enchishi) to manage this specialized local agriculture. The office provided farming tools and oxen, and managed a regular rotation of workers to see to His Majesty’s produce. The Gardens and Ponds Office was never large; the administrative code lists a director, an assistant, one scribe, six messengers, one laborer, and three hundred households to support the office. Half of these households were expected to contribute annually. 109 According to Isaji Yasunari, the Gardens and Ponds Office was based on an office in the Tang government that also oversaw ice houses. In Japan, officials in the office focussed on Inoue et al., Ritsuryō, p. 183. Specifics on the affiliated household numbers are mentioned in the 109 clause’s note. 55 raising edible plants for the palace, as well as possibly pet food for the monarch’s birds, like peacocks. After the capital moved from Nara to Heian in 794, officials re-assessed the 110 independence of the office. Given its provisioning role, its workers must have worked closely with the Royal Meal Office, since the produce they grew was intended for the monarch’s table. In 896 the Council of State issued a order incorporating the Gardens and Ponds Office into the Royal Meal Office.111 What were the people in households affiliated with the Gardens and Ponds Office growing for the palace? The Engi Protocols give us a clear picture of their responsibilities.112 Farmers in Yamato and Yamashiro grew turnips, different sorts of chives, spring onions, butterbur, thistle, melons, eggplants, lettuces, mallow, coriander, colza, barley, and flowering nothosmyrnium. They grew and shelled beans: soybeans, adzuki beans, and cowpeas. They dug up crops raised underground, like varieties of ginger, taro, daikon radishes, and turnips. These farmers knew that certain crops would respond well to bog-like conditions, perhaps growing them around ponds or paddies—these included water celery, water leeks, and water chestnuts. Meanwhile, others worked in His Majesty’s orchards. Protocols compilers noted 460 fruit trees and berry bushes. Workers in the orchards picked pears, peaches, citruses, jujubes, and chocolate vine, which yields a pod-like fruit with purple translucent jelly-like fruit that tastes of lychee. The gardens were located in Yamashiro and Yamato so that it would be easier to transport the produce. 110 On the history and some interesting theories on this office, including the proposal that it raised birds for the palace, see Isaji, “Enchishi ni tsuite.” See Ruijū sandai kyaku, Kanpyō 寛平 8.9.7 (p. 148). 111 Charlotte von Verschuer has analyzed the Gardens and Ponds Office’s regulations in the Engi 112 Protocols for what they tell us about premodern agricultural techniques. She usefully points out that the compilers made some minor errors because they were not agronomists. The main clause is intended to quantify aspects of palace agriculture, such as labor and supplies. I rely mainly on these quantity-related details here. See von Verschuer, Rice, Agriculture, and the Food Supply in Premodern Japan, p. 21. 56 They also cultivated a bramble-berry, a variety of native wild strawberry that has long since been lost.113 Compilers were sensitive to the labor and material needs of the gardens, orchards, and paddies. For each plant cultivated in the fields, they noted how many people would be needed for turning the soil, weeding, handling the oxen, and harvesting. Unlike most farmers in Japan, 114 those working in royal fields had oxen to help them. The Bureau of the Left and Right Stables provided eleven oxen for the various gardens, and officials made sure that there were plenty of hoes and spades on hand for the work. The farming households in charge of the fields and 115 orchards picked fruits and packed them into baskets and had the produce carried to the palace. For those lucky farmers at the Naki and Nara gardens along the Yodo River, officials maintained a riverboat, and shipped the baskets of produce to the capital.116 Where the imperial ice houses in Tang China were managed by the same office as that managing produce, in Japan ice houses 氷室 (himuro) were managed by the Water Office. The ice houses stored blocks of ice until they were to be shipped to the palace during the warmer months of late spring and summer. They were concentrated in the Kinai: ten in Yamashiro, two in Yamato, two in Kawachi, two in Ōmi, and three in Tanba. Like the locations of fields and orchards, this allowed for timely shipments to the palace.117 How could ice survive the sweltering, humid months of spring and summer in the Kinai? Special technology and workers were set aside for the ice houses. The structures were built in Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 526-538 (39-2:61-63). 113 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 526-538 (39-2:63). 114 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 524-526 (39-2:57). 115 Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 526 (39-2:59). 116 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 592-594 (40-3:26). 117 57 carefully chosen locations in the mountains where they maintained a cool temperature in warmer months by manipulating sinking cooler air and rising warm air. Specifically, officials had ice houses constructed on a mountain slope near a pond where ice could be cut. Then they had workers dig shafts at strategic points leading up the mountain. In cold months, cool air would travel downwards along the slope, lowering the temperature of the stones and dirt. Workers cut ice blocks, insulated them in grasses, and lowered them into chambers in the ice house. Between the insulation and the cold sinking air, the ice remained solid longer than if it was simply left in the pond. Additionally, when the weather warmed, the warm air rose through the shafts dug out by workers, preserving a cooler temperature in the ice house. This technology allowed the monarch and elite courtiers to enjoy ice in Kyoto during the spring and summer. 58 A diagram depicting the flow of air around an ice house. The vents are not to scale. Emily Warren, 2023. Another notable “special food” that required special sourcing was the syrup of the amazura vine, and if Sei Shōnagon is to be believed, courtiers enjoyed amazura syrup with shaved ice. Recreation studies have given us a better understanding of how troublesome it was to produce amazura syrup. Although amazura syrup is technically more sweet than even modern sugar, extracting the sap from the vine is a hassle; researchers at Nara Women’s University resorted to using a bicycle pump to extract sap when pressing the relatively dry vine proved a struggle.118 Given the difficulty of making amazura syrup, why not just use honey? Honey is present in the Engi Protocols. [ What quickly becomes apparent after a look at the chart above and the provinces that provided honey, however, is that it was a very scarce commodity. Its application was as a medical product and it was to be served with so, a dairy product discussed below. This was not the primary sweetener being used at the palace. Japan has a native honeybee, but there is no evidence of beeProvinces that Provided Honey Province Amount Approximate Conversion, Liters Approximate Conversion, US Cups Kai 1 shō .8 L 3.4 Sagami 1 shō .8 L 3.4 Shinano 2 shō 1.6 L 6.8 Noto 1 shō 5 gō 1.2 L 5 Etchū 1 shō .8 L 3.4 Bitchū 1 shō .8 L 3.4 Bingo 2 shō 1.6 L 6.8 Honey was provided as a medicine in very limited quantities. See Engi shiki, vol. 2, p. 340 (15:54). See Nara Joshi Daigaku ‘Bunkashi Sōgo Enshū’ Chiimu, “Gen no amamiryō amazura no saigen 118 jikken.” 59 keeping in Japan during the Heian or Kamakura periods. Any honey consumed at the palace was collected in the wild, and honey collected in that fashion takes time and energy. This is borne out in the very minimal collection numbers for the seven provinces listed in the chart above. To put honey collection in perspective, we turn to the Banquet Protocols where officials wrote out a long, winding list of the many provinces that sent amazura syrup. To source all the intensively made syrup for the palace, officials expected twenty provinces and the Dazaifu to provide the syrup. Unlike other fruits and nuts sent to the palace, which went to the Royal Meal Office, the amazura syrup went directly to the Royal Secretariat. By the tenth century, the 119 Royal Secretariat and the Palace Kitchen were playing more active roles in the preparation of the monarch’s meals, and it is possible that the amazura syrup was sent to them because of its particularly high value. The officials in the Royal Secretariat were much more important and higher-ranking than those of the Royal Meal Office, so perhaps they managed amazura syrup for banquets and His Majesty’s daily meals because it was a particularly rare and thus prestigious ingredient. Out of all the ingredients that required special provisioning in classical Japan, none has captured the imagination of researchers as much as so 蘇, a dairy product made from cow’s milk. Japan is not a country known for a long history of cheese and milk consumption; but from the sixth century onwards, there is evidence of so being made near cattle and horse ranches. Hirono Takashi has proposed that the making of dairy products increased when immigrant communities from the kingdoms of the Korean peninsula came to Japan—their expertise was a great boon to raising cattle and horses. The Engi Protocols lists many provinces that provided jars of so on 120 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 242-244 (33:54). 119 Hirono, Kodai nihon no miruku rōdo, pp. 64-66. 120 60 an alternating annual schedule, each province sending between ten and twenty jars for their designated cycle. Hirono has usefully pointed out that even the lengthy Engi Protocols list 121 does not likely contain all the provinces that provided so, as longstanding ranch locations in Kinai appear to be absent from the Engi Protocols list. The picture that emerges is one of 122 royally designated ranches and provisioners that knew how to breed and milk cattle, that then processed the milk to make so. So was eaten with ginger as an abstinence food, but mainly it 123 was eaten with honey for perceived medical benefits. In fact, if so had not also become a dish featured at banquets, I would be tempted to label it a medicine. But so seems to have come to straddle medicinal and culinary categories. What was so? The earliest detailed recipe-like text is in the Engi Protocols, just below the list of provinces providing it. The clause says that milk is to be cooked until half of the volume remains: and “so is to be made according to this method: one to [8 L] of cooked milk yields one shō [.8L] of so.” But when it comes to dairy processing, the devil is in the details. Researchers 124 have resorted to recreation studies to uncover the details of how this product was made. If one simply boils milk down to one-tenth volume and jars it, the product will quickly rot and be unsafe to eat. To cook down the milk and remove the water content, people in the milk households 乳戸 (nyūko) who made the so would have cooked it in a pot over low heat for an extended period of time. By heating the milk around eighty degrees celsius, cooks would have killed bacteria and microorganisms in the milk, and this heating would have affected the See Engi shiki, vol. 2, pp. 816-820 (23:58). These cycles were likely tied to expectations about how 121 much milk could be produced at the ranches in question. See Hirono, Kodai nihon no miruku rōdo, pp. 147-149. Hirono, Kodai nihon no miruku rōdo, pp. 42-43. 122 Engi shiki, vol. 2, p. 310 (15:26). 123 Engi shiki, vol. 2, p. 820 (23:59). 124 61 proteins, allowing the milk to coagulate. So thus was a coagulated milk product that had “fresh” and “aged” forms, not unlike a mild farmers cheese. However, it is important to note that there is no evidence in the record of any kind of culturing, such as what occurs with other cheeses or yogurt. In the pages to come, I will refer to this dairy product as so cheese. 125 Conclusion The Engi Protocols provide us with a bird’s eye view of the ritsuryō food system. Through three main channels—the tax system, royal provisions, and lands administered by foodrelated palace offices—officials acquired food for the monarch’s table. The tax system and royal provisioning in particular meant that the entire realm participated. Some regions provided distinct foods, like salmon, sardines, or wasabi. Many provinces merely sent common items, like wakame seaweed. Scholars have attributed regionality to foods such as abalone, but if we consider the food system more broadly, there were parts of the realm and blocks of provinces providing distinct foods that could also be considered representative, such as those providing salmon, sardines, or wasabi. We have seen too how the ritsuryō food system incorporated older provisioning networks, like those commanded by the historic leaders of the Royal Meal Office, the Takahashi and the Azumi, who called on local leaders to provide foods from Royal Food Provinces. Over Hirono, Kodai nihon no miruku rōdo, p. 73. Given the widespread and carefully managed production 125 of so cheese in the Heian period, Hirono argues persuasively that it functioned as a symbol of ritsuryō and royal authority. However, the fact that this food was reserved for elites was also its downfall: “Because milk culture never went beyond the elites, and then was only superficially elevated as a nutritious medicine, and even though its production and consumption was long-practiced, it never gained a position in commoner food culture, and this was a major reason that the consumption of milk and dairy disappeared.” The fact that so cheese was no longer made and shipped to the capital by the Kamakura period reflected the breakdown of the ritsuryō food system. Because it was no longer being made for the palace, and it was not being made for anyone other than elites, the food faded into legend. From there, so cheese in later medieval records was conflated—and confused—with daigo 醍醐, which was similar to ghee or shar tos, a form of clarified butter that in Japan existed in Buddhist texts, but not in actual culinary practice. Despite this confusion in popular and even some scholarly writings, it is important to remember that so cheese and daigo are not the same food. So cheese occupied an elite position in Heian culinary culture and repeatedly appears in the developing banquet culture. 62 time, officials were compelled to create more administrative units for provisioning, like tributary lands and specific households to provide particular foods for the monarch’s table. The resulting systems, while complicated, allowed the monarch to symbolically consume his realm even as taxation processes changed over time. In this chapter I have also outlined some special foods that required distinct infrastructure: ice, so cheese, and amazura syrup. The production of these foods required specialized knowledge and organization, such as dairy ranches and ice houses, and they came to be closely associated with royal dining. In Chapter Three, we will see how so cheese in particular came to be served outside the palace as a sign of royal endorsement. In the chapters to come, we will see how ingredients outlined in this chapter, handled by palace cooks, became the foundation of Heian cuisine. 63 [ Food Item Taxes of the Tōkaidō 東海道 Iga madder*, sesame oil, Japanese pepper Ise rice**, arame kelp, madder, sesame oil, peppercorn oil, various dried fish, salt-boiled sweetfish, various lacto-fermented fish Shima mitori abalone, various abalone, bonito, dried sea cucumber, various strips of dried fish, various dried fish (unidentified type), various dried meats, various lacto-fermented fish, various salt-pickled fish, nori, codium seaweed, gloiopeltis seaweed, wakame seaweed, wakame stems, campylaephora seaweed, chondrus seaweed, gracilaria seaweed, arame kelp, various dried fish, bonito, dried strips of sea bream Owari Ikuji salt, salt, sesame oil, dried pheasant, various dried fish, salt-boiled sweetfish, various lacto-fermented fish Mikawa various strips of dried fish, dried sea bream, strips of dried sea bream, lacto-fermented mussels , rice, salt, sesame oil, peppercorn oil, dried pheasant, various dried fish, wakame seaweed Tōtōmi sesame oil, dried halfbeak fish Suruga boiled bonito, bonito, hand net-caught lacto-fermented fish, fire-dried sweetfish, salt-boiled sweetfish, bonito for infusing soups Izu sesame oil, bonito for infusing soups Kai roasted sesame (or ripened sesame), walnut oil, dried venison, boar fat Sagami roasted sesame (or ripened sesame), madder, short abalone strips, bonito Musashino madder Awa ōshi abalone, codium seaweed, roasted sesame (or ripened sesame), bonito, abalone Kazusa roasted sesame (or ripened sesame), mustard, various dried meat, abalone, gelidium seaweed, Shimōsa roasted sesame (or ripened sesame) Hitachi madder, dried meat, abalone, *Madder is edible and can also be used to dye cloth. A few edible items had non-culinary applications, such as oils, which might be burned for light. **Where rice explicitly appears in the Accounting Protocols, it will be mentioned here. This rice was paid in addition to the rice taxes levied on land. 64 Food Item Taxes of the Tōsandō 東山道 Ōmi rice, sesame oil, hishio crucian carp, ameuo lacto-fermented fish, salt-boiled sweetfish Mino sesame oil, perilla oil, salt-boiled sweetfish, lacto-fermented sweetfish, carp, lacto-fermented crucian carp Hida Shinano hemp seeds, mustard, boar fat, dried meat, dried pheasant, dried strips of salmon, salmon cartilage, salmon back flesh, salmon eggs Kōzuke Shimotsuke hemp seeds, mustard Mutsu rice, grains Dewa rice, grains Food Item Taxes of the Hokuridō 北陸道 Wakasa thin abalone strips, squid, dried sea cucumber, various dried meats, lacto-fermented “sweet” abalone, various lacto-fermented fish, mixed lacto-fermented mussels and sea squirts, sea urchin, gelidium seaweed, salt, rice, Japanese pepper, wakame seaweed, strips of dried sea bream Echizen rice, roasted sesame (or ripened sesame), madder, sinomenium, sesame oil, perilla oil, walnut or some other type of oil, wasabi, wakame seaweed, various dried fish Noto dried sea cucumbers, sea cucumber innards, sesame oil, various dried fish, mackerel Etchū madder, sesame oil, dried strips of salmon, lacto-fermented salmon, salmon cartilage, salmon back flesh, salmon roe, various dried meats Echigo salmon, salmon roe still in the salmon, salmon roe, salmon cartilage, salmon back flesh Sado abalone 65 Food Item Taxes of the San’indō 山陰道 Tanba rice, sinomenium, sesame oil, Japanese pepper, flattened chestnuts, dried-crushed chestnuts Tango rice, sinomenium, sesame oil, castanopsis nuts, squid, various dried fish, wakame seaweed Tajima sesame oil, peppercorn oil, dried-crushed chestnuts, salt-boiled sweetfish, various dried meat, pufferfish, wakame seaweed Inaba sesame oil, sinomenium, camellia oil, flattened chestnuts, fire-dried sweetfish, pufferfish, various dried meats, wakame seaweed Hōki castanopsis nuts, pufferfish, boiled and dried sweetfish, various dried meat Izumo squid, abalone, camellia oil, perilla oil, sesame oil, thin abalone strips, various dried meats, nori, wakame seaweed Iwami thin abalone strips, various dried meats, nori Oki mitori abalone, short strips of abalone, squid, dried sea cucumber, dried octopus, dried meats, nori, wakame seaweed, island chives, various dried [fish] Food Item Taxes of the San’yōdō 山陽道 Harima salt, rice, sinomenium, Japanese pepper, sesame oil, various dried meat, salt-boiled sweetfish, lacto-fermented sweetfish, Mimasaka rice, madder, sinomenium, dried-crushed chestnuts, sesame oil, peppercorn oil Bizen salt, rice, sesame oil, shark, pressed sweetfish, salt-boiled sweetfish, various lacto-fermented fish Bitchū salt, rice, madder, sesame oil, peppercorn oil, ground-dried chestnuts, shark, pressed sweetfish, salt-boiled sweetfish, large sardines, small hishio sardines Bingo salt, rice, sinomenium, sesame oil, pressed sweetfish, salt-boiled sweetfish, shark, large sardines, various dried meat Aki salt, madder, sinomenium, sesame oil, dried meat, small hishio sardines Suō salt, rice, madder, camellia oil, sesame oil, salt-boiled sweetfish, mackerel, small hishio sardines, Nagato various abalone, rice, sesame oil, thin strips of abalone, various dried meat, wakame seaweed 66 Food Item Taxes of the Nankaidō 南海道 Kii salt, lacto-fermented abalone, bonito, dried shark, arame kelp, dried venison, lactofermented venison, lacto-fermented boar, bonito, pressed sweetfish, salt-boiled sweetfish, dried strips of sea bream, large sardines, wakame seaweed Awaji various meats, various fish, salt, rice, various lacto-fermented fish Awa mitori abalone, thin strips of abalone, abalone on a stick, bonito, rice, hemp seeds, Japanese snowball oil, peppercorn oil, sesame oil, short strips of abalone, dried boar, dried shark, pickled abalone innards, lacto-fermented abalone, lacto-fermented sweetfish, salt-boiled sweetfish, various lacto-fermented fish, wakame seaweed, gloiopeltis seaweed, gelidium seaweed Sanuki salt, rice, sesame oil, dried octopus, dried strips of sea bream, lacto-fermented large sardines, mackerel, wakame seaweed Iyo long strips of abalone, short strips of abalone, salt, rice, sesame oil, lacto-fermented abalone, salt-boiled abalone, lacto-fermented mussels, mackerel, wakame stems, wakame seaweed, various seaweeds Tosa bonito, rice, sesame oil, various dried fish, salt-boiled sweetfish, mackerel Food Item Taxes of the Saikaidō 西海道 Chikuzen camellia oil, mitori abalone, wing-cut abalone, stem-removed (kuzu nuki) abalone, shadow (kage) abalone, strung (muchi) abalone, ear abalone, hishio crucian carp, lacto-fermented crucian carp, wakame seaweed, short strips of abalone, thin abalone, lacto-fermented abalone, roasted abalone, salt, roasted sea cucumber, various dried fish, sesame oil, camellia oil, perilla oil, dried venison, lacto-fermented venison, pressed sweetfish, squid, dried sea bream, strips of various dried fish, pickled abalone innards, salt-pickled sweetfish Chikugo rice, sesame oil, camellia oil, perilla oil, peppercorn oil, hishio crucian carp, strips of various dried fish, various dried meats, pressed sweetfish, salt-boiled sweetfish, lacto-fermented sweetfish, salt-pickled sweetfish, lacto-fermented crucian carp Hizen mitori abalone, short strips of abalone, long strips of abalone, wing-cut abalone, roasted sea cucumber, salt, thin strips of abalone, rice, Japanese snowball oil, perilla oil, lacto-fermented abalone, pickled abalone innards Higo tanra abalone, roasted sea cucumber, dried sea bream, dried octopus, various dried fish, rice, roasted sesame seeds (or ripened sesame), sinomenium, sesame oil, camellia oil, perilla oil, dried venison, pressed sweetfish, dried strips of shark, dried oysters, salt-boiled sweetfish, lacto-fermented sweetfish, salt-pickled sweetfish, chunks of salt Bizen squid, various strips of dried fish, rice, sinomenium, camellia oil, sesame oil, perilla oil, lacto-fermented venison, lacto-fermented boar, salt-pickled sweetfish, lacto-fermented sweetfish 67 Bungo mitori abalone, short strips of abalone, wing-cut abalone, strung (muchi) abalone, tanra abalone, bonito, thin strips of abalone, roasted sesame seeds (or ripened sesame), sinomenium, peppercorn oil, camellia oil, perilla oil, dried venison, pressed sweetfish, various dried fish, lacto-fermented venison, lacto-fermented sweetfish, salt-boiled sweetfish Hyūga thin strips of abalone, bonito, roasted sesame (or ripened sesame), madder, sesame seeds Ōsumi Satsuma salt Iki soybeans, adzuki beans, wheat, camellia oil, thin strips of abalone Tsushima Royal Food Provinces’ Responsibilities Food Item Taxes Royal Provisions Shima mitori abalone, various abalone, bonito, dried sea cucumber, various strips of dried fish, various dried fish (unidentified type), various dried meats, various lacto-fermented fish, various salt-pickled fish, nori, codium seaweed, gloiopeltis seaweed, wakame seaweed, wakame stems, campylaephora seaweed, chondrus seaweed, gracilaria seaweed, arame kelp, various dried fish, bonito, dried strips of sea bream fresh abalone, sazae sea snails, preserved [abalone], fermented innards, steamed abalone, dried abalone strips, dried abalone spirals, and summer abalone, various fish, deep seaweed, and “fresh, delicious ingredients” Wakasa thin abalone strips, squid, dried sea cucumber, various dried meats, lacto-fermented “sweet” abalone, various lacto-fermented fish, mixed lactofermented mussels and sea squirts, sea urchin, gelidium seaweed, salt, rice, Japanese pepper, wakame seaweed, strips of dried sea bream fresh salmon; wasabi; wakame seaweed; nemacystus seaweed; and gracilaria seaweed; “the various fish of Wakasa province” [dried or fermented]; and “fresh, delicious ingredients” Awaji various meats, various fish, salt, rice, various lactofermented fish The various fish from Awaji Province; “fresh, delicious ingredients” Awa (Tōkaidō) ōshi abalone, codium seaweed, roasted sesame (or ripened sesame), bonito, alabone various abalone Kii salt, lacto-fermented abalone, bonito, dried shark, arame kelp, dried venison, lacto-fermented venison, lacto-fermented boar, bonito, pressed sweetfish, saltboiled sweetfish, dried strips of sea bream, large sardines, wakame seaweed The various fish; fermented sweetfish These were ingredients provided by the Royal Food Provinces explicitly mentioned in the Engi Protocols. The Protocols, especially the schedule lists in the Royal Meal Protocols, imply that more was being sent to the palace for the monarch’s meals. 68 Chapter Two: From Food System to Royal Cuisine — The Monarch’s Daily Meals Once ingredients arrived at the Heian palace, how were these foods transformed from ingredients into cuisine? In this his chapter I discuss how officials at the various offices and kitchens prepared food to fit culinary categories appropriate to be served to His Majesty. There are several manuals for conducting daily life in the palace and tending to His Majesty, such as those documented in the Jichūgun’yō 侍中群要 or the Kinpishō 禁秘抄. Our most detailed 126 directions concerning the monarch’s daily meals, however, appear in a manual from the early eleventh century called The Daily Events 日中行事 (Nitchūgyōji). Through the rhythms of the 127 day centered around the work of the Royal Secretariat (Kurōdodokoro), we can see how the monarch’s life including his meals was becoming increasingly ritualized. Daily offerings from royal provisions were first presented and then prepared for royal consumption. Royal meals were one more ritual that connected His Majesty with the ritsuryō food system, as numerous dishes were presented for him by the Royal Meal Office, Palace Kitchen, and Offerings Station. These elaborate daily meals were symbols of his control of the realm, even if he were not present to eat them. The important thing was that the food was provisioned, prepared, and presented. In order to understand the monarch’s meals as described in ritual texts, however, we need to first understand the categories of palace cuisine as they were understood in the Heian period. The cuisine of formal meals consisted of the four condiments 四種物 (shishumono), “deep-dish” items 窪器物 (kubotsukimono), dried items 干物 (himono), fresh 生物 (namamono) See Jichūgun’yō, pp. 36-47, and Kinpishō, pp. 376-380. 126 This chapter draws extensively on the Nitchūgyōji, or The Daily Events, a text that details the daily 127 procedures around palace life for the monarch. The manuscript, which dates from the early eleventh century, is archived in the Kunaichō’s Higashiyama Library 東山御文庫. For the full manuscript, see Yoshinouchi, Nihon kodai no dairi un’ei kikō, pp. 232-245. 69 and vinegared items 鱠 (namasu), soups, grilled items 追物 (tsuimono), sweets and confections 菓子 (kashi), and rice preparations. This use of general categories for menu-building in Heian cuisine is important for a variety of reasons. First, categories were used to dictate what was proper to serve and at what point in the food service. At the same time, these general categories allowed officials to incorporate seasonality and fresh foods when available. This means that cooks and provisioners could serve a delicious fish or vegetable as it became available, or to accommodate His Majesty’s personal preferences, while still following the proper food service procedure. For instance, if a cook needed to prepare a grilled item and a particularly delicious-looking basket of pheasant wings had just come into the kitchen from Shinano province, the cook could safely prepare grilled pheasant wings for the royal table as a grilled item. The vocabulary for this culinary culture appears piecemeal in journals and ritual manuals in the mid-Heian period. However, our best source for understanding it comes from later in the Heian period. The culinary text Notes from the Palace Kitchen 厨事類記 (Chūjiruiki) contains directions for feeding the monarch with notes for meals for the queen consort and crown prince as well. The text is similar to others in what is called the buruiki 部類記 genre—it is a fragmentary compilation of useful notes and quotations from various texts. Unfortunately the author of Notes from the Palace Kitchen is unknown, but given the contents, it is likely that the compiler-author was affiliated with the Palace Kitchen or Royal Meal Office—possibly he was a Takahashi, or there may have been multiple compilers from the same lineage. Our earliest 70 manuscript copy, owned by the Keio University Institute of Oriental Classics, dates from the Kamakura period (1185-1333).128 The text is divided into two parts, and scholars believe that they were compiled at different times—the first part in the late Heian period, and the second in the Kamakura period. Even if Notes from the Palace Kitchen is not an early or mid-Heian source, a close reading indicates that it matches well with the culinary vocabulary and procedures of that time. It is incredibly valuable for establishing fundamental knowledge of palace food culture. The first part of the text, which is written in Sinitic-Japanese or kambun, focuses on the procedures for serving the monarch various meals. It includes a number of table maps, or diagrams showing where to place different types of dishes on the large tables or trays placed before His Majesty. The second part describes the culinary categories as used in the first part of the text, and provides examples of what items fit the bill. Finally, the text ends with what we might consider to be Japan’s first recipes, which are written entirely in kana. I suspect that the recipes were written in kana to enable easy reading, as well as to help cooks give directions to illiterate staff working in the palace kitchens. It is very much a practical text that was created to guide cooks and administrators through the web of provisioning and food service required to feed the monarch. Side Dishes for the Monarch Notes from the Palace Kitchen begins its accounting of royal dining with the four condiments: vinegar, sake, salt, and hishio. Sake and vinegar were produced by the Brewery 129 Office, and vinegar was made by fermenting the sake they produced. Coastal people around the This chapter draws on the Chūjiruiki in the Gunsho ruijū series. I have also consulted the photographs 128 of the Keio University Institute of Oriental Classics manuscript published in Makino, Setsuzoku ritsuyōshū, Chūjiruiki, hokano isshū, pp. 81-125. Chūjiruiki, p. 748. 129 71 archipelago made salt by boiling away seawater, as Japan has no rock salt deposits. Hishio, which requires the most explanation for modern readers, was a precursor to miso. According to the Banquet Protocols, hishio for the monarch’s meals was made with soybeans, sprouted rice, glutinous rice, wheat, and salt. (Hishio for people of lower rank had no glutinous rice in it.)130 Technically, miso was not one of the four condiments, but the chemical process for making both fermented bean pastes is the same. The kōji fungus (Aspergillus oryzae) is inculcated on rice, 131 barley, or wheat, whereupon it produces enzymes that break down the starches and proteins of soybeans into simple sugars and amino acids. All four of the condiments were served to the 132 monarch so that he might season his food as he liked. The deep-dish items were so-named because they were seafoods and meats that were loose and could not be plated on flat dishes, and so were piled high in deep bowls. They were often fermented items. Notes from the Palace Kitchen lists a few examples foods made into of deep-dish items: jellyfish, sea quirts, pheasant innards, and sea bream. Because these foods were often fermented, Heian cooks classified them as hishio, like the condiment. For instance, the compiler advises that sea squirts are to be plated in their bowls in piles and that the dish is also called “hishio sea squirts.” If a cook did not have sea squirts, then fermented abalone or lactofermented abalone was a good substitute. Pheasant innards were also fermented and “made into a hishio.” However, not all deep-dish items were fermented.Notes explains that jellyfish was See Engi shiki, vol. 3, p. 226 (33:18). 130 When the Notes were compiled in the late Heian period, cooks were not serving the monarch the thin, 131 flavorful liquid that formed on the top of the hishio fermentation jar, but the implication in the text is that this might have been served in previous era. If cooks had been straining off this liquid, this would have resulted in a mash of fermented soybeans that I call hishio lees. Chūjiruiki, p. 748. For a detailed guide in English on kōji and miso-making, see Redzepi and Zilber, The Noma Guide to 132 Fermentation, pp. 212-227 and 270-278. There is also to be a forthcoming history of kōji in Japan by Eric Rath to be published in Gastronomica that will be useful to scholars interested in premodern fermentation techniques. 72 simply simmered in salt and sake, sliced, and then soaked in sake infused with bonito. From there, a cook added vinegar, and if in-season, Japanese peppercorns (hajikami).133 Dried items could be used as components in more complex recipes or simply eaten on their own. As we saw earlier, dried seafoods were a common item prepared and shipped from the provinces to the palace, and a number of those foods appear in the Notes. Some, such as dried octopus, are still eaten today. There were strips of dried fish, and abalone that was steamed and then dried. Dried “bird” is not specific, but it was probably pheasant, given that bird’s 134 prominence in the tax and royal provisions records. The unknown Notes author writes that the four main dried items were to go in four separate dishes, and that thinly sliced sea bream was also served to His Majesty. Notes from the Palace Kitchen makes it clear that cooks were expected to adapt the dishes in different categories based on what was particularly delicious and available. Seasonality was crucial: “Soups are not always the same and are prepared based on what is delicious at the time.” Either hot or cold soups might be made from fish, like sea bream; but over the course of the Heian period, abalone became a commonly used fish for soups in the palace, “perhaps for special occasions?” mused the author. Soups were also made from the broth created by 135 cooking soybeans or bonito. A cook ought to “place a grilled item in the center of the soup 136 bowl, and the broth should be put in a separate dish.” Then, during the meal service, the server would pour the soup over the grilled item table-side. As we will see in later chapters, this kind of Chūjiruiki, p. 750. 133 The Chūjiruiki author says that suwari 楚割 referred to salmon that had been treated with salt, dried, 134 and sliced. Chūjiruiki, p. 749. Chūjiruiki, p. 748. 135 Chūjiruiki, p. 747. 136 73 table-side service was also taken up by courtiers outside of the palace for their banquets as well. Notes says too that cooks added garnishes, like wasabi or water pepper to the soup. This assembly of separate broths, soups, and garnishes—although not necessarily performed tableside—continues to feature prominently in Japanese cuisine today. Fresh seafoods and meats were often dressed with vinegar, that is, in the namasu 鱠 style. Six items were noted for this category: carp, sea bream, trout, sea bass 鱸 (suzuki), and pheasant. By the time of compilation, the Notes author acknowledged that salmon and trout were no longer being served in this fashion—rather, sea bass and pheasant were in vogue. Haraka 腹赤 trout or croaker, however, was served with vinegar. This preparation would have been a less sour 137 version of the lacto-fermented fish, allowing fresh ingredients to provide a contrast to the dried and fermented items on the monarch’s table. As for grilled items, the author does not elaborate on them, perhaps because it was so obvious. Pheasant legs deserved special attention because they were to be wrapped in leaves or paper before grilling. Carp was to be carefully sliced, speared on sticks, and then grilled. A variation was to affix walnuts before grilling the fish. These wrapped pheasant and grilled carp 138 preparations later became featured dishes in official banquets outside of the palace. On the Kashi Category Foods in another category, called kashi 菓子, were a key component of classical cuisine. Kashi is particularly challenging to understand, since it contains both items made of flours, sweet items like amazura syrup, as well as fruits and nuts. Notes from the Palace Kitchen provides relatively clear kashi categories—“tree sweets,” which were intended to be eaten seasonally, Chūjiruiki, p. 747. The author also noted an event in 1080 when “officials served the monarch a hot 137 soup of fowl broth and used sea bream as the pre-plated item; it is irregular to use sea bream. I have heard that sea bream in vinegar (namasu) should have been served.” Chūjiruiki, p. 751. 138 74 included chestnuts, tachibana oranges, apricots, plums, mandarin oranges, peaches, mountain pears, persimmons and such. Chestnuts were included in this broad fruits category. 139 Other fruits and nuts might appear in a related category, that of “dried sweets” 干菓子 (higashi). Unlike the fresh tree sweets, dried sweets kept longer. Examples provided by our author were pine nuts, beech nuts, pomegranate, and jujubes. Perhaps other dried fruits, like 140 persimmon, were so obvious as to not be included here. When most of us think of sweets today, however, we are more likely to imagine confections than fruit. Indeed confections featured in classical Japanese meals and banquets. They were made with rice and wheat flours based on cooking methods that came to Japan during the Nara period (710-794). Specifically, there were eight main Tang confections in palace banquet culture: baishi 梅枝, tōshi 桃枝, kakko, keishin 桂心, tensei 黏臍, hichira, tsuishi, and danki 団喜. These varieties were listed in the Notes of the Palace Kitchen, which states that 141 Chūjiruiki, p. 748. 139 Chūjiruiki, p. 748. 140 I have provided characters for names here that are available in modern keyboard coding. 141 Wamyōruijushō Database, Scroll 16. “Danki.” This list of the primary eight Tang sweets is also in Chūjiruiki, p. 748. 75 An illustration of Tang confections by Fujiwara Sadamoto. From the left: keishin, danki, tsuishi, hichira, and tensei. National Diet Library. Tang confections were made from rice flour mixed with water, and the ensuing dough was boiled or perhaps steamed. Following this, the dough was kneaded and then shaped into such forms as branches, ovals, half moons, and strips, and then fried in sesame oil. They might be filled or coated with a sweet syrup, as discussed below. Some confections were likely made from rice 142 flour and grilled in a manner similar to rice crackers today. It is difficult to grasp differences among these Tang confections because they fell out of fashion, lingering on only as shrine offerings and curiosities into the Edo period (1600-1868) and today. One of our best illustrations of Tang confections dates from the Edo period when Fujiwara Sadamoto recorded varieties still being made by the Royal Meal Office, Palace Kitchen, and Banquet Office, as well as at shrines around Kyoto and Nara. Other than these illustrations, 143 Heian dictionaries like the tenth-century Wamyōruijushō 和名類聚抄 provide some details. For instance, tensei was considered a fried mochi, and it was made from wheat gluten fried in the shape of a belly button. Kakko was a rice cracker—also technically considered mochi—that was roasted in the shape of a curled up insect. Hichira was likely made of wheat originally, but an 144 Edo period encyclopedia states that it was circular and made from glutinous rice flour kneaded with water and roasted thin, like a rice cracker. Baishi and tōshi were rice flour sweets that 145 were boiled, then cut into branch-like shapes and fried. Keishin was a rice flour confection 146 seasoned with cinnamon, long praised for its fragrance and medicinal properties.147 Chūjiruiki, pp. 753-755. 142 See Fujiwara Sadamoto, Shūkozu. The Tang confections are illustrated at the beginning of Scroll Six of 143 the National Diet Library’s manuscript. Wamyōruijushō Database, “Tensei” and “Kakko.” 144 This Ruiju meibutsukō 類聚名物考 entry is quoted in Kojiruien, p. 610. 145 Chūjiruiki, pp. 754-755. 146 Nakamura, Wagashi no keifu, pp. 99-100. 147 76 Producing such food items was clearly very labor intensive. For the confections requiring rice or wheat flour, kitchen staff would have milled the grains. If made from pounded cooked rice or millet, cooks would have to swing a mallet against the grains until they broke down and turned smooth, yielding a ball of mochi. After the milling or pounding, cooks would have fried items in valuable pressed sesame or perilla oil, or grilled the rice cakes. This work was limited to elite kitchens, making such items luxury goods. Tang confections also had cultural cachet because of their Chinese origins. The eight Tang confections listed in Notes were inspired by Chinese banquet culture. But, just as is the case today, foods change as they are adapted by different cultures. For instance, the sixth-century Chinese agricultural text Qimin Yaoshu 齊民要術, which contains many detailed ancient recipes, describes confections made of flour using the same characters as the Japanese would in their later culinary texts, 粉餅. However, the Qimin Yaoshu describes many such items as using meat soup, particularly made with beef, as a key ingredient. This was not the case in Japan. When describing how to make Tang confections, the Japanese Notes uses the Chinese term komochi 粉餅 but makes no mention of meat or soup at all. So, what happened? The Wamyōruijushō explains that confections could be made with either rice or wheat flour, but they underwent change as they were adopted by Japanese cooks. Chinese confections were made of wheat flour, but in Japan mochi usually referred to something made of glutinous rice flour, and were called are 餅粉.148 The cooking methods used to make Tang confections were some of the most difficult work that happened in the royal kitchens. Techniques were passed down through cooks and texts like the Notes. What seems to have occurred is that the Tang confections were brought to Japan, See Tanaka et al., Saimin yōjutsu, pp. 202-3, and Wamyōruijushō Database, “Mochii.” 148 77 but then underwent a shift, given that much meat consumed at court was hunted, and beef was not eaten by elites. The Tang confections were categorized as kashi, called tōgashi, and grouped with fruits and nuts and sweeter items. For the Heian period, it is best for us to understand these confections not as uniquely Tang food that traveled to Japan but as a general method of preparation for confectionary that used rice, and to a lesser extant, wheat flours. Meanwhile, mochi made from pounded glutinous rice, or occasionally millet, occupied its own category. Functionally, in kitchen lists and tax records, mochi was listed separately from kashi. Kashi were understood to be fruits or Tang confections. This broad category of kashi that includes fruits, nuts, and confections begs the question of how sweetness was understood in Japan. The Japanese used the same five fundamental flavors as did the classical Chinese for describing foods, which were either sour 酸, spicy 辛, sweet 甘, bitter 苦, or salty 鹹. Sweetness was not understood as the opposite of bitterness. It was actually the opposite of saltiness. “Sweet” foods included items like rare imported sugar or ame brown rice syrup, but also mallow 葵 (aoi) and rice. Certain fruits were also considered sweet. In 1145, Fujiwara no Yorinaga recorded his delight at receiving sweet (amai) berries from another courtier as a gift. He wrote, “The flavor is so sweet (amashi)! The flavor is so lovely! The flavor is so very tasty! How can I express how delicious these are?” To understand the full meaning of 149 Yorinaga’s delight, we must remember that sweet referred to a generally pleasurable taste, and especially the absence of salt. Much of food preservation required salt, and by extension, most foods were salty, from fermented fish, to pickles preserved in salt, to dried meat and fish treated with salt to fend off bacteria. The Heian-period palate was awash in salty foods. Sweet foods were a rarity, a sensory contrast. See Fujiwara no Yorinaga, Taiki, Ten’yō 天養 2(1145).5.3 (vol. 1, p. 151). 149 78 The Royal Provisions in the Monarch’s Daily Events Now that we have considered the various culinary categories and what foods were in them, as understood in the Heian period, we can follow the ingredients from the storehouses to the various offices that were preparing food for the monarch. Preparation for His Majesty’s daily meals began early. The residential palace household stirred around the Hour of the Rabbit, at approximately six in the morning. The cleaners began their work, tidying the palace’s eating spaces and adjoining chambers: the breakfast room 朝餉壺 (asagarei no tsubo) and the dining room 台盤所壺 (daibandokoro no tsubo). Around eight, accounting was taken for those serving His Majesty and their days of service. The director of the Royal Secretariat 蔵人所 (kurōdodokoro) entered the residence about this time. He was a busy man from a powerful office that had developed steadily since its creation in 810. Initially Saga Tennō (r. 809-823) established the office to help him in a feud with his elder brother, the former monarch Heizei, and he had members of the Royal Secretariat serve as his representative in other parts of the government. As the tenth century came to a close and even beyond, this was still the case. The Royal Secretariat still carried His Majesty’s orders and messages, supervised the intimates 殿上人 (tenjōbito) who flocked around the royal residence, and oversaw many functions of the residential palace. His office tended to His Majesty’s musical 79 instruments, falcons, entertainments, and clothing. And the office oversaw the Palace Kitchen, 150 which had come to play an increasing role in royal food preparation.151 The Royal Secretariat was located just south of the royal quarters, and its director entered His Majesty’s presence from that direction in the morning. He oversaw the blinds being raised and lamps taken away, the re-arrangement of cushions in the Day Room, and the movement of the guardian sword to its appropriate position. This director was the most important person to 152 oversee much of the monarch’s life, including his daily meals. His rank was even higher than that of the steward of the Royal Meal Office. The first appearance of food in The Daily Events does not concern the serving of His Majesty’s breakfast. Rather, it describes a ritual acknowledging how ingredients flowed to the palace for royal consumption. As the cleaning and re-arranging of His Majesty’s living space took place, the Four Guards Headquarters 四衛府 (shiefu) presented a dish of royal provisions 御贄 (minie). The guard would plate fish on a rimmed dish, not unlike a cake stand, and offer it to His Majesty from the garden. The guard then carried it inside the royal residence to the Dining Room 台盤所 (daibandokoro), which was three bays wide and located behind the monarch’s 153 seat. The plated fish was then placed on the two-tiered Shelf of the Royal Meal 御膳棚 This is a traditional interpretation of the Royal Secretariat presented in Tamai, “Kyū, jūseiki no 150 kurōdodokoro ni kansuru ikkōsatsu.” Historians have continued to build on the development and nature of this early Heian office. Furuse Natsuko argues in her comparative analysis of the Royal Secretariat Protocols 蔵人式 (Kurōdo shiki) and the Engi Protocols that the office’s role in ritual grew over the early Heian period as people around the monarch and dedicated to his daily life came to play more important roles in palace rituals. Furuse, “Kurōdo shiki ni tsuite.” Satō Masatoshi challenges some of the traditional interpretations of the office and the larger context of the early and mid-Heian period, arguing that the decline of ritsuryō is not so clear when analyzing the office—although he and others, like intimates, replaced older ritsuryō roles, ultimately they were serving similar functions. Perhaps this “decline” is not as dramatic as historians have interpreted. See Satō, “Kurōdodokoro no seiritsu to tenkai.” See Yoshinouchi, Nihon kodai no dairi un’ei kikō, pp. 255-267, and Satō, Heian jidai no tennō to 151 kanryōsei, pp. 338-352. Both these scholars consider the growing bureaucratic complexity concerning the production of the monarch’s daily meals. Nitchūgyōji, p. 233. 152 Nitchūgyōji, p. 234. 153 80 (omonodana) made from pale, fragrant hinoki wood. Around it were appropriate platforms, lined in purple cloth and fit for a monarch to sit on, as well as a red lacquerware chest, a chair, and the tables for His Majesty to dine on. A gleaming black lacquerware shelf to the side held fruits, nuts, and confections, and a screen shaped like a horse’s head stood on the south side of the room to provide privacy. At the conclusion of the ritual, an official from the Palace Kitchen fetched 154 the to prepare it for serving and eating. There were many such offering rites that were part of the royal meal service. For instance, one tenth-century ritual manual mentions the offering of trout (or nibe croaker) in the Tenth-century Daily Offerings to the Monarch Province Days of the Month Items Yamashiro 1, 7, 13, 19, 29 Pheasant, pigeon, crane, duck, small birds, carp, crucian carp, shrimp. Also ice sweetfish from the Ninth through the Eleventh months Yamato 2, 8, 14, 20, 26 Pheasant, pigeon, crane, duck, sweetfish Kawachi 3 <5>, 10, 16, 21, 28 <27> Pheasant, pigeon, crane, duck, takabe 高戸, small birds, eggs, carp, crucian carp, sea bass Izumi 4, 10, 16, 22, 28 Sea bream, horse mackerel, yohi 世比, gazami crab 擁剣 (kazame), squid, surf clams Settsu 5, 11, 17, 23, 29 Clams, octopus, gazami crab, squid, carp, eggs, crucian carp, sea bass, dried sea bream, horse mackerel, yohi 世比, shrimp, surf clams Ōmi 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 4 pieces of dried deer, four pieces of dried boar <the above two types of dried items are for the first day of the New Year>, pheasant, pigeon, crane, duck, takabe 高戸, small birds, carp, crucian carp, ame 阿米, shrimp **Storehouse Bureau Sea bass, pigeon, crane, melon, ripe melons This chart draws on a Council of State order copied in Saikyūki. It was dated Engi 延喜 11(913).12.22. See Saikyūki, pp. 715-716. There are a few unknown items here, for which I have provided possible readings and original kanji. Kinpishō, p. 372. 154 81 First Month and the Water Office presentation of ice in the Fourth Month. The Royal Meal 155 Office presented melon in the Fifth Month, and they presented food cooked over a sacred fire in the Sixth Month while the Brewery Office presented amazake. The Royal Meal Office brought 156 seasonal foods in the Seventh Month, and in the Eighth Month, there were cormorant-caught 157 fish for His Majesty, and ice sweetfish 氷魚 (hiuo) in the Ninth Month. And, of course, 158 159 there were great food offerings made for the Great Harvest Rite, enthronement rites, and other major festivals of the calendar, as Felicia Bock has described. With the offering of royal provisions completed, four officials from the Water Office 主水司 (Shusuishi) and female officials from the bathing chamber 御湯殿 (Oyudono) arrived to offer water for the monarch’s morning ablutions, specifically for the monarch to wash his hands. This “royal hand water” was placed on a tray with two gilt bronze bowls, one with salt and the other with crushed beans. There was no soap in this period, and these ground beans cleaned and exfoliated his skin. There was also fruits and nuts on the tray with chopsticks and a spoon for a possible snack. There was also a Heian toothbrush that functioned like to a toothpick for cleaning teeth. Female officials poured water into a black lacquer jar and arranged other vessels for His Majesty’s use. One lady-in-waiting server 陪膳女房 (baizen nyobō) tended to His Majesty as another waited to the side, assisting with vessels and utensils. Once he had washed his hands, she dutifully offered him a cloth to dry the royal hands, and then His Majesty departed. There were Saikyūki, p. 140. 155 Saikyūki, p. 178. This sacred fire food was also presented in the Eleventh and Twelfth months, p. 317 156 and 351. Saikyūki, p. 201. 157 Saikyūki, p. 261. 158 Saikyūki, p. 267. 159 82 prayers and sutras read to protect him. Earlier in the Heian period, the Water Office had 160 provided rice porridge for the monarch in his first meal of the day, but by the early eleventh century, they focused on potable water, cleansing water, and providing ice to the palace. The Palace Kitchen overseen by the Royal Secretariat had taken over responsibility for this meal.161 Throughout the morning, palace cooks in the Palace Kitchens, the Royal Meal Office, and the Offerings Station were hard at work preparing the monarch’s meals from the available ingredients. The Engi Protocols allows us to understand the ingredients that palace cooks could expect on a monthly basis specifically to prepare the monarch’s meals. He ate rice and a 162 variety of grains, including different types of millet. As for beans, he regularly ate adzuki, cowpeas, and soybeans. Different seeds could be fermented or used to bring new flavors to his dishes: mannagrass, sesame, and perilla seeds. His common proteins, as we know from Chapter One, consisted of dried meats, different preparations of sweetfish, Azuma abalone, Awa abalone, Oki abalone, and thinly sliced abalone. There were also bonito and sea cucumber, octopus, squid, salmon, shark, pickled abalone innards, and mackerel. A garden of seaweed graced his table in reconstituted and seasoned forms: codium seaweed, arame kelp, wakame seaweed, gelidium seaweed, glacilaria seaweed, gloiopeltis seaweed, and campylaephora seaweed. To season the fish, meats, and seasonal produce brought into the palace, cooks used a mix of sake and sakemaking byproducts, like leftover kōji and rice mashes called lees, vinegar, hishio and miso products, and salt. Cooks prepared a salad-like mixture of wakame, leaf mustard and soybeans to make a palace dish called kuki. For a sweet contrast, cooks used ame brown rice syrup with Nitchūgyōji, pp. 234-235. 160 They might have served the monarch porridge in the evening if he wished for it. 161 These ingredients are mentioned throughout the Royal Meal Office Protocols, but for the main clauses, 162 see Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 494-496 (39-2:19) and pp. 506-508 (39-2:28). 83 confections, and they served jujubes, chestnuts, persimmons, castanopsis nuts, walnuts, and oranges. When the cooking was finished, they carried the dishes to the Food Service Station 163 御膳宿 (Omoyadori) under the western eaves of the residential palace.164 The Royal Breakfast About nine in the morning at the Hour of the Snake, the monarch ate his first meal of the day: the Royal Breakfast, or asagarei 朝餉, in the suitably named Royal Breakfast Room. The Notes give us this procedure. A female server stood beside where His Majesty would sit, and off to the side, two more female attendants waited behind a screen to carry over trays of dishes. They all had their hair done in a Tang style with the front of their hair tied up festively in a cord. There were two tables used for the Royal Breakfast, and the ladies had to properly carry and arrange the dishes. One server carried over a tray, and the others placed the proper dishes from the tray 165 on one of the two tables. The first tray of dishes held the four condiments of salt, vinegar, hishio, and sake. Another tray held two sets of chopsticks in silver and wood with a spoon, and a small earthenware dish. All these were placed on the breakfast table. 166 Servers and attendants left one of the two tables empty for the ten dishes and rice to come, all prepared by the Royal Meal Office and the Palace Kitchen. Notes tells us that on one tray there would be seven different dishes piled high 高盛 (takamori) in bowls and three dishes plated flat. All of these dishes contained fish, so they might be a mix of seafoods and vegetables, or pickled things. Plating methods make it clear that these items were grilled, dried, or in the Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 494-496 (39-2:19). 163 This station was a space set aside on the western eaves of the residential palace where the monarch’s 164 food for royal banquets and daily meals were plated. Because uneme prepped the dishes and carried them out from this room, it was also called the Uneme Station 采女所 (Unemedokoro). Also called the Royal Offerings Station 御饌所 (Gozendokoro). Chūjiruiki, p. 733. 165 Nitchūgyōji, pp. 235-236. 166 84 namasu style with vinegar. As we well know, fermented items required a different plating method: the loose foods were served in deep dishes with high rims. Flat-plated items were likely dried or grilled, suiting that plating method. The servers then placed the rice on the table. The monarch’s rice, prepared by the Royal Meal Office, was served in a silver bowl with a lid, to protect it and keep it warm. Rice could be prepared in a variety of ways, of course. It could be cooked into a porridge with proportionally large amounts of water. Grains and beans could be added as well. But there were two main rice preparations in the palace: stiff rice 強飯 (kowaii) and soft rice 姫飯 (himeii). Stiff rice was made by boiling rice, whereas palace cooks made soft rice by using steamers. In Notes, we can see that soft rice was served to the monarch and other members of the royal family.167 When the main parts of the meal had been served, the server took up one of the wooden chopstick sets. She then chose a morsel of rice, pieces of the side dishes, salt and vinegar, and placed all of it in the earthenware bowl. This was called “taking saba” 三把. There were 168 multiple religious dimensions to this small ritual. In Buddhist ritual, taking saba refers to setting aside a small amount of food as an offering to suffering beings, like hungry ghosts, demons, or beasts. A server would also take a portion of the monarch’s rice and add it to a bowl of hot water, creating a porridge-like substance. The server then ate it. The remaining rice was placed in the Amakatsu bowl and chopsticks were stood upright in the rice. When the monarch entered to begin eating, the chopsticks were exchanged for new ones and the rice discarded. This might have served as a type of purification for the meal. In Chūjiruiki, the author does not use standard characters, but 比目 or 御比目 to refer to soft rice. For 167 more on rice preparations and the molding and serving of rice, see Mifune, Kodai no shoku o saigen suru, pp. 53-62. 168 Saba can be written a number of ways in Heian and Kamakura documents: 散飯, 生飯, 三飯, 産飯, 祭飯, 最把, 最花. 85 86 The Monarch’s Dishes and Utensils Notes from the Palace Kitchen also pictures of the dishes and utensils used for daily meals and banquets. I have provided the translations of the dishes, foods, and utensils. For the original text, see Chūjiruiki pp. 746-747. Another female official called a tōji 刀自 then came over and took away the saba offering. The tōji had a long history as female leaders in early communities, but by the Heian period, this designation referred to a lowly female official who worked for either the Palace Kitchen, Dining Room, or the Chamberlain’s Station 内侍所 (Naishidokoro). She sat to 169 conduct the end of the ritual, and then took the offerings of food and sake to the eight Royal Meal Deities 御食津 (miketsu). After all this, His Majesty’s sake was poured in a cup, and fruits and nuts were arranged on a lid. The monarch proceeded to eat as he wished. When he finished, the servers removed the dishes in the same order in which they had been placed. Serving women who were menstruating were not to serve food to His Majesty, and by the early eleventh century a custom developed of allowing male nobles of the fourth rank or higher to attend to the monarch as servers at this meal.170 The Afternoon Meal If the Royal Breakfast was a stately affair, its formality was overshadowed by the highly ceremonial Afternoon Meal 昼御膳 (hiru no gozen). It was considered a formal table meal 大床子御膳 (daishōji no gozen) for the monarch. In the ninth century, these formal table meals were held twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, plus the other two morning and evening meals, resulting in four meals a day for the monarch. It proved too much, however, and in the end, the formal meal became a once-a-day affair in the afternoon. 171 See Yoshie, “‘Tōji’ kara mita nihon kodai shakai no gendā: mura to kyūtei ni okeru kon’in, keiei, 169 seijiteki chii.” Nitchūgyōji, p. 236. 170 Yoshinouchi, Nihon kodai no dairi un’ei kikō, pp. 261-265. Note that these characters can also be read 171 as hiru no omono. 87 Around eleven in the afternoon at the Hour of the Horse, uneme female attendants came into the residence and set out two tables. A royal secretary turned to the Food Service Station, saying, “Bring the horse head tray in,” and uneme female attendants went to retrieve this tray. An illustration in Notes shows us that it was indeed shaped somewhat like a horse’s face (see the diagram). It held silver chopsticks, wooden chopsticks, and two silver spoons. Off to the side, additional servants joined the attendants. They were servers 倍膳 (baizen), who would help place bowls on the royal table, and carriers 役供 (yakusō, yakugu) to move the trays of dishes. They were to wash their hands and enter, declaring their arrival with an exclamation.172 The carriers brought in trays of food, and these were carefully served. First came the four condiments, then rice, and then dishes from the Royal Meal Office. These Royal Meal dishes consisted of two “deep dishes”; six dishes (undetermined); and two bowls of soup. These were followed by an offering of hot water in a small earthenware dish for taking the saba offering, and sake was poured into a cup. Then the Palace Kitchen offered their own ten side dishes to the monarch, followed by two dishes of soup and two grilled dishes. Here we see the use of culinary categories allowing for delicious, seasonal foods while following the food service protocols. When the last dish had been placed on the table, a sixth-ranker from the Royal Secretariat walked over to the southwestern edge of the dining room and declared in a loud voice that the meal was served.173 This Afternoon Meal was an elaborate affair, highly ritualized, and with a formal food service of dishes from different offices. Many side dishes were provided by the Offerings Station 進物所 (Shinmotsudokoro), such as the sixth and seventh trays of soups, grilled items, and other On days when offering were being made to Ise Shrine 伊勢奉幣 (Ise no hōhei) or realm-wide 172 mourning and abstinences, 御国忌 (Onkoki) they were to remain silent. Nitchūgyōji, p. 236. Nitchūgyōji, p. 237. 173 88 items. Abalone strips were plated by the Palace Kitchen and the Royal Meal Office plated wakame seaweed. The Royal Meal Office took the lead on preparing the four types of vegetarian dishes required on days of abstinence. This was because the Royal Meal Office oversaw the gardens, orchards, and fields provisioning the palace. All the dishes prepared by these three offices—the Palace Kitchen, Royal Meal Office, and Offerings Station—were brought to the Food Service Station. From there, uneme attendants carried the trays of dishes to the table in 174 order when the Royal Secretariat’s director called for the Afternoon Meal. Notes breaks down 175 the food service by trays and even provides table maps and tray order diagrams. With the meal placed on the tables, His Majesty was supposed to make his appearance. He sat on a proper round cushion laid out for him. He took up a pair of wooden chopsticks, and he took the saba from the rice, placing it in the small earthenware bowl. Then he stuck the chopsticks in the rice. A server came forward and the rice and chopsticks were taken away. If His Majesty then wished to eat from the spread of dishes before him, he did so. However, there were times when this entire ceremonial meal was laid out, and in fact, the monarch never arrived to eat it. Presentation of the fruits of the realm, and the use of royal provisions for His Majesty, was 176 the point of the meal, not nourishing the royal body. In this way, the daily meal was a symbol of the provisioning process and the monarch’s status therein. And as we will see in accounts of ministerial banquets, ministerial hosts also served elaborate meals to absent guests of honor as a sign of their wealth and mindfulness of protocol. This station was a space set aside on the western eaves of the residential palace where the monarch’s 174 food for royal banquets and daily meals were plated. Because uneme prepped the dishes and carried them out from this room, it was also called the Uneme Station 采女所 (Unemedokoro). Also called the Royal Offerings Station 御饌所 (Gozendokoro). Chūjiruiki, p. 728. 175 Yoshinouchi, Nihon kodai no dairi un’ei kikō, pp. 252-253. 176 89 With the meal over, the director came and gave instructions for the meal to be taken away, and all of the servers and carriers of the respective offices removed their various dishes, returning the space to its pre-meal state. What happened to a monarch’s uneaten Afternoon 177 Meal? The record gives us no clues. Perhaps the leftovers were eaten by happy officials, serving women and men, in the privacy of the Food Service Station. There was a custom of foodpreparers, like the Takahashi, eating royal leftovers. This might have been viewed similarly to 178 eating the leftovers of foods presented as offerings to deities or the buddhas. Nitchūgyōji, p. 239. 177 This custom of the Takahashi eating the leftovers, however, ended in the early ninth century. See 178 Kondō, Chōtei girei no bunkashi: sechie o chūshin toshite, pp. 45-46. 90 Notes from the Palace Kitchen provides a tray diagram for the proper order of serving dishes for the ceremonial Afternoon Meal. Chūjiruiki, p. 731. Food Service Trays for the Afternoon Meal 91 Table Maps for the Afternoon Meal Table maps for the layout of the monarch’s Afternoon Meal. Chūjiruiki, p. 730. The Evening Meal and Managing Food Abstinences The monarch’s next meal came during the Hour of the Rooster, around five in the evening, and was called the Evening Meal 夕膳 (yūzen). The Royal Secretariat sent orders to the Food Service Station for chopsticks to be prepared. Outside and around the residence, people set up torches to light the palace. The tray for the Evening Meal had ten items. It was essentially similar to the Royal Breakfast, and there were eight different dishes prepared by the Palace Kitchen. There were eight high-plated dishes and two flat-plated dishes.179 Cooks and servers had to be sensitive to the ritual calendar and how it might affect the monarch’s meals. When there were Buddhist rituals being conducted, the servers and various officials re-arranged their procedures to serve the morning and evening meals in the Royal Breakfast Chamber. If night had fallen, servants were to not lower the blinds around the living quarters, but they were to do so in the dining area, giving His Majesty a measure of privacy. Those people tending to His Majesty entered the dining room, announced their presence, and then got to work setting up the seating and two tables. There were a few other variations in the afternoon and evening meals, depending on other ongoing events. For instance, when His Majesty was to eat vegetarian dishes as a form of abstinence 御精進 (goshōjin), the Royal Meal Office was supposed to present those dishes and the four condiments on celadon 青瓷 (aoji) trays. Modifications to drinks were also made depending on what the Brewery Office was making, particularly when brewing the drink called amazake, a sweet non-alcoholic beverage made by combining kōji with rice, which converted starches into sugars. From the Sixth Month through the end of the Seventh Month, servers were to give His Majesty amazake with his meals, unless there was some kind of royal pollution to Chūjiruiki, p. 733. 179 92 contend with. In that case, the Royal Secretariat would be sure to see to the serving of sake in celadon sake cups. When the Kamo Rites were ongoing, the monarch received green onions shipped in from an unnamed estate associated with the Royal Meal Office estate in Yamashiro Province. The greens of the spring onion were served in one dish and the white onion portion was served in another dish. In this way, rituals affected the daily meals of the monarch. 180 While managing ritual defilement was a very important part of Heian daily life, royal food service directions reveal that there was flexibility in such procedures in ways that might surprise us. For instance, “On the Rokusai 六斉 and other such days [of important Buddhist 181 rituals], the following dishes are served together: five fish dishes <by the Palace Kitchen> and five vegetarian dishes. <The Royal Meal Office is to use daily offerings for the Royal Breakfast dishes, plating, and serving them.>” So, while there were adjustments made to the monarch’s 182 diet and meals for abstinence and ritual purification, as far as palace cooks were concerned, vegetarian dishes could be served on the same table as fish. What was important was to provide some dishes that did not have meat or fish in them. Eating these vegetarian dishes was to be a gentle sacrifice on His Majesty’s part. He was not a monk—he would have both vegetables and fish in his daily meals to be consumed as he chose.183 Nitchūgyōji, p. 238. 180 The Rokusaijitsu 六斎日 were six days monthly that required purification actions. They were the 181 eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, twenty-third, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth days of the month. Chūjiruiki, p. 733. 182 Another note on the same page reinforces the point, as the author writes that it is said when the 183 monarch was doing shōjin abstinences for kami or Buddhist rituals, ten dishes of vegetarian foods and fish, in addition to two soups, were to be served together. Chūjiruiki, p. 733. 93 Conclusion In this chapter, I have shown the increasing routinization and ritualization of the monarch’s meals in the ninth and tenth centuries as it is recorded in later documents. His Majesty’s daily meals drew on culinary categories that allowed cooks in the Royal Meal Office, Palace Kitchen, and Offerings Station to serve seasonal and delicious foods while following routinized culinary protocol. This increasing ritualization in royal food culture is beautifully illustrated by the elaborate Afternoon Meal for which many items were served in a formal tableservice, but which the monarch might not even appear to consume. The morning offering of royal provisions also reinforced the continuity of the ritsuryō food system and the monarch’s command of the realm’s food. This display of the foods of the realm also occurred in palace celebrations and banquets. Felicia Bock clearly demonstrates the importance of realm-wide provisioning and how food was used in grand celebrations like the Great Harvest Rite and the enthronement rites. Annual 184 banquets attended by the monarch had been a feature of rulership since before the seventh century. In particular, the sechie 節会, or royal banquets, held in the First Month, on the Third Month Third Day, Fifth Month Fifth Day, in the Seventh Month, on the Ninth Month Ninth Day, and in the Eleventh Month were long practiced by the monarch and his officials. There was a 185 longstanding tradition of gifts, feats of martial valor, such as wrestling or demonstrations of horseback-riding, and musical performances at royal banquets. As Kondō Yoshikazu’s recent research has shown, these events—which featured banquets and rewards for participants—were 184 See Bock, “The Great Feast of the Enthronement” and “The Enthronement Rites: The Text of Engishiki, 927.” The type of banquet depended on whether or not the monarch attended it. For instance, banquets attended by the 185 monarch and involving a sake service came to be called en 宴, whereas a banquet without the monarch present was called a kyō 饗. See Kondō, Chōtei girei no bunkashi: sechie o chūshin toshite, p. 31. 94 adopted from Tang protocols in the eighth century, but during the tenth century, royal banquets and official events transitioned from being realm-wide rituals in official halls to being focused on the monarch as an individual and conducted in his residential palace. This ritualization of royal banquets hosted by the monarch, Kondō argues, came about as a result of the prominence of the Northern Fujiwara in positions of authority and changing palace administration. Northern 186 Fujiwara regents turned to rites and events to emphasize their increasing control of the court society.187 The feasts of the royal banquets had gifts, rounds of drinking, music, and food services, all likely based on Tang protocols, but a careful appraisal of early ritual manuals shows that 188 courtiers were not deliberating on the procedure of the food service. It seems like the procedure of what foods and when they were to be served did not matter a great deal in the Nara and early Heian periods. That said, royal banquets often seem to have consisted of three rounds of drinking. The main meal was not to be served prior to the first round, says an entry in a tenthcentury manual, but when exactly is not specified. This contrasts with the detailed records 189 See Kondō, Chōtei girei no bunkashi, especially pp. 331-335. Kondō also emphasizes the ritual space transition 186 from the Burakuin 豊楽院 to the residential palace in his analysis of New Year’s ritual manuals. Under Kammu, the Burakuin was used for welcoming emissaries and realm-focussed banquet. In particular, the space was used for the big banquets around the ascension of a new monarch to the throne. Other royal banquets were held in the Chōdōin 朝堂院. Daigo built on Kammu’s ritual strategy and held more royal banquets in the Chōdōin, heightening its sense of a space for banquets. See Hashimoto, “Heiangū sōsōki no burakuin.” Kimura, Kokufū bunka no jidai. 187 188 Kumakura, “Nihon ryōri ni okeru kondate no keifu.” Saikyūki, p. 276. This appears in a note on the Ninth Month Ninth Day royal banquet. I reviewed the royal 189 banquets of Saikyūki looking for more food service related details, and the detailing of such procedures seems to be a practice of later record-keepers. This pattern of a lack of food service procedure is also clear in the royal banquets held in the first month. See Nagada, Ganjitsu sechie kenkyū to shiryō for a useful compilation of royal banquetrelated sources. The second volume of Kurahayashi’s Kyōen no kenkyū also provides overviews the different royal banquets, Continental origins and adaptations, and extant procedures. For historians interested in what foods were served, the Royal Meal Office Protocols and the Banquet Protocols from the Engi Protocols give us an idea of the ingredients needed for the different royal banquets. 95 available to us for the banquets that were primarily hosted by the Northern Fujiwara beginning in the tenth century. Earlier in this chapter, I said that the monarch’s daily meals were not the only meal service evolving in the tenth century. New banquets were also emerging. These grand banquets have clearly articulated directions for food service and eating in manuals and journals. These new banquets—which were different from the earlier royal banquets held at the monarch’s palace — had many rounds of drinking and pre-determined food services that drew on palace food culture to demonstrate prestige. As we will see in the next chapter, many of these banquets served as stages for Regental Fujiwara ministers to demonstrate their close connection with the throne even as they hosted celebrations in their own palaces. These ministers began serving dishes sent from the palace that drew on the ritsuryō food system. They also put in place elaborate protocols for hosting and eating that reflected their high status as His Majesty’s lieutenants in ruling the realm. 96 Chapter Three: Regental Banqueting — Fujiwara no Michinaga’s Appointment Banquet of 1017 Fujiwara no Michinaga is widely considered to have been the most powerful of the Northern Fujiwara ministers. I will show here how Michinaga used food and drink to break with protocol in what was possibly one of the most important banquets of his career, the Appointment Banquet 任大臣大饗 (nindaijin daikyō) of 1017. We will see how Michinaga borrowed foods formerly served at the royal palace, such as so cheese and sweet chestnuts, to show his own close connection to the throne, and foods traditionally served in the grand ministerial banquet of the First Month. Because an appointment banquet was not held on a set date every year but changed depending on whenever the minister was appointed, it is a useful stage to see how the culinary categories of Heian banquets allowed for flexible, seasonal menus while maintaining a procedure. As their influence grew at court, Northern Fujiwara ministers began hosting banquets of their own and left significant records in journals and protocol handbooks. These records take us from ingredients to food preparation and dining etiquette. New banquets, called “grand banquets” 大饗 (taikyō), emerged in the tenth century. They were characterized by predetermined food services and many rounds of drinking. More concerned with procedure and etiquette than ever before—that is, rituals of hosting and eating—courtiers debated and constructed the proper ways to hold a banquet, to serve sake, or to choose what to eat. Among these new grand banquets, there was the Two Royals Banquet 二宮大饗 (Nigū no taikyō) dedicated to the queen consort and crown prince. Banquets celebrating the appointment of 190 Sano, “Kōgō hairei to nigū no taikyō.” 190 97 queens 皇后大饗 (kōgō daikyō) and 中宮大饗 (chūgū daikyō) also developed at this time, as 191 did the relaxed feast 穏座 (on no za) as one part of a formal banquet when senior nobles reseated to enjoy relaxed dining at the end of a more formal banquet. The appointment banquet, our 192 focus in this chapter, and the ministerial banquet 大臣大饗 (daijin daikyō), the subject of Chapter Four, began in the tenth century. In other words, this time saw a great flourishing of banquets as a stage for the emergence of a Regental Fujiwara food culture accompanied by concern for rules and elegant conduct. Mastery of dining and protocol was critical to distinguishing oneself at court. Michinaga’s banquet allows us to see how this greatest of the Northern Fujiwara court leaders adjusted protocol to his own political ends. Michinaga was a member of the Northern Fujiwara 北家 (Hokke) Regents’ Line. His ancestor, Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu 藤原冬嗣 (775-826), had served as a minister and royal secretary for Saga Tennō, and his close relationship with the monarch resulted in his son, Yoshifusa, becoming the first minister-regent 摂政 (sesshō) to the child monarch Seiwa Tennō (r. 858-876). Yoshifusa’s adoptive son, Mototsune, later served as both regent and viceroy 関白 (kampaku), or royal chief of staff, for several monarchs. His descendent Michinaga came to lead the court as minister of the left and the maternal grandfather to monarchs. He passed his court leadership onto his sons, routinizing what we call the Regental Fujiwara Line, or the Sekkanke 摂関家. This era of court leadership by the descendants of Yoshifusa is called the Regency era, and it lasted into the twelfth century.193 Shōji, “Chūgū daikyō to hairei.” Shōji argues that this queen consort’s banquet became instituted during the reign 191 of Daigo as a reflection of growing Fujiwara power. See also “Fujiwara Onshi to chūgū daikyō.” Shōji, “‘Shōyūki’ ni mieru rikkō girei: on no za no seiritsu.” 192 For a recent study on the long history of the Regental Fujiwara from their formation until the sixteenth 193 century, see Higuchi, Sekkanke no chūsei: Fujiwara no Michinaga kara Toyotomi Hideyoshi made. 98 In the winter of 1017 when he was appointed prime minister, Michinaga was so powerful that it is easy to forget that much of Michinaga’s career had benefitted from good luck as well as political strategy. He was born the third son of Fujiwara no Kaneie 藤原兼家, but his elder 194 brothers and their heirs died in the mid 950s. Following their deaths, Michinaga received a royal order from Ichijō Tennō (r. 986-1011) making him documents inspector 内覧 (nairan), which effectively made Michinaga viceroy. Michinaga benefitted greatly from his wife, Minamoto no Rinshi 源倫子 (964-1053). Rinshi and Michinaga married as a sort of peace agreement between their fathers. The couple probably did not know it at the time, but this consolidation of power between Kaneie and Masanobu likely helped thin the field of political competition. Minamoto no Rinshi also built 195 the foundation on which so much of Michinaga’s career depended: She bore his children and raised them for the successes to come. Their twelve-year old daughter Shōshi (988-1074) entered Ichijō’s back palace. Shōshi’s competition, Teishi, died in childbirth, and when she was twenty, Shōshi had Prince Atsuhira, the baby who would become Go-Ichijō Tennō. The next year, Shōshi bore Prince Atsunaga, the baby who would become Go-Suzaku Tennō. Without Shōshi, Michinaga would not have been a grandfather to several monarchs. Over the course of his ascendence, Michinaga moved from the office of Minister of the Right to Minister of the Left. Then, Shōshi’s daughter Kenshi became queen consort to Sanjō Tennō (r. 1011-1016), and when he abdicated, Prince Atsuhira ascended the throne as Go-Ichijō Tennō, with Michinaga as regent. Michinaga held the regent post for a year before handing it We have a number of excellent biographies that consider Michinaga and his age. In particular, I have 194 relied on Ōtsu Tōru’s Michinaga to kyūtei shakai; Kuramoto Kazuhiro’s Fujiwara no Michinaga no nichijō seikatsu; and Oboroya Hisashi’s Fujiwara no Michinaga: otoko wa tsumagara nari. For something short, Furuse Natsuko outlines the important events of Michinaga’s life in, “Sekkan seiji: Michinaga no jidai.” 195 See Noguchi, “Sekkan no tsuma to ikai: jū ichii Minamoto Rinshi o chūshin ni.” 99 down to his son, Yorimichi 頼通, in the Third Month of 1017. His control of his family and the court was firm. Michinaga is also known for having used ceremonial innovation to make his authority visible while increasing his power. After supporting his daughters’ efforts in the Back Palace, he elevated the role of the monarch’s mother in ceremonies and created a place for himself as viceroy too. In his analysis of ceremonial protocol performed at Michinaga’s command, Yamanaka Yutaka explains that Michinaga used not only ceremonial protocols of the Kujō lineage, which he clearly respected, but also drew on the protocols of the Western Palace and the Onomiya lineage. This led, Yamanaka argues, to the creation of a distinct ceremonial lineage that reflected Michinaga’s grasp of power. Familial, political, ceremonial, and economic tools—he 196 used them all. Inevitably, we need to think about how we can best understand Heian ceremonial protocol today. There are two main groups of texts that I will use in the coming pages to describe the language of protocol used by Michinaga and other Regental Fujiwara. The first group consists of manuals that the Heian courtiers themselves wrote to document precedent and guide their descendants through the intricate maze of planning and participating in official events. To understand, say, the protocols of Michinaga’s era, scholars turn to the comprehensive Record of the West Palace 西宮記 (Saikyūki) written by Minamoto no Takaakira 源高明 in 969, and the North Mountain Excerpts 北山抄 (Hokuzanshō) of 1012-1021 by Fujiwara no Kintō 藤原公任. This latter source is complemented by the Ōe House Procedures 江家次第 (Gōke shidai) of Ōe no Masafusa 大江匡房, another wonderfully detailed, ceremonial reference text Yamanaka, Heian jidai no kokiroku to kizoku bunka. pp. 206-234. 196 100 completed for Viceroy Fujiwara no Moromichi in 1111. It is in the second group of texts, 197 however, that the language of protocol truly comes to life: the journals kept by courtiers that documented protocols they experienced. Through the detailed precedents described in such journals, a reader could determine how to match what had been done before, what alternatives might exist when the reality of event-planning proved difficult, and even to find examples of times when ancestors had bent or broken protocol. The banquets show that there was power to be grasped by innovating and shaping protocol. A banquet was a grand stage for the performance of this language of protocol. Food, drink, seating, and various performative roles required of guest and host revealed not only status but also aspirations. Michinaga succeeded in innovating protocol. His fingerprints remained all over food and celebratory protocol in the decades after his death as great figures consulted his journal and the journals of his contemporaries in order to imitate his procedures. So we will begin with Michinaga and his appointment banquet, and we will never quite leave him. Michinaga was the most important figure for establishing a Regental Fujiwara food culture that was developed and practiced in the great courtly banquets at ministers’ residences, both his own and those of his heirs into the twelfth century. I will show in this chapter how we can break down banquet procedures into units of actions demanded by custom or adjusted by the will of the host. The two men in the banquet case studies of this chapter and the next, Michinaga and Yorinaga, studied and changed parts of past Early ceremonial manuals from the ninth century largely focussed on the monarch. Consequently, 197 when ceremonies conducted by nobles became more important during the era of the Regental Fujiwara, the early manuals of the 800s like Palace Protocols 内裏式 (Dairi shiki) and The Record of Ceremonies 儀式書 (Gishikisho), were insufficient. They could not meet the demands for guidance demanded by the courtiers in the face of an evolving ritual calendar. And ceremonies in elite households of the nobility that blurred the boundaries between official and unofficial were becoming more important. To meet this demand, courtiers created new ritual manuals like the Record of the West Palace, North Mountain Excerpts, and Ōe House Procedures. In addition, the courtiers’ own journals took on a special importance too. 101 banquet procedure, making alterations to suit their own goals in the political moment. And importantly, neither Michinaga nor Yorinaga were mindless vessels of tradition and precedent. I will use the term “language” in this discussion because it was through the actions taken— because of precedent, practicality, or determined intervention—that these two Fujiwara court leaders expressed themselves. Their banquets were spaces of self-expression and even legacy— their descendants and their guests would imitate what they had done. And in the study of food history, it is through such banquet procedures that we can best understand how cuisine was incorporated in elite celebrations like the appointment and ministerial banquets. The appointment banquet was a ceremony practiced by the court for five-hundred years, and it developed a layout, procedure, and menu intended to demonstrate the power of the host. The tradition began at the turn of the tenth century. While it is possible that celebrations following the appointment of a minister were held in the ninth century, reliable documentation of the banquet date from the era of Fujiwara no Tadahira (880-949). The first record of an appointment banquet appears in Tadahira’s journal in 914. Tadahira had a major impact on the 198 banquet’s development: He drew on precedents from his brother’s (Fujiwara no Tokihira, 199 871-909) banquet. Tadahira’s procedure was then passed down to his sons. It was common for 200 nobles to celebrate with the banquet when they were appointed to palace minister, which was the typical first ministerial post. From there, the banquet might be held again when the official 201 was appointed to prime minister. Appointment banquets continued all through the Kamakura Fujiwara no Tadahira, Teishinkōki, p. 50. 198 199 See Koike, “‘Kyūreki’ no daijin daikyō,” and Kamiya, “Nindaijin daikyō no seiritsu to igi.” His sons established two protocol lineages, the Onomiya of Saneyori and the Kujō of Morosuke. 200 Based on the historical record, it was highly unusual to have appointment banquets when rising from 201 palace minister to right minister, or from right to left minister. Then they would rise to right minister, left minister, and finally, prime minister. But nobles did not celebrate every ministerial promotion. Many Fujiwara men held appointment banquets when appointed to palace minister. 102 period and even into the Muromachi period (1336-1493) when, in 1458, Ashikaga Yoshimasa was appointed to palace minister. Michinaga’s Appointment Banquet Procedure In the Twelfth Month of 1017, the royal order came down from the palace: Fujiwara no Michinaga had been appointed prime minister 太政大臣 (daijō daijin). That morning the great 202 patriarch of the Fujiwara Regent’s Line set out for the Ichijōin Palace, where he met with other senior nobles. Fujiwara no Akimitsu 藤原顕光 served as messenger for the royal order from GoIchijō Tennō 後一条天皇. When the assembled people heard the announcement, however, they were suspicious because Akimitsu had gone for the royal order before the courtiers could line up properly. At a glance, this seems absurd—Michinaga was the most powerful man at court, and his rise to prime minister seemed matter-of-course. But, if the procedure had not been properly followed, especially for such a grave matter, even an announcement of the appointment for a figure as powerful as Michinaga could be called into question. This strange moment is nothing more than a few irritated lines in Michinaga’s journal, but the moment of discomfort when courtiers likely shared awkward glances and fumbled to figure out what to do next is a useful entryway into our story of banquets, appointments, and the importance of protocols in the mid-Heian period. For even the most famous Fujiwara was bound by them: Protocols were a language through which these courtly men and women expressed who they were and who they wished to become. Putting his pique aside, Michinaga went to his palace office and met with some officials before conveying his grateful felicitations 慶賀 (keiga) to the monarch; to the Queen Consort Fujiwara no Shōshi, who was his daughter; and to his grandson, This banquet is documented in Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Shōyūki, Kanin 寛仁1 (1017).12.4. (vol. 4, pp. 202 290-294) and Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, Kannin 寛仁1 (1017).12.4. (vol. 3, pp. 127-128). For modern translations of these passages, see Kuramoto, Shōyūki, vol. 8, pp. 256-253, and Kuramoto, Midō kanpakuki, vol. 3, pp. 260-263. 103 Crown Prince Atsunaga, who was eight years old. They offered their congratulations, and the monarch granted permission for Michinaga to hold a banquet. The timing of Michinaga’s appointment to prime minister in 1017 was no accident. The prime minister would attend the monarch in a coming-of-age ceremony 元服 (genpuku), and likely Michinaga wished to be the one to cap Go-Ichijō at that ceremony—an important moment of visually performed power.203 Thus, this appointment. With his greetings accomplished and permission to hold the appointment banquet granted, Michinaga returned home to his Second Avenue residence. Soon after, a stream of courtiers arrived through the gate: his son and current regent, ministers, officials serving the queen consort, captains, counselors, guards, controllers, and most importantly, officials of the Council of State. Michinaga watched them line up and repeatedly bow before they followed him up to the veranda where they were seated. “It was as usual,” wrote Michinaga, in that brief manner he so often used in his journal when it came to food or ceremony. Nonetheless, in this 204 particular case, we can tell that the banquet was very much not as usual. It goes without saying that Michinaga was acutely aware of ceremonial importance and the degree to which he could demonstrate his authority through protocol—following it and changing it. Both were key in the life of a Heian noble. His own unusual appointment banquet was a stage on which to demonstrate his leadership, and he used the language of protocol to show what he wished the gathering to express. By drawing on the symbolic meanings of foods and their associations, Michinaga broke with the past in front of the most powerful men at court. Oboroya, Fujiwara no Michinaga: otoko wa tsumagara nari, p. 282. 203 Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, vol. 3, p. 127. 204 104 Michinaga’s banquet began as usual with the drinking of sake from a shared cup. Michinaga took a cup of sake to his first guest of honor 尊者 (sonja), the Minister of the Left. There were three such guests of honor: the regent, Fujiwara no Yorimichi; the Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Akimitsu; and the Minister of the Right, Fujiwara no Kinsue. Then the Minister of the Left took the cup to the next ranking figure, the Minister of the Right. Both the server and recipient of the cup took turns drinking. An attentive courtier holding a flagon refilled the cup as it made its way around the room. Each cycle of the cup around the gathering was called a “round” 献 (kon). The flow of the banquet was the rhythm of the round with the sake cup traveling the room. (At the end, the last one to drink might tuck the empty cup under their table.) As rounds began and ended, servers came into the hall to serve dishes. Certain foods were served during certain rounds, and certain figures of differing rank tended to the cup and flagon— diarists often note who was responsible for carrying the cup, tending to the flagon, serving the food, and carrying trays of dishes. The rounds of drinking during a formal Heian court banquet were an etiquette ballet. As the host carried over the cup, he was trailed by another courtier with the flagon. The host would first drink, then pass the cup to the guest of honor to drink next. Participants put out seats and cushions at strategic points for the host, who moved around the banquet space. He would begin sitting in a spot designated for him on the southeast edge of the hall, then moving to a seat called “the first-generation Genji seat” 一世源氏座 (isse Genji no za) or to “the prince’s seat” 親王座 (shin’ō no za). These different vantage points allowed him to oversee the banquet. They also allowed him to be seen. The host determined the beginning and end of rounds. This meant that he would have to watch that the cup had traveled down to the lower nobles on the southwest end of the hall and that foods were being served at the proper round of drinking. 105 The cup circled the hall as courtiers were served their first food items. With each new dish, diners would look to Michinaga, who controlled the pace of eating by raising and lowering his chopsticks to indicate when it was permissible to eat. The position of each diner depended on his status; Michinaga gave the “first” position to his son, the regent and palace minister. Fujiwara no Yorimichi did not come initially. A host might decide to have another noble attend, or he might serve dishes to an empty table in recognition of the absentee guest. Furniture and food was set out for him nonetheless in a gesture that established Yorimichi’s importance and Michinaga’s power. Yorimichi was not sick or suffering from a spiritual affliction. Either of these would have been a reasonable excuse. Yorimichi did not attend simply because he was both high in rank and Michinaga’s son. Officials avoided having fathers and sons bow and serve each other in banquet settings—the father should always occupy a superior position. Since the flow of an appointment or ministerial banquet switched higher and lower roles between guests of honor and the host, it was easier to have an important guest like Yorimichi simply not attend the opening bowing between the host and guests. In this case, Yorimichi arrived late and sat across from his father as the drinking began. Michinaga directed the way the cup should proceed around the room from his seat, and once the Minister of the Left had drunk, he passed the cup to Yorimichi. From there, Yorimichi carried the cup to the Minister of the Right, and then the cup made its way down to the right middle captain. Michinaga watched approvingly as Yorimichi imitated his father’s manner in serving sake to others.205 As winter darkness fell over the residence, servants lit torches and officials carried them into the garden. Fish to accompany the drinking was served. In the second round, Michinaga had Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, vol. 3, p. 127. 205 106 cowpea dumplings 粉熟 (fuzuku) set out for his guests. To make them, kitchen workers soaked 206 dried cowpeas (sasage) that had been harvested in the summertime, and once soft, they combined the beans with white rice flour and water. Understanding how this dish was prepared is difficult, but there are a few possibilities. Rolling the rice into balls, Michinaga’s cooks likely tucked them in a long bag, twisting the fabric after each ball of rice and cowpeas and boiling each dumpling in a pocket to maintain its shape. Or instead of small dumplings, a cook might have made one large dumpling and then cut it into smaller pieces once the mass was cooked through. However, as a cook myself, I suspect that the long-bag technique allowed palace 207 cooks to cook smaller dumplings in a more reasonable amount of time. The result would have been mochi-like, chewy and moist, studded with the earthy cowpeas that are still enjoyed in New Year’s red rice 赤飯 (sekihan) today. Cowpeas were (and still are) ideal for this kind of dish, 208 as the thicker skin helps the cowpeas keep their shape even after a long cook time. When cooked with rice, the color bleeds from the bean skins to turn the rice a festive pink. With this dish, Michinaga was making an innovation, since these cowpea dumplings were customarily served during the second round of certain palace banquets. He likely remembered Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Shōyūki, vol. 4, p. 293. 206 Engi shiki, vol. 3, pp. 506-507. This is based on details in the Royal Meal Office Protocols, which has 207 a proportion of 4:1 for rice to cowpeas. The rice seems to have been ground into flour, mixed with the beans, and then boiled as dumplings in a cloth bag. The important question that the clause prompts is, why was the bag six shaku long? This might be a miscopy. One possibility would be to form the dumplings, put one in the bag, and then twist the bag following each dumpling insertion. When the dumplings were steamed, this would result in a bunch of individual dumplings, and it might justify the long bag because additional cloth is necessary to make the twisted separations. It is also possible that one large dumpling was made. All that said, both these interpretations are valid. The Wamyōruijushō 和名類聚抄 describes the dumpling as being made from rice, and gives an alternative reading 粉粥, which does not tell us much. A fourteenth-century commentary on The Tale of Genji, Genchū saihishō 原中最秘抄 by Minamoto Tomoyuki 源光行 and Chikayuki 親行 describes fuzuku as a boiled dumpling with five different grains and beans made into mochi, boiled, and topped with a sweet syrup. This commentary is quoted in Kojiruien, p. 607. Unfortunately, this description does not match what we see in the Engi Protocols and may represent a later development. Contemporary red rice is made with glutinous rice. The Engi Protocols do not use the term for 208 glutinous rice when describing cowpea dumplings. I do wonder if this is one ancestor of the modern sekihan. 107 having cowpea dumplings and soup during the second round of the Gosaie 御斎会 feast;209 during the feast for Onna Tōka 女踏歌 while enjoying female officials’ song and dance;210 during the New Year’s archery competition; or during Rekken 列見 official appraisals. 211 212 Michinaga might also have had fond memories of eating the food after his daughters had safely given birth—making him grandfather to a monarch—since cowpea dumplings were served during banquets following the birth of a prince or princess as well as when royal consorts entered the palace. The Record of the West Palace entry for Kōjō 考定 notes that cowpea dumplings were once served after the third round of palace banquets, but “in recent years” it was served during the second. It was a food of the most elite—the monarch enjoyed it in his own meals 213 from the Third Month through the Eighth Month. At the feasts and banquets Michinaga and his companions attended, it was only eaten by princes, senior nobles, and ministers. Interestingly, there is no mention of cowpea dumplings being served in an appointment banquet prior to Michinaga’s banquet in 1017. This might have been an addition that Michinaga made, like the palace foods he included in his banquet, and this practice continued beyond his time. It seems that Michinaga seized the opportunity to adjust the menu as he wished. Michinaga did not partake in sake during the second and third rounds, preferring to leave the drinking to the other ministers. He watched as they finished the round and then ordered the Saikyūki, p. 50. 209 Saikyūki, p. 90. 210 211 Saikyūki, p. 94 This was a Heian ceremony held on the Second Month Eleventh Day when select officials of the sixth- 212 rank and above were presented for consideration of promotions. They lined up before the Council of State and were inspected by the ministers and senior nobles. Again, the feast is described in Saikyūki, p. 122. This promotions and appointment process continued in the Gikaisō 擬階奏 of the Fourth Month, and then in the Eighth Month, the minor counselors and controllers composed a plan for position selections that was deliberated on by the Council of State. The Eighth Month ceremony was the Kōjō. Saikyūki, p. 238. 213 108 rice and soup served. The third round featured soup, rice, grilled fowl courses, and sakana dishes, the latter being a wide range of seafood and meat items. These sakana dishes were further categorized as dried items, such as abalone; fowl, such as pheasant; fresh items dressed with vinegar; or deep-dish items. Courtiers might also expect fruits and nuts to be served, depending on what was seasonally available. And, for the fourth round, a hot atsumono soup with meat was de rigueur. In the fourth round, senior nobles 上達部 (kandachime) who were of the three highest court ranks, served Michinaga sake, and then servers brought over soup, grilled fish, and pheasant. Michinaga only held six rounds for his appointment banquet; the fifth round was followed by a single round during the Relaxed Feast. Nobles left their seats for another spot on the veranda, where they enjoyed more food, music, and drinking in a more relaxed atmosphere. This phase of the celebration was limited to those of the higher ranks. It was more intimate. Food and drink continued to be served, but the rigid drinking and menu protocols loosened. The Relaxed Feast was the final phase of eating and drinking. The handbook of Minamoto no Takaakira had a number of ideas about which foods were best for the Relaxed Feast: “Next, the Relaxed Feast 隠座 (on no za) is laid out. For the senior nobles (kuge) and below, the following is served: <Banquet foods (sakana motsu) and mountain yam porridge 署預粥 (imo gayu).>” Mountain yam porridge was a sweet dish. This “Thousand Year Amazura 214 Soup” 千歳䴪 had a “delightful sweetness like thinned honey,” according to the Cuī yǔxī shí jīng 崔禹錫食経 (Jp. Saiushaku shokkyō), a Chinese medical text. This item was made by grinding Gōke shidai, p. 806. Wamyōruijushō, “Imogayu” 署預粥 in Scroll 16, Part 24. This Chinese text that 214 the dictionary cites exists only in quotations in early Japanese dictionaries and medical texts; the similarly named Cuī yǔxī does not contain these food-related passages. For an analysis of the dating of the datings and quotations of the Cuī yǔxī shí jīng in Japanese texts, see Nakahashi, “‘Saiushaku shokkyō’ no kenkyū.” 109 the mountain yam to a soup so as “to make a porridge.” It was thought to support the health of the five organs 五蔵 (gozō) in Chinese medicine. A Heian short story reveals that amazura syrup was added to the porridge to give it sweetness. Mountain yam porridge was a dish for the most elite and a featured item in banquets. Following a banquet, lower level officials were permitted to eat the leftovers. In the story, one courtier, Sir Goi, is so excited to eat the yam soup that a mysterious friend invites him out to the countryside where he has groups of local peasants prepare the yam porridge. Men set up cauldrons, women pour in amazura syrup, and young men with knives chop up mountain yams to add to the bubbling cauldrons. As we have addressed in Chapter One, this valuable 215 ingredient was sourced from around the realm for royal consumption, and it became a key ingredient in elite banquets too. However, during the dining, at least one guest thought that something was amiss. The famous diarist and expert on protocol Fujiwara no Sanesuke wrote in his diary, “Among these items were tsutsumiyaki,” refering to fish or pheasant wrapped in leaves or wet paper and cooked over the embers, “and so cheese along with sweet chestnuts. These are New Years Banquet items.” As Sanesuke ate, he likely pondered the strangeness of Michinaga serving such items from the royal palace in his home. He continued, “The so cheese was sent over from the palace. But, why are these things here?” So why did Michinaga change the banquet and include these items? He changed the procedure of the event to demonstrate his power and proximity to the throne by serving certain foods. I believe that Michinaga had a few protocols in mind that he decided to combine. The first has been mentioned, that it was already customary for cowpea dumplings to be served during the See Konjaku monogatari shū 26:17 (vol. 5, pp. 68-75). 215 110 second round of certain Council of State feasts and for banquets celebrating women entering the monarch’s palace and giving birth. It would be fitting too to draw on a familiar sensory reminder of his command of the highest levels of government and his daughters entering the royal palace. The smell of the steamed white rice, the earthiness of the cowpeas, and the distinct, auspicious rusty crimson of the rice dumpling under the firelight would have associative power. Just as flavors and smells are powerful for stirring memories, that same affect could have been created by the second round. Based on the other foods he chose, Michinaga was clearly imitating the more stately and grand ministerial banquet held in the First Month. In the ministerial banquet, during the second round courtier-servers presented diners with konton dumplings over which the diner, or a server, poured soup. This was an unusual dish, limited to special occasions, and the most prominent of these celebrations was the ministerial banquet. Michinaga was comfortable breaking precedent and borrowing ministerial banquet food items for his later rounds and substituting the cowpea dumpling for the konton dumpling. And the cheese and sweet chestnuts that so startled 216 Sanesuke were served at the palace and also sent from the monarch to the host of a ministerial banquet. The tsutsumiyaki pheasant was another feature of the ministerial banquet. Through food, Michinaga was drawing on elements from the palace and grander celebrations. Gifts and Michinaga’s Precedents For diarists, the banquet was not only a space for gift-giving, but a time for remembering those who served. In 1017, Michinaga may not have diligently recorded every course he was It seems that other hosts of appointment banquets made the same connection as Michinaga between the 216 konton and the cowpea dumplings. In 1113, when Fujiwara no Tadazane 藤原忠実 became prime minister, he wrote in his journal, we served “cowpea dumplings with soup. The guest of honor and the host, [myself,] received their own soup” to pour over their dumplings, while a server with a communal jar of soup circled around to pour it over dumplings for the major counselors and below. We can clearly see that soup poured over an item, like would be done with the konton dumpling, was applied to the cowpea dumplings. See Fujiwara no Tadazane, Denryaku, Ten’ei 天永 3(1113).12.14 (vol. 3, p. 287). 111 served with the same attention as did Sanesuke, but Michinaga was a man to remember those who supported his efforts. Like other diarists, Michinaga recorded the elite members of his guest list, but he also credited his banquet foods to the preparations of a certain “Minamoto Major Counselor.” On the other hand, the grilled items for the banquet-attendees were likely 217 arranged by the cooks of his own kitchen. Provisioning and food preparations were an opportunity for courtiers to demonstrate their attention and loyalty, as well as their sophisticated sense of taste. Courtiers like Michinaga took pains to note who did so.218 When Michinaga had finished dining, he had the performers and clerks 史生 (shishō) told to stand in the garden to receive rewards, and he had gifts presented to guests. His son Yorimichi, the regent, received a falcon and a horse; the two ministers Akemitsu and Kinsue received one horse each; and bolts of cloth were presented to Council of State members. Gifts were also made to the guards and royal police who attended. One of them, Nobuaki, had been attacked on his way to the gathering, and robbers had killed his stablehand and absconded with his horse. It is 219 easy to gloss over the mention of entourages of guardsmen, but Kyoto was not a safe place in the Heian period, particularly for the men and women with lovely horses, carriages, and resplendent clothing. Rewards and gifts for the policemen and guards were necessary for ensuring their dedication, and only through police protection could the court continue to conduct the lavish This seems to be Minamoto no Toshikata 源俊賢. Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, vol. 3, p. 217 127, and Kugyō bunin, p. 265. There is no information on the provisioning of the banquet. It was likely similar to ministerial banquets 218 with a mix of food provided from the palace, official government offices and provinces, guests, and Michinaga’s own estates. The sourcing for an appointment banquet in 1224 is documented as the above, but this was two hundred years after Michinaga. See Kamakura ibun 3332, Gennin 元仁 1 (1224).12.13 (vol. 5, pp. 327-330). By the late thirteenth century, the Royal Gain House 穀倉院 (kokusōin), created in the early Heian period to store tax proceeds, helped with official events. See Watanabe, “Daijin daikyō to daijōkan.” Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Shōyūki, vol. 4, pp. 293-294. 219 112 events required by their calendar, necessary to affirm their status among each other and over the common people. When Michinaga reflected on the seating arrangements for the gathering, he wrote that he had imitated the seating chart of his father, Fujiwara no Kaneie, who had also had a ministerial son in attendance. The presence of his son and the large number of senior nobles meant that he had to give the space and seating more attention than usual. In addition, he invited lower level officials who might not have been involved otherwise. For instance, he had Council of State clerks seated in the house administrative office 政所 (mandokoro). They were the lowest officials in the Council of State, and there were clerks working for the eight ministries as well. They were office staff who copied documents and managed various tasks around their office. They did not have to be invited or feted at the new prime minister’s home when he was appointed. Nonetheless, Michinaga invited the clerks. There were also low level servants who worked for the Council of State as messengers who were not seated at the banquet, but to whom he had his underlings give food and sake, as well as rice balls. The appointment banquet was 220 an abbreviated celebration from the New Year’s ministerial banquet, and the clerks did not have a service role at the banquet. Michinaga’s house manager had two tables brought out and piled 221 high with cloth to give to the clerks as a reward for their continued service.222 Michinaga drew on the language of ceremonial protocol, making changes and interventions that demonstrated his closeness with the throne, his wealth, and his beneficence. His banquet not only included feting the mightiest members of the court and Council of State— Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, vol. 3, pp. 128. 220 The inclusion and exclusion of clerks is analyzed in Kamiya, “Nindaijin daikyō no seiritsu to igi,” pp. 221 24-25. Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Shōyūki, vol. 4, p. 293. 222 113 except for the monarch, of course—but also some of the lowly members of the government. Michinaga used food to show his close relationship with the palace by having certain ingredients for his banquet provided by the monarch, such as so cheese and sweet chestnuts, and he served the cowpea dumplings to stand-in for the konton dumplings customarily served in the grander New Year’s ministerial banquet. His relationship with the monarch, his wealth, and his beneficence were all mutually reinforcing aspects of his power over the court and realm. Michinaga invited the clerks and fed them and gave them gifts as a demonstration of his beneficence. By the time the appointment banquet protocols had stabilized in the early twelfth century, clerks were not to be given space at the banquet. The 969 handbook of Minamoto no Takaakira ended its section on the appointment banquet by stating that “There is no clerks tent… The clerks are not ceremonially called for.” This line refers to a part of the New Year’s 223 ministerial banquet wherein the clerks are invited to the banquet, given a special seating area, fed, and ritually given sake. The Ōe House Protocols also instruct ministers not to make a show out of hosting the lower officials. Michinaga had other ideas. 224 As the courtiers and their entourages packed up their gifts and headed for the gates to go home, as the torches were extinguished and Michinaga left his magnificent banquet hall, our consideration of the appointment banquet comes to a close. But before we depart this banquet and prepare to attend another, let us recall Sanesuke’s confusion over the items on Michinaga’s appointment banquet menu. Sanesuke did not answer his own question or offer an 225 interpretation of Michinaga’s banquet. Perhaps he blamed the household staff for these mistakes. Perhaps he looked askance at Michinaga, but he would not dare to put his criticisms to paper, Saikyūki, 79. 223 Gōke shidai, p. 807. 224 Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Shōyūki, vol. 4, p. 293. 225 114 even for his descendants’ benefit. Instead he posed the question rhetorically: But, why are these things here? Precedent was the basis for ceremony and courtly rites. But, where did that precedent come from? And how did powerful men and women change what precedent was? In courtier journals, precedent is stated as the reasoning for an action with such finality, such authority that one might think it was carved in stone somewhere. In fact, Michinaga’s banquet suggests that precedent was more like a cloth that was woven and unwoven as the convenience and desire of a powerful figure demanded. These changes were as subtle as the moving of a seat, or not so subtle, like the abandonment of a ritual entirely. The reasons for changing protocol could be practical or symbolic. Men of authority could demand that a protocol be changed, like Michinaga did in his appointment banquet. In his own journal, Michinaga made no comment on his interventions, which allowed the action to disappear into the ever expanding fabric of precedent —all was simply as usual. He created new possibilities for what his descendants might do and how they might demonstrate their power in new ways, outside of the bounds of what might have been done previously. In the menu for that evening, Michinaga included palace foods to show his closeness with the palace and royal authority. The menu items that stuck out to Sanesuke—the so cheese and sweet chestnuts—were items to be served not at an appointment banquet, but at the grander New Year’s ministerial banquet. As we will see in the next chapter, the New Year’s ministerial banquet was a grand affair with more culinary and ceremonial components than the appointment banquet. It was during the ministerial banquet that konton dumplings were served, that special tents were erected for cooking, and that huntsmen arrived to put on a show. It was the older banquet, opulent and spectacular with tradition and the wealth of the highest nobility. Michinaga did not 115 merely wish to have an ordinary appointment banquet—he was not an ordinary man. He integrated the ways of the royal palace and the grand New Year’s ministerial banquet into his appointment banquet. Food was the way Michinaga did that. And Sanesuke saw what he did, and he recorded it in his journal, as if to say to his own descendants, we are not supposed to do this. Following an appointment, a minister—even a prime minister—was not (Sanesuke thought) to have foods sent from the palace, even if he controlled the upper reaches of the palace, the Back Palace, and the court. Those foods that Michinaga served were symbols of the royal authority intended for a specific event, and traditionally he should not have been granted them. He should not have even asked. The appointment banquet had undergone a series of protocol changes by the time Michinaga made his modifications. As Ōta Seiroku has shown, the appointment banquet developed after the New Year’s ministerial banquet. It took place under the eaves, and the procedures comprising it were differentiated from those of the New Year’s ministerial banquet. The appointment banquet took off in the mid-Heian, especially from Michinaga’s era onwards.226 We can see that the Appointment Banquet of 1017 demonstrated Michinaga’s ability to shape protocol as he liked. Michinaga’s intimacy with the throne would only grow in the years to come. Mere months after this important banquet, Michinaga’s daughter Ishi 威子 entered the back palace of the ten-year-old Go-Ichijō and became his queen consort in 1018. His other two daughters were married to monarchs, and there were two sons born to them who would rule the Ōta, Shindenzukuri no kenkyū, pp. 360-361. Why was the banquet procedure made differently? It 226 might be not that the appointment banquet was an abbreviated New Year’s ministerial banquet, but instead an all-day affair spilt between the palace and the residence of the new minister. Matsumoto Hiroyuki in his study of the palace minister position proposes that the appointment banquet is not in fact abbreviated from the New Year’s ministerial banquet, but in fact an extension of the palace ceremonies that occur beforehand. See Matsumoto, “Heian jidai no naidaijin ni tsuite,” pp. 198-202. This explains why certain foods like the cheese and sweet chestnuts from the palace were not included in the appointment banquet protocol, as the palace ceremony means that the monarch’s presence and approval was demonstrated through the royal audience and appointment. 116 realm. He had reached heights that most could never dream of, and so, there was a banquet to celebrate Ishi’s becoming queen consort. They were drinking, Michinaga and his sons and 227 companions, the sake cup circling the room. He called over Sanesuke, telling him to tend to Yorimichi. The other ministers poured sake for each other, and Michinaga again called for Sanesuke. “I want to present a poem,” said Michinaga, “and you must say a poem in return.” Sanesuke wondered, aloud, how he could possibly do so. Sanesuke was a good poet; this was 228 a bit of modesty on his part. Under more equal circumstances, he might have more readily agreed. “It is a triumphant poem,” continued Michinaga, “but not one that I prepared.” The poem that Michinaga then presented to the gathering is one of the most famous ones of the period. Ivan Morris translated this poem according to a common interpretation this way: “This world, I think / Is indeed my world. / Like the full moon / I shine, / Uncovered by any cloud.” But, in a more 229 recent analysis of the poem and its moment, Yamamoto Junko has offered an interpretation that combines contemporaneous play with puns and acknowledgement of the banquet setting on a moonlit night. She argues persuasively that we must acknowledge the banqueting context and wordplay of Michinaga’s poem, which might be read like this in her interpretation: “On this night, in this world, I think my heart is contented. The moon before my eyes is waning, but it is my moon—my daughters have become queens, and I trade cups with all at this banquet—and in my mind, nothing is waning.”230 The banquet is addressed in Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Shōyūki, Kannin 寛仁 2 (1018).10.16 (vol. 5, pp. 227 53-56) and Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, vol. 3, 179-180. For a modern translation of these passages, see Kuramoto, Shōyūki, vol. 9, pp. 97-104, and Kuramoto, Midō kanpakuki, pp. 333-336. Shōyūki has the most detail, including the poem and dialogue. Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Shōyūki, vol. 5, p. 55. 228 Morris, The World of the Shining Prince, pp. 60-61. 229 Yamamoto, “‘Kono yo o ba’ no uta no shinshaku to Michinaga zō,” p.14. 230 117 Yamamoto explains that the usual interpretation of the poem wherein Michinaga declares the world as his own, unobscured by any cloud, ignores the wider context. Michinaga was not declaring the world his own—the opening phrase of his poem is not unique to him—as their world belonged to the monarch. And the imagery and pun of sake cups and the moon was a common poetic device too, one that he drew on in that moment. He was at a banquet with companions, celebrating. His daughter had become queen consort, his son had become regent, and he loved them in his way. He was happy. He was probably drunk. No one had a response. Sanesuke was not about to muster a poem to follow the joyous and boastful declaration. Tactfully, he told Michinaga that the poem was beautiful, and that it would be wrong to attempt to respond to it. The poem was an embodiment of a moment of Regental Fujiwara flourishing and jubilation. They repeated the poem over and over again. Michinaga never even wrote it down; we only know of it because Sanesuke recorded it in his journal. The night was late when they all eventually stumbled home from the banquet, drunken and drenched in moonlight. Seasonality in the Appointment Banquet Menu Before we leave the appointment banquet behind, I will briefly address seasonality in the design of banquet menus. The appointment banquet was held following the announcement of a minister’s appointment, and as a result, banquet menus changed based on when in the year it was being held. Michinaga hosted his appointment banquet in the winter, but how might such a gathering differ from that held in the summer? Appointment banquet menus for later Fujiwara ministers allow us to better understand seasonal menu possibilities. As we have established, the first round consisted of drinking only, and from Michinaga’s era onwards, konton dumplings were served in the second round, a legacy of Michinaga’s 118 innovation. Food was primarily served from the third round onwards, and this is when we can begin to see how seasonality affected the foods served and the culinary categories at work. For instance, in the third round for Fujiwara no Morozane in the summer of 1060, the fruits and nuts served were pears and chestnuts, and the sakana dishes were of two sorts: fresh or vinegared carp and sea bass, and jellyfish, sweetfish eggs, and small sweetfish with vinegar. At a summer 231 appointment banquet held in 1080, hosts served pears and jujubes; fresh sea bass and sweetfish; jellyfish; and sea bream dressed with hishio, or fermented until it turned spicy with a lipsmacking saltiness. As mentioned, the third course also featured soup and dishes using fowl. 232 In 1088 when Morozane was appointed to prime minister, the Ōe House Procedures tells us, “Soup was served. <Thinly sliced fish with vinegar and [a soup of] fowl leg.>.” The 233 appointment banquets in 1060 and 1081 echoed a theme of serving vinegar fish and fowl. Specifically, diners ate grilled “small birds” with or added into the soup. Soups were featured in the fourth round, and hosts primarily served soups with different types of game birds and abalone, again, depending on availability. For Morozane in 1088, it was “[A soup of] fowl served hot 䠋 (atsumono) and [a soup of] fresh abalone.” Atsumono is best understood as a hot soup, although we know from the Notes from the Palace Kitchen that chilled soups were also possible. For soups, pheasant was the meat of choice in the appointment 234 banquets of Fujiwara no Norimichi, Tadazane, and Munetada. In 1060, Morozane deviated from See Taira no Sadaie, Kōheiki, Kōhei 康平 3(1060).7.17 (p. 825). 231 See Nindaijin daikyō burui, p. 326. This banquet was held for Fujiwara no Yoshinaga 藤原能長 who 232 had just been appointed palace minister. Gōke shidai, p. 800. 233 There were two categories of hot soup. The first atsumono written with the above character 䠋 refers to 234 hot soups made with a meat base. The other, more common atsumono written with 羹 refers to a hot vegetable soup. These can mean a clear soup, which cooks strained, or a cloudy soup. This distinction, however, is largely a semantic and technical one, as it is clear that many diarists did not make a distinction between these terms. Atsumono written with 羹 can refer to soups with meat in them too, depending on the writer. 119 his fellow banquet-hosting ministers to serve hot crane soup served with a side of prickly water lily 鶏頭草 (keitōsō), which has a pleasing starchiness, and herbaceous lamb’s quarters 藜 (Jpn. akaza; Chenopodium album var. centrorubrum), a green which has an earthy and astringent taste not unlike spinach. Morozane had this prepared along with grilled sweetfish. Lesser guests 235 236 who were counselors or lower in rank ate hot soup made with pigeon. During the fifth round when rewards were called for, Morozane dined on melon, lamb’s quarters, and crunchy persimmon seeds in 1060. At the end of an entry on Morozane’s banquet, a diarist wrote that counselors and below received “two types of fruits and nuts (kashi): pears and chestnuts. Two types of dried items: dried fowl and abalone.” These were the same as the elites’ dishes, but substitutions were made in the meat and fish courses, like the pigeon soup mentioned above for lower-ranking officials. In the fifth round, they received leaf mustard and water chestnuts, “young chestnuts,” sweet chestnuts, and awashi persimmons 淡柿 (awashigaki). Water rice 水飯 (suihan) was also 237 served. This dish is rice to which cold water or ice has been added. The diarist seemed to find the dish out of place, as it was typically served at a banquet when a new queen consort was named. Morozane was making substitutions in his banquet from what would have been typical in a winter appointment banquet, like Michinaga’s, or the New Year’s Ministerial Banquet discussed in the next chapter, which was held in the First Month. Here are the summer substitutions for Morozane’s banquet with the culinary categories provided in brackets: Akaza grows in the wild in Japan today. Lamb’s quarters is commonly cultivated and eaten today in 235 northern India, Nepal, and Pakistan、 where it is known as bathua. In the entry for 康平3.7.17 (1060), 䖣 was added to the sweetfish. See Kōheiki, p. 285. A similar 236 character 蛌, appears in the banquet entry for 承暦4.8.14 (1081) in Nindaijin daikyō burui, p. 326. This may refer to octopus. This refers to persimmons treated with hot water to remove bitterness. 237 120 [Fresh or vinegared items:] sea bass instead of pheasant. [Deep-dish items:] jellyfish instead of sea squirts. [Side dish:] lamb’s quarters instead of soybean-wakame seaweed mixture 䋬 (kuki). [Grilled items:] grilled sweetfish instead of tsutsumiyaki (or wrapped and roasted pheasant). [Kashi:] sweet chestnuts and awashi persimmons instead of rice porridge and sweet chestnuts.238 Again, seasonality played a role in Morozane’s appointment banquet menu. Perhaps he enjoyed the lamb’s quarters more so than the fermented soybeans and wakame, which would have been available year-round. The fifth course was to have sweet components, like fruits and nuts, and Morozane honored that convention by including persimmons and chestnuts, but he decided against a sweet porridge, which would have been warm and heavy—not an ideal dish for a summer banquet in Kyoto’s humidity. Mountain yam porridge, which appears in relaxed feasts, might not be so beloved all year long. Would it not be nicer to have a cold dish in warm weather? “It is said that in hotter months,” writes Takaakira, “[serve] shaved ice, oriental melon 甘瓜 (amauri), etc.” Shaved ice from the ice houses was the delight of elites in the warmer months. Morozane decided that “instead of the mountain yam porridge, shaved ice” would be served. As performers picked up 239 their instruments and music flowed through the mansion, banquet attendees raised their spoons and ate shaved ice. Perhaps it was served with that sweet amazura syrup Sei Shōnagon so enjoyed, one of those elegant things in court life. See Kōheiki p. 286. 238 See Gōke shidai, p.806. More generally, it seems that shaved ice was a popular food among the most 239 elite in the summer months. This popularity continued into the thirteenth century, as we can see from another example of nobles being served shaved ice. See the entry for Scroll 6, Number 274 in Kokon chomonjū, vol. 1, pp. 333-334. 121 Chapter Four: A Pinnacle of Banqueting — Fujiwara no Yorinaga’s Ministerial Banquet of 1152 Now, for another Fujiwara regental banquet. The New Year’s ministerial banquet 大臣大饗 (daijin daikyō) was the pinnacle of Fujiwara banquet culture, and this chapter explores the material complexity of Fujiwara no Yorinaga’s ministerial banquet at a fraught political moment in 1152—almost a century and a half after Michinaga’s appointment banquet. It was attended by the leaders of the court where they ate dozens of foods served on the regalia of the Northern Fujiwara: hundreds of vermillion lacquer dishes. In the same manner as other Regental Fujiwara before him, Yorinaga used the banquet to display his authority. The regalia on which his guests’ food was served was not merely a spectacular display of material power, but an exhibition of Fujiwara myth-building and tradition. Regental Fujiwara also reaffirmed a close relationship with the throne through foods sent from the palace, like so cheese and sweet chestnuts. The very menu of the banquet, which differed according to rank, reinforced court hierarchy. And finally, through the seating and food service of the banquet, we will see how the host Yorinaga elevated his allies. There were different banquets associated with the appointment and post of minister. In the previous chapter, we explored Michinaga’s Appointment Banquet of 1017, held the day he received the royal order to serve as prime minister. We saw how he invited members of the Council of State to his home and feted them with food and drink under the eaves of his mansion’s southern hall. In contrast, a minister might hold a ministerial banquet at his home in the First Month of the New Year. It would be large banquet focused on the Council of State staff, which he oversaw as minister. The main seating area was in the main room 母屋 (moya) of the southern hall of his residence. The date was determined by divination when the man received his 122 ministerial appointment. Special tents were erected in the southern garden, and messengers carrying special ingredients from the palace—so cheese and sweetened chestnuts—arrived in the afternoon just before the celebration Guests then arrived and performed salutations 拝礼 (hairei), with participants lined up according to rank and post. They bowed to the host before processing to their seats where they were served dinner. This New Year’s ministerial banquet consisted of a grand feast with, give-or-take, six rounds of drinking, a visit from hunters who had helped provide food, a relaxed feast, and gifts to attendees. It was one of the spectacular banquets of the court calendar. The host was responsible for feeding the guest of honor and representatives of the Council of State, as well as the counselors, advisors, controllers, secretaries, clerks, and the numerous members of entourages that accompanied the important members of the court. Fortunately ministerial banquets are especially well-documented events, which allows us to go beyond manuals and journals and consult records that addressed the provisioning of the banquets. The ministerial banquet required food for hundreds of people, and the provisioning drew on the wealth of the government as well as more personal and unofficial channels. The richness of detail in Yorinaga’s journal, Taiki, allows us to see how food was used to indicate rank. Yorinaga recorded what different groups were served, when it was served, and even some of the figures preparing the meal. The ministerial banquet was not just a meal, but a performance of music and food preparation, where hunters paraded into the garden to show off their prowess at hunting, and knife chefs carved fowl and fish for nobles to see. Yorinaga kept this careful record of the banquet for his heirs, so that they too could properly conduct one for themselves in the future. 123 The first use of the word kyō 饗, which I translate here as banquet, when referring to a celebration held specifically for a minister, appears in 904. It was a banquet held for Minister of the Left Fujiwara no Tokihira, who was at that time still busily working on the Engi Protocols.240 It is worth noting, however, that such banquets in a prototypical form were held earlier.241 Specifically, at the New Year it was customary for elite courtiers to welcome visitors who came to pay their respects. Fukutō Sanae has proposed that ministerial banquets arose from this practice of salutations, where visiting courtiers lined up, bowed, and proffered greetings. It is 242 easy to imagine a host, after receiving the proper salutations, offering his friends, colleagues, and family members food and drink. Traces of this practice are visible, I believe, in the usage of the phrase “house banquet,” which appears in The Record of the Western Palace. At the turn of the 243 tenth century, these household parties became “officialized” and incorporated into the court calendar. The permission to hold official salutations attended by officialdom in a similar manner as the monarch, queen consort, and crown prince, held a great symbolic importance. In this way, the ministerial banquet became an affirmation of Regental Fujiwara court dominance through the salutations, food, drink, and gifts.244 For the earliest ministerial banquet, see DNS 1:3, Engi 延喜 4.1.4 (904), (p. 417). The first use of the word 240 “taikyō” or “great banquet” appears the next year, again, for a ministerial banquet held for Tokihira: DNS Engi 延喜 5.1.4 (905), (p. 475). For an example of an early household banquet that celebrated appointments, and importantly, had figures 241 fulfilling the role of guest of honor and host, Ise monogatari contains a story in which male officials come together to celebrate in a courtier’s home. We should also note that there was even a banquet held for the appointment of captains 大将 (taishō) too. 242 Fukutō, “Shōgatsu girei to kyōen: ‘ie’ teki mibun chitsujo girei no seiritsu.” Saikyūki, pp. 25-28. 243 Fukutō, “Shōgatsu girei to kyōen: ‘ie’ teki mibun chitsujo girei no seiritsu,” pp. 310-321. 244 124 The ministerial banquet was held regularly during the reign of Daigo Tennō (r. 897-930), and beyond. At this early date, it is possible that some of the features of the banquet were standardized, like the use of so cheese and sweet chestnuts from the palace. The Record of the West Palace says that the Royal Secretariat had so cheese and sweet chestnuts sent to Tokihira’s residence for the “Minister of the Left’s Banquet” 左大臣饗 (sadaijin no kyō). On the next 245 day, a banquet was held for the minister of the right as well. In fact, in the tenth century, it seems to have been customary to hold multiple ministerial banquets in the First Month, with the left minister hosting his on the fourth day and the right minister hosting his on the fifth.246 Over time the practice of both the left and right ministers holding banquets was replaced by that of holding a single banquet hosted by a newly appointed Northern Fujiwara. There were menu complications, however. In 943, Fujiwara no Tadahira decided that fish and meat would not be served at the banquet to avoid ritual pollution for other New Year ceremonies. In particular, the Buddhist Gosaie event with its abstinence period occurred from about the eighth through the fourteenth days, so Tadahira decided that guests would have only vegetarian fare.247 Later ministerial banquets, however, were simply held in the latter half of the month when both fish and fowl could be consumed without conflict.248 Saikyūki, p. 28. There are disagreements between manuscript copies as to the date. It might refer to the fourth 245 year of Engi, as the editors of the Dai nihon shiryō seem to believe, or it might be the second or third year of Engi, as the editors of the Shintō taikei note here. Either way, we are talking about an early ministerial banquet held by Tokihira. Ōta Seiroku says that during the tenth century, officials were fashioning the structure of their New Year’s 246 banquets, royal and ministerial. Ōta, Shindenzukuri no kenkyū, pp. 358-359. Northern Fujiwara ministers followed this format when constructing their own banquets of the First Month. Banquets were becoming more official and court-facing affairs in the tenth century, and it natural that the Fujiwara seized on this new tool. See the note at the head of the Ministerial Banquet section in Gōke shidai, p. 70. 247 Kurahayashi Shōji addresses the gradual shift of the ministerial banquet to be held later and later in the First 248 Month. Kurahayashi, Kyōen no kenkyū, vol. 1, 455-456. 125 126 A Ministerial Banquet illustrated in a nineteenth-century copy of the Nenjūgyōji emaki owned by the Tokyo National Museum. From right to left: the kitchen tent, the host at his seat under the eaves, and the guest of honor above him. The senior nobles on the Council of State are facing the viewer. The hunters with a dog and falcon are pictured as well. Tokyo National Museum Image Search. 127 Ōe no Masafusa wrote in the early twelfth century that, “In recent years we hold the banquet in the New Year following a man’s appointment to minister; or a banquet is not held; or the banquet is not for a minister. <There are also people who do not hold it in the right year.>”249 The ministerial banquet was not merely a celebration of the ministerial position—which is what it seemed to be originally—but a celebration of the Regental Fujiwara lineage and its leadership at court. It was not necessarily held every year. When Ōe no Masafusa wrote that the ministerial banquet might not be focused on a minister, we should understand that it might celebrate a Fujiwara being a regent, viceroy, or perhaps documents inspector. The precedent for a nonminister hosting a ministerial banquet appeared in 987, when Fujiwara no Kaneie 藤原兼家 hosted it as regent.250 The ministerial banquet also served as a stage for presenting a minister in a grand and formal fashion to the Council of State and other officials of importance. Of course, those achieving the rank of minister were already well-known in court government, but a banquet provided a formal setting for official to present himself in his new role. In the previous chapter, I analyzed Michinaga’s appointment banquet following his rise to prime minister at a time in his career when he needed no introduction. His banquet functioned more as a celebration of his power and connection to the throne; but for younger ministers, banquet debuts were an opportunity to create community, prove oneself capable of complex provisioning and hosting duties, and demonstrate knowledge of courtly protocols. The Fujiwara were not the only officials Gōke shidai, p. 70. 249 DNS 2:9, Eien 永延 1.1.2 (987), (p.4). This is the earliest example of a non-minister hosting a ministerial 250 banquet cited by Kawamoto Shigeo in his analysis of the ministerial banquet’s transition to a special reception (rinji kyaku). See Kawamoto, Shindenzukuri no kūkan to gishiki, pp. 302-303. This banquet used lacquer standing trays instead of tables for the host and senior nobles, and they were served on silver dishes. Interestingly, the intimates received red lacquer trays. There are no details on the food here. It is curious that this banquet is being held on the second day of the First Month—that seems awfully early for a ministerial banquet. The second day of the month was traditionally dedicated to the Double Royal Banquet. 128 permitted to host ministerial banquets, but they overwhelmingly dominated the posts of minister and therefore the role of host. Seizing the Vermillion Dishes of the Fujiwara Regalia On an autumn night in 1150, Fujiwara no Yorinaga 藤原頼長 set out with his son to visit his own father, Tadazane 忠実, who was the patriarch of the regental line. They climbed into a 251 carriage together, then rode a boat across the Uji River to the eastern bank, where they changed to a second carriage. Rain fell, pattering the carriage roof and dripping down the blinds. As Yorinaga crossed the bridge at the Kitsu River, he saw his father’s carriage waiting. Dawn began to break, lighting up the sky. While crossing, he watched a deer, which suddenly and inexplicably vanished. No one else in his party had seen the deer or knew of what he spoke. Tadazane wondered if Yorinaga had seen the Great Shining Deity of Kasuga. It was the protective deity of the Fujiwara clan, and Tadazane likely wanted Yorinaga to see an auspicious sign. Yorinaga was descended from Michinaga, but much had changed in the regental line, that most mighty of Fujiwara lineages. Regental Fujiwara dominance at court had begun to erode in the 1060s as retired monarchs became politically active and ruled through a powerful administrative unit, the Retired Monarch’s Office 院庁 (In no Chō), and by the early twelfth century Retired Monarch Shirakawa came to control royal succession. At this time in the midtwelfth century, His Majesty Konoe was on the throne, but there were two retired monarchs, Toba and Sutoku, who also wielded power. It was a particularly challenging time politically for the Fujiwara, and Tadazane, at the age of seventy-two, was still plotting to maintain and build the These events concerning the break-in at the Higashi Sanjō storehouse are detailed in Fujiwara no Yorinaga, Taiki, 251 Kyūan 久安6 (1150).9.26 (vol. 2, pp. 40-41). 129 glory of his house. Thus, this early morning meeting with Yorinaga occurring in the wet, autumn chill. It cannot have been a long meeting, because they left for Kyoto around eight in the morning. Tadazane resided in Uji, but recently he had often been going north to Kyoto and staying with his daughter, the royal lady, Kayano-in 高陽院, so his attendants were already on hand in Kyoto. On this occasion, however, they went to the Higashi Sanjō Residence 東三条, which was the ceremonial headquarters of the regental lineage where they were eventually joined by Kayano-in. The problem of the moment was Tadazane’s sons. Yorinaga and his older brother Tadamichi 忠通 had been at each other’s throats for years, fighting in the bloodless and courtly ways that they knew best. Tadamichi had been twenty-four when Yorinaga was born. His 252 mother was of a more important lineage than Yorinaga’s, which made him seem the natural heir to Tadazane. But Tadamichi had long struggled to have a son, watching as his male children died soon after birth. As a result, Yorinaga had become Tadamichi’s heir. Yorinaga rose quickly through courtly positions, following the path cleared by Tadazane, and he had ambitious sons who followed him. A rift opened between the two brothers in 1143 when Tadamichi finally had the son he had been wishing for, Motozane. Passing the reigns of Regental Fujiwara power to Yorinaga was no longer what Tadamichi wanted. What Tadamichi wanted, however, was not what his father wanted. The two had quarreled over this, and by 1150 Tadazane was done with his eldest’s disobedience. Furious, For more on Tadazane and his conflicted relationship with his sons, see Motoki Yasuo’s Fujiwara no Tadazane 252 and Hashimoto Yoshihiko’s Fujiwara no Yorinaga. In English, see the dissertation by Jillian Barndt, “Scholar, Minister, Rebel Fujiwara no Yorinaga (1120-1156).” There is a narrative in the historiography that Tadazane loved Yorinaga more than Tadamichi, and that was why he worked so hard to make Yorinaga a court leader. Motoki explains that this is not right; this particular perspective on their devolving relationship emerges in the thirteenth century. They were on good enough terms until Motozane’s birth complicated affairs. Motoki, Fujiwara no Tadazane, p. 128. 130 Tadazane declared that Tadamichi was unfilial and consequently unfit to lead the Regental Fujiwara as the family’s chieftain. He could not take the position of regent away from his eldest son, which was granted by the Son of Heaven himself. But no royal decree was required for Tadazane to strip Tadamichi of his chieftainship, and that was exactly what the father intended to do. It was perhaps in a swell of ancestral pride and arrogance that Tadazane challenged all around him. “What is there to fear?” That rhetorical question probably came to haunt him in 253 time. Tadazane then ordered some of the attendants serving his house to take the regalia of the Regental Fujiwara from Tadamichi and give them to Yorinaga. “These items are locked up in the storehouse,” an attendant named Yorisuke said, “and Tadamichi’s house manager has the key at his residence.” At that time, Tadamichi was at another residence, and everyone present would 254 have known that the eldest son would not have been sanguine about turning over the storehouse key to the father currently disowning him. Tadazane turned red with rage at this unexpected setback. “Hurry and break the lock,” he commanded. Before they could begin, a resourceful Yorisuke re-appeared with an ancient key to the building. “A gift from the heavens,” Tadazane called the key. What they found inside, and 255 what Yorinaga inherited as the Fujiwara chiefly regalia, is an important part of our story on Heian banquet food culture. The ministerial banquet for a new chieftain required the regalia they took from Tadamichi’s storehouse. Around eight in the evening, Tadazane wrote to Retired Monarch Toba, explaining that because of Tadamichi’s lack of obedience, Tadazane was disowning him and granting Yorinaga Barndt, “Scholar, Minister, Rebel: Fujiwara no Yorinaga (1120-1156),” pp. 183-184. 253 Taiki, vol. 2, p. 41. 254 Taiki, vol. 2, p. 41. 255 131 the chieftainship. Sir Arinari carried the regalia to the Higashi Sanjō Residence. Meanwhile, rumors of bad omens at Tadamichi’s residence spread throughout the city; Yorinaga heard that a herd of deer had damaged screens in the house, and a fox—seen as an agent of mischief—had wandered inside before servants managed to trap it. Yorinaga had glimpsed the mysterious deer in Uji, and a herd of deer had attacked his brother’s home. The omens seemed to indicate that Yorinaga was indeed the right person to inherit the chieftainship. As for Toba’s response to the disownment and Yorinaga’s new position, it was more opaque than the omens. Toba diplomatically stated that there were good and bad sides to Tadazane’s decision. Ordinarily when a new chieftain inherited the regalia, household staff opened the chests and took inventory of the objects. But perhaps because of the nature of the inheritance, there was no formal ceremony, no careful regard of the regalia surrounded by torchlight. Yorinaga had the chests sent away, unopened, to be stored in the Kangakuin 勧学院 until the day came when it would be needed. What were these items that Tadazane was so desperate to acquire for Yorinaga in 1150? Yorinaga kept remarkably detailed records of ceremony, and his journal would normally be the best place for us to turn for a detailed accounting of what was in the chests kept under lock-andkey at the Higashi Sanjō Residence. Ordinarily there would be a ceremony called the Passing of the Vermillion Dishes 朱器渡り (shuki watari) when the heir inheriting the regalia would take inventory and spend time examining the objects. Because of the coup d'état nature of Yorinaga’s inheritance, however, no such record exists in his journal, Taiki. We have to assemble the evidence from a variety of sources. The regalia featured vermilion tableware 朱器 (shuki) and long, large tables called daiban 台盤. Such tables were used around the palace at royal banquets. But these large tables 132 were special, as they were covered with a coat of gleaming red lacquer. The vermillion dishes were also coated in red lacquer. The crafting process for these items was not as costly as a lacquerware set decorated with mother-of-pearl or dusted in gold, or great works of Buddhist sculpture. It nonetheless deserves our attention here. Lacquerware was an important commodity, and the second half of the Heian Period was a “Golden Age” for lacquerware in Japan, driven by a demand for beautiful house goods, temple decorations, and Buddhist sculpture. To explain it 256 simply, lacquerware is made by coating wood—or another material—in layers of urushiol sap produced by the lacquer tree (Toxicodendron vernicifluum). Untreated lacquer yields a dark brown color, so to achieve the desired black or red finishes, additives were required. In order to create red lacquerware, artisans had to refine the sap over several months, heat it, and then treat this refined sap with iron oxide and cinnabar (a red-colored mercury sulfide ore). The artisan would then cure the piece in a humid space, allowing the lacquer to polymerize. The finish was not only bright red but also durable and water-resistant. Such regalia—furniture and tableware— might strike us as strange, but these objects were used at one of the most important banquets in the court calendar. The ministerial banquet was a time for the Fujiwara to organize members of the Council of State and the broader court, and also to demonstrate its wealth through the presentation of food, drink, and gifts. This regental regalia was an important part of the performance. When brought out for a ministerial banquet, the bright color of the vermillion dishes and tables would draw the attention of anyone present. Other guests would dine on black lacquer tables and dishes, and lower ranking guests would eat from pottery. The vermillion tables and dishes were used for serving the guest of honor and the host. von Rageué, A History of Japanese Lacquerware, pp. 37-59. 256 133 When did the tableware and furniture become objects of ancestral and ceremonial importance to the Fujiwara? As Iwai Ryūji has argued in his analysis of the regalia’s history, they were indeed comparable to the more famous regalia of the monarchy. The Ōe House 257 Procedures reads “The Fujiwara chieftain’s vermillion dishes and tables belonged to the Kan’in Minister of the Left Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu 藤原冬嗣 (775-826), and they are in the Kangakuin. They are passed on to the chieftain when he is first appointed, and then the dishes are used at the New Year’s [Ministerial] Banquet.” But, it is possible that some myth-building is underway in 258 the 1111 text. There is no contemporaneous evidence that the vermillion dishes or tables belonged to Fuyutsugu beyond what is written here in the Ōe House Procedures, which were compiled hundreds of years later. The oldest surviving reference to the vermillion dishes and tables appears in the Record of the West Palace (969) which states that the vermillion dishes and tables were to be used at the “Minister’s House Banquet” 臣家大饗 (shinke no daikyō). The first mention in a journal is in 259 an entry from 987, when Fujiwara no Sanesuke noted that “vermillion dishes and tables” were used at the banquet following Fujiwara no Kaneie’s appointment to regent. Another early 260 appearance of the vermillion dishes and tables appears in Michinaga’s journal when Michinaga See Iwai, “Shuki daiban kō,” p. 27. The above provides an excellent overview of the Fujiwara’s regalia until its 257 disappearance in the early fourteenth century. For his analysis of the inheritance of the regalia, see “Tōji no chōja keishō hōshiki no hensan to shuki daiban.” Gōke shidai, p. 70. 258 Saikyūki, p. 25. 259 Sanesuke only mentions the drinking protocols in the entry, unfortunately, so we do not know what foods were 260 served at this early banquet. It seems to have been held at Kaneie’s residence, and it was a taikyō (or daikyō) banquet. It has the right features of a ministerial banquet, such as the three rounds of formal drinking and the presence of the guest of honor. Unfortunately the text before those banquet characters is missing, so how Sanesuke would have described the banquet is unclear. Iwai is wrong in his assertion that the first journal entry to address the Fujiwara regalia is in Midō kanpakuki. See Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Shōyūki, Eien 永延 1 (987).1.19 (vol. 1, p. 115). The following day, a banquet was held for the minister of the left, but the vermillion dishes and tables were not used. There is no mention of them in the entry. This was likely because even at this relatively early date, the rule was that the regalia were only to be used by the chieftain and not simply for any ministerial banquet. 134 was appointed to Minister of the Left as well as chieftain. He remarks that, “I was appointed minister and then the vermillion dishes and tables, etc. were brought to me.”261 Michinaga showed the value of the regalia in 1016, when he watched as fire swept through the city, the flames intensified by a windy night. Countless buildings were burned to ashes, and amidst the chaos, around two in the morning, Michinaga ordered that the vermillion dishes and documents be rescued. Messengers brought the chests to Ichijō, and then reports came in that Hōkōin, possibly where they had been stored, had caught fire and completely burned down. That night, wrote Michinaga, “my own buildings and five hundred others from Tsuchimikado Avenue to northern Nijō were lost in the fire.” Rescuing the vermillion dishes 262 and other regalia was such a priority that Michinaga risked lives for them. These were not merely valuable objects. They were ancestral treasures from which the chieftain derived authority. It is clear that by the late tenth century, the custom of using these special dishes and tables at important banquets had become a key feature of Regental Fujiwara ceremony. 263 The new tradition continued throughout the eleventh century, and it is in diaries of that time that we begin to really see the regalia manifest on the page. When Morozane inherited the chieftainship in 1075 and his household manager had servants bring in the four long chests, there Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, Chōtoku 長徳 1 (995).6.19 (vol. 3, p. 257). 261 See Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, Chōwa 長和 5 (1016).7.21 (vol. 3, p. 69). 262 While it is not impossible that the objects themselves had belonged to Fuyutsugu, no evidence suggests that 263 Fuyutsugu (or even his sons) used them in the ministerial banquet in the same manner as later Fujiwara. Their usage seems to have been an innovation of the tenth century, but to give them more legitimacy, the Fujiwara reached into their ancestry to add the special Fuyutsugu gloss. It is difficult to know whether the ceremony for the Passing of the Vermillion Dishes had been created by Michinaga’s era. The ceremony is established by the twelfth ceremony. 135 were the vermillion dishes, five large tables, and a small box that held a set of scales. In 1094, 264 Fujiwara no Munetada 藤原宗忠 wrote in his journal, Chūyūki, that he went to Fujiwara no Moromichi’s home for the Passing of the Vermillion Dishes. Moromichi had just been appointed viceroy and chieftain of the Regental Fujiwara. Courtiers arrived and settled into seats on the southern veranda. They watched the governor of Aki and some servants bring the chests on to the veranda. Munetada explains that at that time there was “one continental chest <which probably held the scrolls and documents>; one small chest <which probably held the clan’s seal>; one long and narrow chest <grass scales>.” Once the chests were in place, a courtier opened the continental chest, and Moromichi inspected the documents.265 As we see here, the regalia was not limited to dishes and tables. The documents attested to the inherited property of the chieftain, such as the Saho Residence 佐保殿 (Sahodono) in Nara, Kada Estate 鹿田荘 (Kada no shō) in Bizen Province, Katakami Estate 方上荘 (Katakami no shō) in Echizen Province, and Kusuha Horse Ranch 楠葉牧 (Kuzuha no maki) in Kawachi Province. These estates had been established to support the Kangakuin and regental family temples. Michinaga’s era was an especially notable period of land acquisition. And when 266 Fujiwara no Moromichi held his Passing of the Vermillion Dishes, he too added more documents See Minamoto no Toshifusa, Suisaki, Jōho 承保 2 (1075).10.3 (pp. 31-32). Everyone was well dressed; servants 264 of the household had put on full court dress 束帯 (sokutai) that included formal robes and caps. Sir Aritsuna 有綱 commanded that the boxes be opened, and the two upper and lower household managers opened the lid, revealing the dish sets. Sir Aritsuna ordered that one large dish and one small dish be removed for inspection, and once that was done, they returned the dishes to the chest and closed it. The household managers then withdrew the scales and inspected them before returning them to the safety of the box. Fujiwara no Munetada, Chūyūki, Kahō 嘉保 1 (1094).3.11 (vol. 2, pp. 33-34). 265 Iwai, “Shuki daiban kō,” p. 27. 266 136 to the chest. The set of scales are more difficult to understand. Iwai thinks that the scales 267 268 were symbolic of the Fujiwara’s historic connection with the raising of horses—a horse ranch was included in the above property document.269 As for the dishes and tables, Munetada provides the best surviving description. He noted that laborers in red hunting robes removed the lids from the chests, and inside were twenty-seven red lacquered tables. Two of the tables were almost eight feet long (8 shaku, 2.38m). In addition there were six square tables, and nineteen other large and small tables.” The Fujiwara seemed to have added more tables over time. They inspected the dishes “in the old way,” in rows. The 270 271 vermillion dishes would have included small shallow plates, bowls, and deep bowls, as well as plates shaped like flowers. As happens with parties, things were broken—or lost—and needed to be replaced over the years. For the banquet in 1206, officials noted that new deep tea bowls might need to be made, as well as smaller dishes for condiments for ranking official guests.272 Hashimoto, Heian kizoku shakai no kenkyū, pp. 237-282. 267 Different diarists used different characters to refer to the item. This character is thought to be a scale because 268 Munetada made a note in his own journal: “one small, white, long chest: <holding grass scales 草波加利>.” Fujiwara no Munetada, Chūyūki, vol. 2, p. 34-35. In the twelfth century, an official took these to the stables where he and others engaged in three rounds of drinking. See Fujiwara no Tsunefusa, Kikki, Juei 寿永 2 (1184).12.1 (vol. 3, p. 126). Iwai, “Shuki daiban kō,” p. 28. 269 In 1075 only five large tables were noted in Suisaki, pp. 31-32. 270 Fujiwara no Munetada, Chūyūki, vol. 2, p. 34-35. 271 “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” p. 191. 272 137 We should not understand the vermillion dishes as a single set of objects with a definitive beginning, but as a changing collection with an esteemed origin story. 273 On that tense night in 1150 when Tadazane decided that he would disown Tadamichi and that Yorinaga would inherit the regalia, he probably recalled his own ascendance to chieftain when he inherited the regalia at age twenty-one. Tadazane also probably remembered the 274 massive banquet he had successfully hosted following his appointment to minister and chieftain. The inheritance of the dishes, tables, documents, seal, and scales was an important rite of passage by the late tenth century, never mind the twelfth. We can easily understand the property records and the family seal as notable documentation of regental house wealth and authority. The dishes and tables were for a public display on the stage of the ministerial banquet of the New Year, as we shall see. The Provisioning of a Ministerial Banquet In 1152, Yorinaga had much to prepare before he could hold his own successful ministerial banquet. He had to assemble his guest list, determine his guests of honor, and invite everyone who should be invited. Diviners and experts of the calendar helped choose an auspicious day. Yorinaga and his household managers knew that hundreds of courtiers, servants, and attendants would pass through the gates of the Higashi Sanjō Residence on the day of the banquet. Household managers, cooks, and staff would be busy preparing for weeks. Yorinaga, There were hundreds of red lacquer dishes, a shimmering set that when laid out in full at the banquet would have 273 been dazzling to behold. The guest of honor alone received five flower-shaped dishes for soups, rice, and dumplings; eight plates for sweets; twenty-one deep dishes for tea and assorted seafoods; and six small dishes for condiments, totaling forty dishes. The counselors and advisors were seated two to a large table, and one person was served on eight dishes, a large tray for sweets, thirty-four deep dishes, and five small dishes for a total of forty-eight. NonCouncil of State major controllers used twenty-nine pieces of tableware; controllers and junior counselors, seated two to a table, used fifty-four dishes; and secretaries and scribes, seated eight to a table, were served on 148 dishes for the table. These numbers fluctuated, of course, depending on the number of guests in each category. In 1206, an inventory notes that there were 201 red lacquerware dishes (101 in a flower shape), 204 sweets trays, 726 deep dishes, 226 small dishes, fifty chopstick sets, and fifty spoons. “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” pp. 182-191. Fujiwara no Tadazane, Denryaku, vol. 1, p. 12. 274 138 like many ministers, hosted a planning meeting 定 (sadame) to decide on invitees, a banquet date, gifts, laborers, and which provinces and estates would be provisioning the banquet. Here 275 I am going to show the proper ways to plan a banquet in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Starting with entries in Yorinaga’s own journal Taiki, there is also the Kujō Compilation of Appointment Ceremony 九条家本除目抄 (Kujōkebon jimokushō). I will also refer to the “Various Matters Concerning the Chieftain’s Banquet” 朱器大饗雑事 (Shuki daikyō zatsuji), compiled around 1206 for a later chieftain’s banquet. It includes useful data on where 276 ingredients came from, different officials’ responsibilities, extensive menus, and tableware based on documents that must have been held by the Kujō. Indeed, Yorinaga’s detailed menus in his 277 journal provided precedents for later banquet hosts. To begin, Yorinaga and his helpers wanted to ensure that it would not rain on the day of the banquet. Banquet organizers insured that prayers and rites were held at major shrines to make sure that that rain would not wash out the big day. A host sent bolts of cloth to the shrines of Hachiman, Kamo, Kasuga, Ōharano, Yoshida, and Gion as offerings for prayers to keep away the rain. Monks at Kōfukuji, Ninnaji, Enryakuji, Hōjōji, and Byōdōin were asked to conduct rites as well. And the host also needed to choose messengers to carry invitations to his elite guests. Of 278 course, senior nobles of the Council of State would be invited, but there were also royal intimates and royal ladies with their entourages as well as musicians and performers on the list. Kurahayashi, Kyōen no kenkyū, vol. 1, p. 459. 275 Kujōkebon jimokushō, vol. 2, pp. 238-240. 276 Interestingly, the document does not address Yorinaga’s banquet at all. This might be a consequence of the 277 conflict between Tadamichi and Yorinaga, or it might be a result of a lack of extant documentation for the thirteenthcentury compilers. “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” pp. 172-174. 278 139 A host also had to provide for people with special roles to play. For instance, proper dark blue hunting costumes and court caps had to be provided to the falconer and houndsman. The falcon and hunting dog each received a set of bells to wear for their appearances mid-banquet. Falcons needed to wear red cords, which the host provided. Special large knives were also needed; in 1206, officials worked to track down special “bird’s head large knives” 鳥頸大刀 (tori kubi no tachi) adorned with bird’s faces on the grips to be carried by the falconer and houndsman. 279 Unsurprisingly, the decorations and provisioning for the ministerial banquet was a complex affair. Endō Motoo has analyzed provisioning patterns for the banquet to better understand the degree to which this banquet was an “official” one sponsored by taxes or one that was supported by the Regental Fujiwara coffers as a more private affair. Endō has shown that the hosting minister was responsible for providing the ingredients that would feed his “important guests” 上客 (jōkyaku): nobles, secretaries, and scribes. Their dishes were prepared and plated 280 at the special Noble Guests Cooking Station 上客料理所 set up for the occasion. This cooking station took over a section of the residence. At Higashi Sanjō in 1116, when Tadamichi hosted a New Year’s ministerial banquet, he had the station put in the Eastern Guards Post. Setting up 281 this cooking station was a notable part of banquet preliminaries, and when they prepared the space, hosts invited other courtiers to watch. In 1157, Motozane celebrated the newly assembled cooking station by serving drinks and having three fresh fish sliced for a meal. Yorinaga had 282 “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” p. 177. Gōke shidai, p. 81. 279 Endō, Chūsei ōken to ōchō girei, p. 80. 280 See Fujiwara no Tadazane, Denryaku, Eikyū 永久 4 (1116).1.6 (vol. 4, p. 212). 281 Taira no Nobunori, Hyōhanki, Hōgen 保元 2 (1157).8.10 (vol. 2, p. 218). 282 140 this cooking station for his own banquet set up in the northern walkway, a convenient location that was close enough to easily serve guests.283 What about food for less important guests? Their dishes might be prepared in either the residence’s permanent kitchen or in a tent set up in the garden. Ingredients were sourced from different places. Depending on the guest, the host might turn to provincial governors or other members of the Council of State to help with provisioning. Intimates of His Majesty, who were seated in the walkways and were thus served a “walkway banquet” 渡殿饗 (wataridono no kyō), had their meals procured by a middle counselor or major counselor. In this case, the host 284 would request a donation from the middle or major counselor to feed the intimates at the banquet. Most of the guests at the ministerial banquet— clerks 史生 (shishō), messengers, various members of the guest of honor’s entourage, stablehands, performers, royal police, torch-bearers, attendants, and body guards—had their food provided by the provinces from tax resources. In other words, their meals were an official expense. The host gave orders for ingredients from governors, who in turn procured what was necessary for the feast.285 In 1206, for instance, banquet ingredients for different guests were provided by all kinds of entities. Various shrine officials provided fish and shellfish, and “large carp” were sent in by the priestly administrators 神主 (kannushi) of Kamo Shrine, as well as by Sanuki Province.286 Taira no Nobunori, Hyōhanki, Ninpei 仁平 2 (1152).1.25 (vol. 1, p. 62), and Taiki, vol. 2, p. 77. Hyōhanki says 283 that it was in the eastern walkway, and it might have been originally. Yorinaga ends his entry for the day by noting that the cooking station was moved to the northern walkway where the senior officials were seated. This would have been a convenient location for final cooking and plating. Endō, Chūsei ōken to ōchō girei, p. 80. 284 “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” pp. 212-215. Endō, Chūsei ōken to ōchō girei, pp.77-81. 285 “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” pp. 181-182 and pp. 212-213. The author of the text also notes the names of officials and 286 administrators that sent ingredients for the banquet. 141 Nara monks and administrators, possibly at Kōfukuji, sent fruits and nuts. Additionally Kamo Shrine administrators sent hardy kiwi (kokuwa) and dried jujubes. Ise Shrine administrators 287 provided seafood. Still other provisions were supplied by the provinces and estates, like the provinces of Echigo and Kai, which sent dried strips of fish and dried jujubes. (A note reminds us that such networks sometimes fell short. It reads “in Hōgen [for Motozane in 1158] the ingredients from the provinces were insufficient and many things had to be provided by the estates.”) While the ritsuryō provisioning system had no doubt become less reliable in the 288 twelfth century, the provinces still had a big role to play in banquet culture. A clear historical pattern emerges from the “Various Matters” text. Provincial governors still provided for many diners. These diners were of lower rank—the clerks, messengers, supervisors, etc.—with simpler menus corresponding to their position. Despite the relative modesty of the fare, the challenge for a host and his cooks was the volume of food required, and the burden was shared by multiple provincial governors. Conservatively, those fed by the governors numbered at least 350 people. Consider an instance of banquet provisioning by Fujiwara no Tadamichi. Back in 1131, Tadamichi celebrated his rise to viceroy with a New Year’s ministerial banquet, and he asked the two governors of Bingo Province and Suō Province to provide the feast for the clerks, which consisted of banquet sets for sixty people. For the one-hundred meals for the messengers, it was the governors of Izumi and Iga to whom he turned. The Settsu governor mustered up what was required for the thirty supervisors’ 大夫 (taifu) meals, and the former governor of Hōki provided the thirty meals for the guest of honor’s front-riders. The Izumo governor was responsible for sixty other members of the guest of honor’s entourage, and the Sagami governor for those This item is written strangely in the text as 孔獲桃 which I believe might be a miscopy of the difficult to write 287 kokuwa 獼猴桃. This fruit is also called sarunashi 猿梨. “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” p. 212. 288 142 tending to the oxen in the stables, the boatmen, and other workers. The twenty royal police who attended to provide security—like police today, they welcomed being treated to food and drink— had their food provided by the governor of Kawachi. The twenty musicians were fed by the former governor of Awaji, and thirty bodyguards by the governor of Aki. The provincial 289 governors’ provisioning in “Various Matters,” with its columns of names and titles for banquet sets, with notations for provisioners reminds us that providing food was a way for those affiliated with the regents to demonstrate their support at key political celebrations. There are two reasons why the provincial governors were deeply involved in this provisioning. First, to begin with the practicalities, by requesting that the provincial governors do provisioning for the banquet, the host was relieved of that burden. Anyone who has ever hosted a party can appreciate this. Second, by involving the provincial governors, the host emphasized the official nature of the event. Of course, a ministerial banquet had to be sanctioned by the monarch. But as a major event of the court calendar that was not actually held in the palace, a ministerial banquet better represented officialdom when Council of State officials attended, and the provinces provided the food. By providing food for the banquet, these governors allowed the host to eat the realm. Some provisions and items were also provided by the palace. The Royal Meal Office procured and sent fish and shellfish; fruits, nuts, and confections 菓子 (kashi); various produce; and nibe croakers 腹赤 (haraka)—these were all delicacies closely associated with the palace and His Majesty. The Palace Kitchen provided a special dish: a mixture of fermented soybeans and wakame seaweed.290 In 1206, the host sent twenty-two bales 石 (koku) of brown rice 能米 “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” pp. 213-217. 289 “Shuki daiban zatsuji,” p. 212. 290 143 (nōmai) to the Banquet Office to pay for them to make Tang confections and konton 291 dumplings. The palace also provided oil for frying the Tang confections. These items, like the 292 Tang confections and konton dumplings, were culinarily sophisticated and well-known to the cooks serving His Majesty, but no doubt less familiar to the cooks in noble kitchens. The palace sent a delivery of so cheese and sweet chestnuts by formal messenger. In this way, the palace played an important role in a ministerial banquet menu. In earlier times the palace helped by 293 providing furniture, but by the late twelfth century, regental hosts were well-equipped with tables.294 As far as we can tell, Yorinaga’s provisioning for his 1152 banquet followed the general patterns outlined above. The host provided banquet sets for the important guests of high rank, but others were fed by governors and units of the ritsuryō government. Yorinaga provided various things, such as mountain yam porridge, for his guests of honor, as well as for his carriage attendants and entourage. On the other hand, Yorinaga wrote that he did not serve banquet sets 295 to one hundred messengers. Instead he served them sake and snacks, and gave them cloth as gifts. Entries in the journal known as Hyōhanki by Taira no Nobunori 平信範 give more details that illustrate the multifaceted nature of provisioning at the 1152 Ministerial Banquet. “Various An especially dark, unrefined rice grain. 291 “Shuki daiban zatsuji,” pp. 180-181. 292 It is interesting to note that in 1158 for Fujiwara no Motozane’s banquet, the Grains Bureau provided five bales 293 of cooked rice. So, there are other, more ordinary items that the palace may have provided for the occasion. See “Shuki daiban zatsuji,” p. 181. In 1206, an official noted that the Banquet Office had once provided ten black lacquer tables for the clerks, but 294 “in recent years,” the Fujiwara host took care of that. “Shuki daiban zatsuji,” p. 193. 295 Hyōhanki, vol. 1, p. 72. Taiki, vol. 2, p. 94. Illustrations of Various Important Matters 類聚雑要抄 (Ruijū zatsuyōshō) also provides numbers of expected banquet sets for other groups that hosts like Yorinaga would not be feeding: sixty clerks, sixty intimates, twenty policemen, or ten performers. Ruijū zatsuyōshō, pp. 529-531. 144 provinces provided for the aforementioned banquet dishes,” wrote Nobunori, “and the house manager and Tax Bureau manager Motoyasu oversaw this from Eastern Mikuramachi 東御倉町.” This was a district with rows of storehouses maintained by the regental household. As for officials who worked on provisioning, there were household and palace officials as well as the governors of Suō, Sagami, Iyo, Iga, Bizen, Awa, and Chikugo. Yorinaga used tax goods, food 296 from the palace, and items from his own household to provision the banquet. The Tents and Cooking Spaces Tented spaces were crucial stations for sake, plating, and distributing cuisine. Hosts might have to order new poles made or new fabrics to stretch over the frames, and craftsmen assembled floors and seating. There were three main tents required for a ministerial banquet: the kitchen tent, the sake tent, and the clerks’ tent. The kitchen and sake tents were hubs during the early courses of the banquet, as servants filled jars and servers hurried back and forth to refill cups, while cooks chopped ingredients, cooked meats and soups, and plated dishes. These two tents were two bays wide with tables and shelves for workspace and storage. Large carp, a 297 notable dish on the menu, were to be stored on the western table, and jars of cheese and sweet chestnuts were kept on a shelf below. On the table to the east, cooks kept jars of sake and vinegar for seasoning dishes, and below that were forty trays for ferrying prepared items to the diners. They also had on hand hemp cloths, suitable tableware, shiny leaves for plating, salted leaf mustard, and pickled ginger. Tables oriented north-south in the tent were for the knife chefs to sit and work. There was a stove and containers for ashes and fresh fuel. Beside the plum tree at the eastern corner of the tent, they set up another large table for additional prep work. Cooks Hyōhanki, vol. 1, p. 72. 296 “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” p. 203. 297 145 146 The most important guests at the ministerial banquet sat in the main room. The host moved between two spaces, marked here in yellow. Higher-ranking guests were seated closest to the guest of honor. I have provided the rankings and additional information to the seating chart created by Kawamoto Shigeo in Shindenzukuri no kūkan to gishiki, p. 167. Seating Chart for the Main Room working in the kitchen tent were expected to handle certain special parts of the menu: fresh fish or fowl dressed in vinegar, carp, nibe croakers 䩢 (haraka), so cheese, sweet chestnuts, pheasants presented by the hunters, jellyfish, and various simmered dishes 煮染 (nishime). Other 298 banquet dishes were prepared in the residence’s kitchen, but important dishes like the ones made with ingredients brought from the palace, or dishes that demanded some theatricality were cooked and plated in the tent. The kitchen tent was both a stage and kitchen gallery. An informed host like Yorinaga would know that the kitchen tent must be erected near the southern hall on the northernmost edge of the garden, which would allow an attentive host to observe the flow of food preparation and intervene as needed. A host would be able to hurry cooks along from one course of dishes to 299 another, or check to make sure that the correct preparations were underway. As we will see, the tent was part of banquet performance. Elite courtiers could watch as knife chefs elaborately carved up the large carp for multiple dishes. The hunters would arrive with their animals and ceremoniously present the pheasant for the feast, which would then be butchered on site and within view. The cooking tent being near the most important guests and the hosts was no accident—it was one part of the theatricality of the ministerial banquet. The presentation of ingredients (or provisioning) and their cooking was part of the show. The sake tent was another crucial hub. Inside, servers would find shelving and a big table, six jars, trays, and a lamp. And, of course, there were large black lacquer and ceramic jars of sake. There was charcoal too, perfect for warming sake on a cold night in the First Month. Shuki daiban zatsuji,” pp. 207-208. “Various Matters” shows slight variations across previously held chieftain’s 298 banquets, but these details seem to have become relatively consistent by the latter half of the twelfth century. These dishes would likely have been served in deep dishes or bowls. Yorinaga noted in his journal that the tents were erected the day before the banquet. Fujiwara no Yorinaga, Taiki, 299 Ninpei 仁平 2 (1152).1.26 (vol. 2, p. 77). 147 The clerks’ tent was huge, large enough to hold the aforementioned ten black lacquer tables, each table almost eight feet long (8 shaku, 2.38m) to seat a crowd of grateful clerks. In 300 1152 it was assembled on the island in the middle of the Higashi Sanjō pond in the southern garden, to which servants carried the tables and other pieces of furniture. The day before the banquet, Yorinaga held a decorating ceremony at the Higashi Sanjō Residence and other nobles visited to see the decor as cooks busily prepared dishes for the next day’s feast. Ordinarily, the cooking began early on the morning of the banquet, Yorinaga was concerned about the food, so he had his kitchen staff start early. This was not Yorinaga’s first 301 ministerial banquet. When he had been appointed to Palace Minister in 1136, Yorinaga had also served as host at Higashi Sanjō. Now he was chieftain of the Regental Fujiwara, he was older, and he better understood the responsibilities and tensions of his position. The importance of the banquet and its details is reflected in Taiki. For his first banquet, which was held when he was a teenager, Yorinaga briefly addressed broad strokes of the event’s procedure. Now as chieftain, he understood that his heirs would turn to his journal for guidance on how to conduct the event successfully, and he provided the rich detail needed for his sons to have magnificent careers befitting leaders of the Regental Fujiwara. Food was one key part of a magnificent career at court. The Drinking, Messengers, and Salutations On the big day, Yorinaga was up early to supervise the hustle and bustle that overtook the Higashi Sanjō Residence. Some nobles began to arrive in the late morning. Mindful of the flow of people into the residence, Yorinaga dispatched guest messengers 掌客使 (shōkyakushi) who “Shuki daikyō zatsuji,” p. 204. 300 Decorating began on the fifteenth day. The ceremony and decor details are mentioned in Taira no Nobunori, 301 Hyōhanki, Ninpei 仁平2 (1152).1.25 (vol. 1, p. 61). Yorinaga’s preparations the day before and week prior are addressed in Taiki, vol 2, pp. 76-77. 148 walked to the homes of the guests of honor to remind them of the event and then serve as an escort. A flurry of other such messengers left the Higashi Sanjō Residence. At this point, a host might decide to hold a “waiting drink” 待膏, 待油 (machi abura) during which he and early arriving nobles retired to the seats prepared for junior counselors to have a few rounds of drinking. The “waiting drink” refers to drinking sake before attending a social function. At a tenth-century gathering when officials were considering drinking customs, one remarked that “While messengers and such do their jobs, there are waiting drinks and punishment rounds 闕巡 (kechizun).” Perhaps in 1152, Yorinaga had his early, noble guests 302 served food as he did in 1155 at another banquet: three trays for himself and dishes spread across a large table for the supervisors, while major counselors and below received three trays of food with an additional table of food off to their side. After five rounds of drinking, they were served yam porridge, and the messengers returned.303 While he waited, Yorinaga would have been eagerly anticipating the messenger from the palace bearing cheese and sweet chestnuts. Such items would be served later in his banquet. He held a formal reception for this palace messenger. Yorinaga would have reminded His Majesty multiple times of the date for the ministerial banquet in the weeks and months leading up to the event. The monarch did not attend the ministerial banquet, but as representation of his royal Gōke shidai, p. 71. The waiting drink as a practice seems to have fallen out of fashion. By the early twelfth 302 century, protocol authors cited examples of cancelling the practice of having a “little drink” 小飲 (shōin) before an event. See Taira no Nobunori, Hyōhanki, Kyūju 久寿 2 (1155).1.21 (vol. 1, p. 297). There seems to have been a custom 303 of snacking and drinking while waiting for events to begin at other formal gatherings. There were also waiting foods マチザカナ (machizakana). When nobles gathered at the palace and waited near the waterfall gate 滝口 (takiguchi) and listening to the stream over the rocks, they might have received waiting foods piled up in high dishes in two rows of ten on a big table. Each courtier would have their own standing tray, like a miniature table, on which servers would place the dishes. The waiting foods at the palace consisted of three rounds of drinking and dishes. A hypothetical menu from the thirteenth century recommends jellyfish and dried abalone for the first round; sliced fish (uchimi), likely carp or sea bream served like a prototypical sashimi, crested ibis (tsuki), and whatever was seasonally delicious for the second and third. These were, of course, foods served at the palace under different ceremonial circumstances, but they give us an idea of what might have been served alongside sake when nobles waited for a ministerial banquet to begin. Sezoku ritsuyōshū, pp. 761-762. 149 person, he sent special foods. Sei Shōnagon gives the impression that the messenger bringing the sweet chestnuts was a delight for the officials who awaited him; “The Royal Secretariat brings the sweet chestnuts for the ministerial banquet and when he is feted they treat him like he is a being descended from the heavens.”304 Yorinaga rose from his seat at this important messenger’s arrival, and three other courtiers hurried to lay out the appropriate seating for the reception of Fujiwara no Noriyori 藤原憲頼, who wore green and plum red. Two lowly fifth-rankers retrieved the chestnuts and 305 306 cheese, and officials removed the lids to the chests, revealing two large jars and two small jars 307 of so cheese and eight baskets of chestnuts that had been pounded flat and sweetened with amazura syrup. Two junior attendants 小舎人 (kodoneri) piled the so cheese and sweet chestnuts on tall earthenware dishes.308 There was a sensitive timeline for all of this preparation, gatherings, and the sending of messengers. Yorinaga might have known that his father, Tadazane, had encountered problems at this phase in a ministerial banquet. In 1113, the cheese and chestnuts messenger was so late that courtiers worried over when to dispatch the messenger to the guest of honor’s home. What 309 Sei Shōnagon, Makura no sōshi, p. 113. 304 Yorinaga writes this name as both Yorinori and Noriyori. I cannot determine who he is. Hyōhanki spells his name 305 consistently as Noriyori, so I will do so here. Ordinarily the royal secretary filled this particular role, and Noriyori was not the royal secretary but a substitute. The term here is jige 地下 which refers to courtiers of high rank who did not have permission to enter His 306 Majesty’s living quarters. Taira no Nobunori, Hyōhanki, Ninpei 仁平 2 (1152).1.26 (vol. 1, p. 64). 307 Yorinaga tells us that Noriyori was technically not a royal secretary, who was typically the person to do this duty, 308 but that he could enter His Majesty’s quarters. Authors seemed to disagree over whether the messenger from the palace should be treated to a drink or food: Ōe no Masafusa wrote that there should be“no sake or food” served but The Protocol Handbook for the Royal Secretariat 侍中群要 (Jichūgun’yō) says that the messenger, should receive sake and rewards. Sei Shōnagon’s account certainly gives the impression that the messenger was treated well and likely given some sake. As the presentation of the palace foods ended, workers from the cooking station came over to take charge of it. Gōke shidai, p. 71. Jichūgun’yō, p. 278. Chūyūki, vol. 1, p. 87. 309 150 most often happened was that there were two guests of honor, but only one of them actually attended the banquet. This was the case for Yorinaga’s 1152 banquet. When the guest of honor arrived, Yorinaga went down to meet him in the garden. He was Palace Minister Fujiwara no Saneyoshi 藤原実能, the son of a wetnurse to both Horikawa and Toba. In addition to being 310 an accomplished poet and politician from an esteemed lineage, he was also married to Yorinaga’s eldest daughter, Kōshi 幸子. The guest of honor was followed by other members of the Council of State and supporting staff. Some of the men were close and longtime allies. Fujiwara no Munesuke 藤原宗輔 had worked with Yorinaga throughout his career. This “minister of bees,” famously kept bees for his cultivated chrysanthemums and peonies. Saneyoshi’s brother and son were also there. Yorinaga’s son, Moronaga, attended the banquet as a Council of State advisor. These notable guests lined up and performed salutations 拝礼 (hairei). With their respects paid to Yorinaga, the officials lined up once more and walked up the stairs to their banquet seats. Yorinaga sat down at the prince’s seat, the first of the host’s seats. The guest of honor, Saneyoshi, sat down in his place, and then everyone else sat. The preparation and prologue were over. The banquet was about to begin. The First Three Rounds of Drinking As the officials in the main room settled onto their cushions, they saw the rows of large tables. Servants had filled the room with lacquerware tables, as well as mats, cushions, and screens. Status and rank affected every part of a Heian aristocrat’s life. Dress was determined by rank, and seating was determined by rank. At a ministerial banquet the most important guests with the highest rank and position were seated at the large tables in the main room of the southern hall near the guest of honor. As the host, Yorinaga was centrally placed even when he Kugyō bunin, p. 429 and p. 435. Saneyoshi would go on to navigate the difficult political waters of the 1150s 310 with success, eventually reaching the position of minister of the right. 151 moved between the Prince’s Seat and the First Genji Seat while he oversaw the banquet. The food served at the banquet also reinforced the status hierarchy of attendees. As we will explore in this section, the menu changed based on rank. Yorinaga’s own journal shows this more clearly than any other medieval source, and “Various Matters Concerning the Chieftain’s Banquet” reflects how rank-based menus were an enduring feature. In this section, I show how rank was embodied by seating and by the food. In the first three drinking rounds, courtiers of high rank served sake to each other and began the chain of offering and passing sake that bound participants together. Yorinaga’s guest list shows that he surrounded himself with family and close allies at this sensitive political juncture of 1152. He had his sons serve sake, and he feted those he trusted. In a playful and traditional way, he also punished latecomers. He worked very hard to make sure that the banquet was worthy of him and his illustrious lineage, by its array of dishes that would satiate and delight even as it represented the natural world over which His Majesty and he, as loyal minister, ruled. So began the first round of drinking. Yorinaga moved to the so-called Genji seat on the south side of the main room, and he prepared to serve sake to the guest of honor. The workers at the sake tent were late, but they had prepared the flagons of sake and cups. Just as with Michinaga’s appointment banquet, guests drank from a single cup and passed it along to the next guest in a chain of sake-drinking. For this banquet, all twenty-nine important guests would not drink from exactly the same cup in order; Yorinaga had planned on two cups for the senior nobles and two for the secretaries with the same cups being used for the first three rounds. His 311 household manager, Sir Takachika, with tray in hand, carried the sake cup on its saucer to Yorinaga, and as Sir Tadachika stepped aside, he was replaced by Sanesada, Second Manager of This total number changes to thirty at the end of the first round, as the household manager sent a messenger to 311 fetch a late guest, who arrived and had to be seated out of order with the royal intimates. 152 the Inner Palace Guards, who carried the sake flagon made from green stoneware. After drinking, Yorinaga gave the guest of honor, Saneyoshi, a look, and Saneyoshi shuffled over to Yorinaga’s seat. From there he carried the sake cup to the senior nobles, who then drank in order of rank, with Sanesada diligently refilling the cup as it moved around the room. From his new vantage point in the Genji seat beneath the garden-side eaves, Yorinaga watched as cooks, servants, and other guests assembled in the garden. At this time, members of the royal police made their way over to seats around the sake tent, and Sir Moroyasu, Yorinaga’s household manager, entered with his team of officials to take their places in the kitchen tent. Meanwhile, in the Noble 312 Guests Cooking Station, the cooks got to work kneading rice flour dough, rolling it out, and filling it with adzuki beans. They pinched the dumplings shut, boiled them, and set about preparing the soup that would be served with them. For the second round, Yorinaga’s sons Kanenaga and Moronaga conveyed the sake cup to guests. Yorinaga acknowledged that there was a recent precedent for having royal intimates do this job, but he chose to draw on another protocol to have his close family do it instead. He wanted to showcase his sons. With the drinking completed, the konton dumplings were served in red lacquerware dishes. As noted in the previous chapter, the konton dumpling was an item to be served at particular banquets. It was not supposed to be served at an appointment banquet, such as the one hosted by Michinaga, but it was supposed to be served at the royal banquets at the palace and outside of the palace, at the New Year’s ministerial banquet. The konton dumpling was an adaptation of a continental dish that consisted of rice flour dough wrapped around a Taiki, vol. 2, pp. 80-81. 312 153 filling and boiled. In the tenth century, palace cooks filled the dumplings with meat. But, by 313 the twelfth century, konton dumplings were being made with beans. Servers 陪膳 (baizen) were courtiers chosen to properly serve certain dishes. Cooks working in the Noble Guests Cooking Station plated the dumplings and placed them on fleets of trays, which were transported by other servants called carriers 役送 (yakusō). The servers placed the dumplings before Yorinaga and Saneyoshi, and then, in a bit of dinner theater, poured the soup on the dumplings table-side. (Other guests would be served their dumplings with the soup already in the bowl.) In his journal, Yorinaga painstakingly documented the names of every 314 server and the ranks of the carriers who participated in the whirl of dumpling delivery: the Governor of Hyūga Sir Arisada 有成 was Yorinaga’s server, and Classics Professor Fujiwara no Mochiakira 藤原茂明 was the server for Saneyoshi, just to name two. Many of the carriers were of the modest fifth rank. Even once guests were served, it would have been terribly improper for anyone to begin eating. Left Major Controller Fujiwara no Sukenobu picked up his baton and turned to the guest of honor, who then turned to Yorinaga. With all eyes on him, Yorinaga picked up his chopsticks and began to dine, with everyone starting at the same time. As his guests were eating, Yorinaga looked behind him at the kitchen tent and realized that the large carp, one of the centerpieces of a future course, was not being dismantled or cut up. One of the knife chefs, an unfortunate Yukisuke, had not yet arrived on site, and Yorinaga had a messenger sent to fetch him.315 See Wamyōruijushō Database, “Konton.” 313 Taiki, vol. 2, p. 81. 314 Taiki, vol. 2, p. 82. 315 154 The third round saw Yorinaga’s brother-in-law, Lord Fujiwara no Kin’yoshi, carrying 316 the cup, as did Lord Fujiwara no Norinaga. There might also have been a “punishment round,” 317 which refers to forcing a late guest to drink additional sake that they had missed. Officials 318 might have deliberated on whether a late guest should or should not have to do a punishment round, as happened in 973. The Ōe House Procedures provides an example of a tardy Council 319 of State advisor who arrived at the end of a banquet’s fourth round, and when he sat down, a sake cup was brought over, and people counted out the number of times he had to drink for his punishment round. The concept was not unfamiliar to Yorinaga; following Council of State discussions 官政 (kansei) in 1147, he held a gathering with food and drink. Yorinaga decided that they would do punishment rounds following the late arrival of a few officials during the fourth round, after food had already been served. One of them had to drink four rounds because he had not attended the first three, and others only did one round. Yorinaga confessed in his journal that he did not know the protocol for this— it seems to have been a rather informal practice. A lack of protocol knowledge did not stop Yorinaga from doing punishment rounds at 320 his Ministerial Banquet of 1152, when a major controller arrived late and had to drink two rounds of sake to make up for his tardiness.321 He was the son of the guest of honor, Saneyoshi. 316 Norinaga would go on to be one of Yorinaga’s allies in the Hōgen Rebellion of 1156. 317 This is called basshu 罰酒 in Heian records. This term could refer to a punishment drink for latecomers as well as 318 the act of forcing the loser of an archery contest to drink sake. Saikyūki, p. 670-671. 319 See Fujiwara no Yorinaga, Taiki, Kyūan 久安 3 (1147). 10.2 (vol. 2, p. 221). 320 Hyōhanki, vol. 1, p. 70. I cannot say I blame Yorinaga—Tomotaka arrived during the fifth round of the banquet. 321 He was made to drink twice because of his lateness. 155 When the drinking was completed, the cups and flagons were put away, and the workers in the sake tent departed, as did the royal police who had been dining there. The end of the third round marked the end of relatively formal drinking using ceremonial ceramics and lacquerware. Why was there such a shift during the third round of drinking? Kumakura Isao proposes that certain Japanese banquets drew on a three-part protocol established during the Tang dynasty, as described in Rites of the Kaiyuan Era of the eighth century. Kumakura proposes that the third round transitioned into dining, although remaining rounds included both drinking and feasting, followed by the relaxed feast. Rites of the Kaiyuan Era prescribed three parts of a banquet: the ceremonial drinking 酒礼 (shurei), banquet meals 饗膳 (kyōzen), and drinking feast 酒宴 (shuen). In sources like Illustrations of Various Important Matters, the diagrams of trays might 322 lead to the interpretation that the large array of dishes that make up the main meal are served at the beginning of the banquet, right after the salutations. Yorinaga makes it crystal clear, however, that the main meal was served during the third course. His father, Tadazane, did the same thing 323 at his Ministerial Banquet of 1107. And according to his own journal, Yorinaga studied an 324 early ministerial banquet of Michinaga when considering logistics and the flow of events in the third round of drinking. Michinaga too, had noted this flow: “In the second round, the konton dumplings. The clerks were called for. In the third round, the meal and soups were served, and at this time, the falconer crossed over” the garden.325 See Kumakura, “Nihon ryōri ni okeru kondate no keison.” These are not precise adaptations, as Kumakura 322 acknowledges. Many banquets changed the order of things like musical performances or had dishes served earlier than the fourth round of the banquet. Kumakura’s point about the banquet structure is a good one, but I believe that closely analyzing ministerial banquets more clearly supports his thesis than moving between diverse banquet examples like the royal banquets. So, I am providing some more supporting evidence here. For the main banquet service, see Taiki, vol. 2, p. 84. 323 324 See Fujiwara no Tadazane, Denryaku, Kajō 嘉承 2 (1107).1.19 (vol. 2, p. 172). The phrase han o sū 飯を居う refers to dishes being served, not rice specifically. See Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, Kankō 寛弘 5 (1004).1.25 (vol. 1, p. 249). 325 156 At this point, we turn our attention to the veritable fleet of trays filled with lacquerware dishes of seafood, fruits, confections, and more, as carriers brought the main meal. Intimates of His Majesty rose to the occasion, to serve as carriers. Each tray held three or four dishes. 326 Dinner is Served in the Third Round Yorinaga’s banquet dishes changed depending on the rank of the guest, and through his detailed menus, we can get a sense of how the menu shifted depending on status, which foods were most prized, and how palace foods reaffirmed the hierarchy. This banquet meal of the third round was the main course of food a guest would receive that evening. Then, during later rounds of drinking, guests received a pre-determined menu of other special dishes at specific points in time. Following the formal banquet meal and more sake-drinking, the elite members of the Council of State would move from their seats to the southern veranda to participate in more rounds of drinking and a food service called the relaxed feast. What did Yorinaga’s guests eat? The most elaborate meal was served to the guests of honor, Palace Minister Fujiwara no Saneyoshi, and the Minister of the Right, Minamoto no Masasada 源雅定. The latter was absent due to illness, but food was served even to guests of honor who did not attend. This confirms that one of the important aspects of banqueting was the presentation of food itself. These dishes for the absent guest would go untouched during the banquet, and then they would be taken away to be eaten by servants or lower level officials. This presentation of food that would go uneaten during the banquet was a sign of the host’s wealth and economic power; a regental Fujiwara chieftain could afford to serve food to a guest who was not even present to eat it. This service to the absent guest might also have been a sign of respect. More details on the proper delivery of the dishes and how many dishes were to be placed on each tray according 326 to the diner’s menu, are recorded in Taiki, vol. 2, pp. 84-85. 157 And of course, this food service for an absent diner echoed the similar service for the absent monarch in the palace for the Afternoon Meal. A guest of honor’s banquet course was extravagant. It consisted of twenty-nine different items, from confections to condiments. At Yorinaga’s banquet, the guest of honor was served four Tang confections: fried strips, cinnamon treats, fried wheat gluten, and grilled crackers. Since Tang confections were recipes adapted from continental banquet culture and required specialized culinary work, Yorinaga’s kitchen staff did not prepare them. Instead they were ordered from the Palace Storehouse Bureau 内蔵寮 (Kuraryō), who likely asked the Royal Meal Office cooks to make them. On another dish were crunchy mountain pears, unpeeled, followed 327 by dishes of “dried sweets,” such as nuts or persimmons, pomegranates, and small mandarin oranges. Saneyoshi and the absent Masasada were served bowls of carefully arranged meat and fish: pheasant, with cuts of meat arranged around the center of the bird; as well as crucian carp, trout, and sea bream served in a similar manner. The bowls full of meat and fish were placed on gleaming mirror leaves and topped with spider lilies. There was pheasant, jellyfish, and sea 328 squirts. Saneyoshi was treated not just to the sensory experience of a meal with an array of flavors and textures, but to a display of culinary abundance over the two large lacquer tables in front of him. The abundance continued with abalone, sazae sea snails, surf clams, and sea urchins carefully arranged in their shells. There were kisago sea snails, goose barnacles, and fat innkeeper worms, all served again on the mirror leaves with flowers and the shells from which the snails and barnacles came. The bounty of the sea was on display in a manner reminiscent of See Taiki, vol. 2, p. 93. 327 These are the flowers or foliage of Crinum asiaticum var. japonicum or hamayū 浜木綿. These flowers are not 328 edible, so they would have been purely decorative. 158 the re-creations of the natural world seen in the artificial landscapes of the suhama miniatures so beloved in this period. In this way, the plating showed the ability to procure this bounty and to present it artfully for dining. The guest of honor was the only guest to receive all of the four condiments: salt, vinegar, sake, and hishio. Others would not receive their own personal cup of sake. Of course there was a bowl of rice. The guest of honor was also served tea, which is surprising in this period. Yorinaga must have been an early adapter of the drink for other than medical treatment—I have not seen tea on an earlier banquet menu. The record shows that Yorinaga ordered spoons and chopsticks from the Craftsmen Bureau 内匠寮 (Takumiryō) and paid for them. Perhaps such utensils were special, another connection to the palace. 329 330 Given that Yorinaga was the host and this gathering was a celebration of his successful— although no doubt controversial—ascent to Fujiwara leadership, it would be natural to assume that Yorinaga would be served the most elaborate menu. But, this was not the case. The banquet host occupied a unique position with unique responsibilities. As the host, Yorinaga was busy overseeing all the moving parts of a long event; he would not have the same time or attention as other guests to tuck into a long and elaborate meal. Furthermore, the host moved between different seats and locations throughout the banquet from which he determined the pulse and flow of the drinking and eating. He was constantly granting permission for different courtiers and servants to fulfill their determined roles. It was the host’s largesse that provided for the banquet, and the active role that the host took emphasized this. Yorinaga did not record what he ate. This might seem odd. But as anyone who has ever hosted a complex affair knows, when you are busy focusing on others and working to make sure that an event goes smoothly, what you eat barely Taiki, vol 2. p. 93. 329 330 Ruijū zatsuyōshō notes that the chopsticks and spoons should come from the Craftsmen Bureau. See Ruijū zatsuyōshō, p. 524. 159 registers. We do know what his older brother Tadamichi ate at his ministerial banquet thanks to diagrams in Illustrations of Various Important Matters. At his own personal table, he was served dried strips of fish, dried fowl, dried jujubes, two types of pears (peeled), jellyfish, hermit crab, pheasant, carp, soybean and wakame seaweed mixture, and vinegar and salt as condiments.331 The host’s meal seems to have been an abbreviated version of the banquet meal. In fact, as we move down the hierarchy of important guests, it is clear that abbreviation of the guest of honor’s meal is the primary theme. Senior nobles received only two confections, fried strips and cinnamon treats, with a smaller array of fruits and nuts. They did not receive trout, as the guest of honor did, nor oysters, hardy kiwis, or surf clams. By receiving less, their status below the guest of honor was made clear. Another way this hierarchy was made visible was the manner in which they dined. The senior nobles were not seated at individual tables like the guest of honor. They shared a large table space. For the Ministerial Banquet of 1152, Yorinaga had two rows of six large tables set up. On those two rows there would have been an 332 assortment of dishes, including the rice, condiments, and deep-dish items. In the middles of the two-person tables would have been items to be shared, such as carp, sea bream and other seafood dishes, pheasant, dried items, fruits and nuts, and confections. Other ministerial banquets, like Ruijū zatsuyōshō, p. 522. For analysis of the food in this particular text for a ministerial banquets, see Harada, 331 ‘Kyōshoku’ no shakaishi, pp. 201-211; and Koizumi, “‘Ruijū zatsuyōshō’ to ‘Ruijū zatsuyōshō sashizukan’ ni miru Heian kizoku no enkaiyō inshoku, kuzengu.” It is worth noting that Harada’s analysis contains some inaccuracies. Because his document analysis is limited to Ruijū zatsuyōshō, he can argue that commonality in the menu is a key feature of the ministerial banquet. Harada, ‘Kyōshoku’ no shakaishi, p. 210. But Ruijū zatsuyōshō only addresses certain diners, mostly the highest ranking ones, and is not as comprehensive for menu changing according to rank as Taiki. As I will show, Taiki shows variation in the menu according to rank, especially once we go beyond the senior nobles and guest of honor. On a more granular note, grilled octopus and steamed abalone are, in fact, dried foods, not grilled or steamed fresh ones as his reading here implies. This is explained in Chūjiruiki, p. 747. Yorinaga lists eleven tables for the senior nobles of the Council of the State, with one more table tacked onto this 332 group for non-Council of State officials and major controllers. Taiki, vol. 2, p. 93. 160 the one pictured in Illustrations of Various Important Matters, have the dishes for two senior noble diners arrayed across three tables.333 See Taiki, vol. 2, p. 93. and Ruijū zatsuyōshō, p. 523. Curiously, Yorinaga says that there were eleven tables for 333 Council of State. Both the guest of honor and the Council of State ate off of fewer table tables than was the case for Tadamichi. 161 The banquet meal table map for Tadamichi’s guest of honor in Illustrations of Various Important Matters. Emily Warren, 2023. 162 The table map for two members of the Council of State over three tables provided in Illustrations of Various Important Matters. I have noted the culinary categories of different items: deep-dish items are marked in pink, dried items in purple, condiments in orange, fresh items in green, fruits in pale blue, and Tang confections in dark blue. Kyoto University, Main Library. This sharing of table space and food might have served two functions. First, many nobles would have regularly dined from personal standing trays, akin to small tables, in their own quarters. Dining together in such a setting would have encouraged interaction. Communal eating would have prompted conversation and negotiation of who would eat what and when. This was a place where relationships could be formed and fed. Communal dining fostered community. And as Harada Nobuo has argued, the eating of the same foods, granted by the same host, reaffirms group relationships.334 At the same time, sharing food or different menu items according to rank may have felt less restrictive because the host himself went without. Perhaps by restricting the food given to the host, who was often the person of highest status, the banquet format made having less to eat or choose from more acceptable. Despite his high rank, the host did not dine like the guest of honor, even if it was through his authority and the permission of the monarch that he provided lavish fare to his guests according to their courtly status. Next in status among Yorinaga’s diners were the major controllers and those who were not members of the Council of State. Their banquet meals were further abbreviations of that for senior nobles. They received two confections; only two fruits (pears and dried jujubes); but also the same freshly prepared dishes of pheasant, carp, and sea bream; abalone, sazae sea snails, sea urchin, kisago sea snails, hermit crab, mussels, and the same deep-dish items as their superiors. But given that these men were seated right beside the senior nobles of the Council of State, they would have clearly seen the differences in menu between those of higher status and their own dishes. The changes in menu continued with the controllers and junior counselors seated along the western walkway. They were seated perpendicular to the senior nobles and faced the guest of Harada, ‘Kyōshoku’ no shakaishi, p. 214. 334 163 164 The secretaries were the lowest of the important guests, and two rows of secretaries ate off of the shared table pictured above. Illustrations of Various Important Matters shows that they were sharing dishes of fruits and confections. Kyoto University, Main Library. A junior counselor dined off his own table, which is pictured above from Illustrations of Various Important Matters. The junior’s counselor’s banquet meal was more modest than that of his superiors. I believe that there is a mistake here; the trout should be pheasant or possibly sea bream. Kyoto University, Main Library. honor at the other side of the room. Instead of mussels and hermit crab, this group received spider crab and two obscure seafood dishes—possibly a snail and something called “buddha’s teeth” 佛牙 (butsuge). They also received condiments and tea.335 Another group of particular concern to Yorinaga were the Council of State secretaries (geki), seated in the neighboring room beyond the junior counselor’s tables. These low-ranking officials, who essentially kept government going, received the minimalist version of the menu: two confections, pears, small mandarin oranges, pheasant, carp, abalone, fowl innards, tea, salt, and vinegar. Detailed menus similar to Yorinaga’s can be found in other sources like From Two Almanacs 二中歴 (Nitchūreki), and they show varying dishes according to rank. The author of this Kamakura text reserved fried wheat gluten, hardy kiwis, trout, surf clam, squid, and one unidentified item, possibly sliced innards, for the guest of honor. Additional menus are broken down and divided into the following groups: counselors, controllers and junior counselors, secretaries, and clerks. Much of the menus From Two Almanacs echoes what we see in Yorinaga’s menus and those in Illustrations of Various Important Matters.336 Despite the variations in menu according to rank, we should not lose sight of the dishes enjoyed by all. Important guests were all served pheasant and carp, which created a sense of community and commonality, even across ranks. As for the Tang confections, all important guests were served fried strips and cinnamon treats. Pears too were for everyone; they might have been dried or simply survived the cold months of winter in storage if they came from a late Taiki, vol. 2, p. 94. 335 Nitchūreki, Part 8, pp. 15-17. 336 165 harvest. All important guests received deep-dish items, likely jellyfish, and fowl innards which would have come from pheasants slaughtered for the event. It is worth noting that this main course did not include soups. Side dishes and soups were, ideally, to be served at different times in the third round. Both Michinaga’s and Yorinaga’s accounts reveal that soups were conceived of separately from other dishes in the banquet service.337 The banquet meal course was the second opportunity for the host to use protocol to build community and reaffirm rank through a delicate balance of both common dishes eaten by all important guests, as well as dishes reserved for diners of higher status. The guest of honor had the most elaborate spread by far, and he ate dishes that no one else received. At the same time, we must be aware that merely having many dishes was not simply a recognition of the high position of the guest of honor. Rather, what was most important was the ability of the host to procure the bounty that was being displayed. The ministerial banquet is a performance of procurement and preparation, as well as a gathering for eating. If a guest of honor was unable to attend, as happened for Yorinaga’s banquet, the host served them food in their absence. Demonstrations of plenty for the guests, even absent ones, were the key feature of the Heian banquet. And as the guests dined on the main dishes of the third round, the preparation for still more dishes was underway. Musicians boarded a boat that floated out into the pond, and strands of music drifted over the water. See the aforementioned entry in Fujiwara no Michinaga, Midō kanpakuki, vol. 1, p. 249; and Fujiwara no 337 Yorinaga, Taiki, vol. 2, p. 84. 166 167 The host’s table map in Scroll Four of Illustrations of Various Important Matters manuscript owned by Kyoto University. Kyoto University, Main Library. Calling Clerks and the Hunters The third round of drinking not only included the main course of the banquet, but also some of the more theatrical entertainments of the event. As the guest of honor was just finishing eating, it was suggested to him that it was time to ‘call the clerks.’ At this, Saneyoshi put down his chopsticks and took up his baton, walking over to Yorinaga to ask his permission. Yorinaga put down his chopsticks, lifted his baton, and consented. Saneyoshi turned to Middle Controller Sukenaga and indicated assent. Sukenaga bowed and called out for a secretary. The secretary answered, put down his chopsticks, picked up his baton, and proceeded to kneel behind Sukenaga. Sukenaga told him to call the clerks, and then returned to his seat. A chain of officials vocalized and arranged themselves, calling for the clerks. These clerks were apprentice bureaucrats, unranked, and did the grunt office work of the government overseen by the Council of State. Summoned, they lined up in the garden and presented themselves to the host, the guest of honor, and other important guests. With that presentation done, Yorinaga gave a sign, and the clerks proceeded to the pond. Crossing a bridge, they entered the large tent prepared for their feast and were served sake. As the important guests in the main hall continued their meal, the clerks enjoyed theirs. They enjoyed a more humble feast, but still a relatively complex one: mochi, fried mochi (uto), large and small mandarins, persimmons, salt-pressed sweetfish, dried sea bream, dried salmon, pheasant, carp, another (unidentifiable) fish, sweetfish, abalone, fowl innards, and jellyfish. They also received two condiments—salt and vinegar—as well as rice and soup. This is similar to 338 the clerks’ menu provided in From Two Almanacs, modified by the addition of magari dough twists, a Tang confection; and konton dumplings. From Two Almanacs also specifies that the Taiki, vol. 2, p. 94. 338 168 clerks received the special dishes that more important guests would expect in the rounds of drinking to come: namasu, or fish with vinegar, hot pheasant soup, a trout soup, tsutsumiyaki grilled pheasant, cheese, and sweet chestnuts. So there is a good possibility that Yorinaga’s 339 guest clerks were served these items too. This calling of the clerks served several functions. The clerks were of relatively low status, and by being feted by the host, they were being rewarded for their hard work. They lined up and presented themselves, and it would have been clear that while lowly, they served the Council of State and the monarch. As we have seen, the ministerial banquet was not simply a celebration of the host’s position. It was also an event for community-building. By eating and dining together at the Higashi Sanjō Residence, the sense of communally working for the Council of State was strengthened. While everyone was sorted by rank, even the clerks ate the same konton dumplings, pheasant, soups, cheese, and chestnuts. Controllers from the main room of the residence came down to serve sake to the clerks, just as other important guests took turns serving sake to each other. This sense of shared service, from the clerks up to the host was an important feature of the ministerial banquet. If calling the clerks emphasized the shared service of all, the theatrical appearance of the hunters reinforced the provisioning role of the host. Pheasant was an important dish for this banquet. In recognition of the pheasant’s prominence, hunters visited the banquet and presented themselves before the guests of the main room. Yorinaga watched as a falconer entered the garden, followed by a houndsman with a hunting dog. The attending falconer was an inner palace guard, Shimotsukeno no Atsukata 下毛野敦方. Over his shoulder, Atsukata carried branches 340 Nitchūreki, Part 8, p. 17. 339 Alas, we do not have the name of the houndsman, who would have been of lower status. 340 169 to which were tied pheasants. Striding across the garden, Atsukata paused and sent his falcon from his arm. Bells—provided by the host in advance—were tied around the falcon’s leg and tinkled as it flew. The nobles watched the little show, and the falcon returned to Atsukata’s arm. He walked over to the kitchen tent where the pheasants were hung up in a visible corner. He then sat down at a prepared seat, and the houndsman sat down behind him. Atsukata was served sake, and when he was done drinking, he passed the earthenware cup over his shoulder to the houndsman seated behind him. An official filled the cup, the houndsman drank, and when the houndsman was done, he tossed the cup over his shoulder, breaking it. When they were done, they received their gifts of cloth and departed. Here Yorinaga was carrying on a custom said to go back to Kaneie in the tenth century. As Nakazawa Katsuaki has observed, the pheasant was a main dish with a tradition of the Regental Fujiwara serving it. Only a few years before Yorinaga held his chieftain’s banquet, 341 his father, Tadazane, reflected on memorable appearances of the hunters at ministerial banquets: “When the banquet was held at the main room of the residence, the falconer was a sight to be seen. He sent his falcon flying twice. The first time was when he enters through the Main Gate, sending it aloft, and one could hear the bells. After that, he crossed the southern garden, and seating was put out for him. After he drank sake, he stood up and when he walked across the garden, the falcon flew again. “The falconer was sent to go hunting in the eastern mountains when the banquet was held at Hōkōin. They could see him hunting from the grounds of the residence. I think it was in this ceremony, during the Kayanoin banquet in the Chōgen era [in 1033], that they sent the falcon 342 flying out from a hole above the garden’s waterfall.343 The Kayanoin mansion was famous for its expansive garden, and it seems that the host in 1033 wished to impress his guests with an appearance of the hunters at his family’s large Nakazawa, Nikujiki no shakaishi, pp. 102-106. 341 This refers to a banquet held by Viceroy Fujiwara no Yorimichi. 342 Nakahara Moromoto, Chūgaishō, p. 352. This is in the second scroll, forty-seventh clause of the text. 343 170 property. Sending a falcon suddenly flying from an artificial waterfall would have been dramatic. It was a spectacle. As Nakazawa says, we should see the appearance of the hunters as “a ceremonial performance of hunting.” But, make no mistake—the appearance of the hunters 344 was a theatrical performance. The pheasants slung over the falconer’s shoulder that were then hung in the kitchen tent could not have fed the dozens of important guests, much less so the hundreds of tertiary guests. The hunter with his falcon was not so much a practical part of the banquet as a dramatic reminder of the host’s largesse in providing the banquet. This particular form of largesse, however, was not without its complications. By Yorinaga’s era in the twelfth century, falconry was no longer a simple past time for Heian elites. It was an act that had moral implications. Falcons were used for hunting, and they were kept and rewarded with meat, which required the taking of life in opposition to Buddhist teachings. In his later years, Tadazane supposedly reflected on his pet falcon and the sport beloved by so many of his peers: In recent days, hunting with small falcons is popular. I well recall how fun it was when I was a boy. When I was about thirteen or fourteen, I loved falconry. Taking my falcon in hand, I would go down to play… When it saw a bird once, it flew all the way up to two black kites and flew alongside them before flying back down to land on my hat. I remember those days with such fondness. After that, a lady-in-waiting read to me the story of the senior counselor, and I learned that people who love falcons are reborn as pheasants. So, I became afraid of falcons and the 345 next morning when I awakened, I joined everyone in releasing falcons. After that I did not enjoy them anymore.346 In this passage, Tadazane explains that although he enjoyed falconry, the possibility of being reborn as a pheasant and empathy for the creature he had hunted prompted him to stop Nakazawa, Nikujiki no shakaishi, p. 106. 344 This premise of falconers being reborn as pheasants appears in Konjaku monogatari shū 19:8 (vol. 4 pp. 345 133-136). Nakahara Moromoto, Chūgaishō, pp. 339-340. 346 171 engaging in falconry. And yet, aristocrats continued to eat the spoils of that falconry. In fact, the record does not indicate engagement with the ethical implications of eating pheasant during a ministerial banquet. As noted earlier, in the tenth century the banquet was originally held in the early days of the First Month, but it was moved to later in the First Month to avoid any pollution from meat-eating that would interfere with New Year’s rituals. If the banquet had not featured the eating of meat and so many different foods so prominently, it might have been possible to change the menu. However, given that the provisioning of pheasants and fish were important features, the date was changed rather than the menu. This adjustment of the date, however, speaks more to concerns around blood pollution, which is different from Tadazane’s worries about the killing of sentient beings and rebirth as a pheasant, which are fundamentally Buddhist ideas. If the practice was so immoral, why did they serve pheasant? And why feature the hunters? Scholars have proposed that over the course of the medieval age, elites were able to separate the act of meat-eating from that of hunting. The bad act was the taking of sentient life, 347 not necessarily the consumption of the product of that action. Hunters, fishermen, and others that provided meat and fish bore the brunt of Buddhist moralizing, even while elites consumed the result of their labors. As for the hunters, they represented the role of the host as grand provisioner, one who served fruits from the waters, like the large carp, as well as the pheasant hunted in the mountains. These foods in the menu refer to parts of the realm under the control of the hosting minister. With the pheasant having been provided, Yorinaga went to watch a pair of carvers in the kitchen tent butcher the birds. Before the hunters arrived, Yorinaga had been calling for the knife The topic of meat sourcing and consumption and the ethical dimensions of such in premodern Japan are 347 addressed in Nakazawa, Nikujiki no shakaishi; Harada, Rekishi no naka no kome to niku; and Karikome, Sesshō to ōjō no aida: chūsei bukkyō to minshū no seikatsu. 172 chef Minamoto no Yukisuke, who also served as an inner palace guard and had served at a banquet in 1151. There were other knife chefs working, but Yorinaga made special mention of 348 Yukisuke: “Many nobles bemoan the difficulty of the work. If you just watch Yukisuke’s intricate motions, you will soon forget [the difficulty of it.]” At the chieftain’s banquet, Yukisuke first 349 filleted the large carp, which would be broken down, dressed with vinegar, or used for grilling and chilled carp soup. Then once Yukisuke received the pheasants, he butchered those for cooking. Again, observing the food preparations appears as a part of the banquet experience, 350 just as for us today on occasion. As Yukisuke and his fellow knife chefs worked, music continued and dancers performed as well.351 Cooks prepared the birds in four different ways, for the third, fourth, and fifth rounds. Meat from the bird was sliced up and possibly served raw or grilled with vinegar; the innards were treated with salt and fermented; other meat and bones were made into soup; and the legs were wrapped and cooked over embers. The sliced pheasant that would be considered “fresh” and the fermented innards were served during the third round. The order of these pheasant dishes reflects preparations following the hunters’ delivery, although no doubt much preparation and cooking had been done before the hunters arrived. The first pheasant dishes of the third round were served alongside a bowl of chilled carp soup—one assumes it came from the large carp that had been on display in the kitchen tent. Given that much of the food must have been prepared Taiki, vol. 2, p. 63. 348 Minamoto no Yukisuke appears as a knife chef first at a banquet held for Minister Fujiwara no Saneyoshi. See 349 Fujiwara no Yorinaga, Taiki, Kyūan 久安 7 (1151).1.26 (vol. 2, p. 63) for Yorinaga’s praises. Fujiwara no Yorinaga, Taiki, vol. 2, p. 82. 350 Taira no Nobunori, Hyōhanki, vol. 1, p.68. 351 173 prior to the hunter’s arrival, it also casts Yukisuke’s work in a new light; he was there to perform his “intricate motions” to delight important guests.352 To conclude, during the third round, a number of important culinary and performative elements of a ministerial banquet appeared. In particular, the generosity of the host was on full display. The clerks arrived at his calling and ordered themselves in the garden before being sent to dine in their own special tent with their own special menu. This moment at the banquet built community between some of the lowliest workers connected with the Council of State and the very highest officials. Following the clerks, the hunters arrived to perform the provisioning of the pheasants that guests would then consume. And after the pheasant was butchered and the music ended, everyone was served the large variety of eagerly expected dishes. The menu for each guest was determined by their ranks and posts. At the same time, the common experience of dining together, watching the hunters’ performance, and listening to the music created a sense of community across ranks. Four More Rounds of Drinking As the complex third round ended, Yorinaga probably breathed a sigh of relief. The Noble Guests Cooking Station took over the sake service, and Yorinaga tended to drinking and making sure that the cup—now made of earthenware—went around the room appropriately. He also drank more himself. As the nobles drank, the cooks completed the hot pheasant soup, plated 353 it, and served it to those of the rank of controller and above. As before, everyone began to eat at Yorinaga uses the term myōbu 妙舞 to refer to Yukisuke’s butchering and carving, which is more often used in 352 the context of dancing. See the note, Taira no Nobunori, Hyōhanki, vol. 1, 68. 353 174 the same time. Then they were served a mixture of soybeans and wakame seaweed, as well as a dish of salt. Watching for the cues, everyone ate this next dish together. 354 It was in the fifth round that the tsutsumiyaki pheasant was served. This cut of roasted 355 meat might have required more time to prepare than the sliced pheasant served in the third round or the pheasant soup of the fourth round. And it might have taken a bit more time to eat too. Amidst all the logistics, it is easy to forget that the banquet was a critical opportunity for the courtiers to demonstrate their command of proper etiquette. At a banquet held for Saneyoshi the year before, participants asked Yorinaga to describe the proper way to eat pheasant legs. They gathered around his table watching, and Yorinaga first pulled off meat from the thigh joint with his chopsticks, then folded the piece of meat over itself and ate it in a single bite. Given that diarists often commented on failures of etiquette, we can assume that these banquets were highpressure spaces with many opportunities for humiliation. Banquets were also spaces for courtiers to learn, be seen, and show off their knowledge.356 In the Collection of Lessons for the Young 古今著聞集 (Kokon chomonjū) of 1254, Tachibana no Narisue wrote about Fujiwara no Sanesada hosting a banquet. After a number of 357 drinking rounds, knife chef Yukisue cut up the carp, and Fujiwara no Tsunemune called him over. “You know how to prepare the carp, but you do not know how to eat it? How about I show you?” Then, he did so and everyone was happy and paid close attention. So Yorinaga’s 358 See Taiki, vol. 2, p. 85 and Hyōhanki, vol. 1, pp. 68-69. 354 This was also served with a soybean and wakame mixture, as well as a dish of salt. There is a good chance that 355 the mixture and salt were condiments for the pheasant. Taiki, vol. 2, p. 86. This episode does not appear in Taiki, but in Kojidanshō. Kojidanshō zenshaku, pp. 104-109. Nakazawa, Nikujiki 356 no shakaishi, pp. 106-107. Of course, there is another interpretation here: the more critical possibility might be that Yorinaga was being put on the spot and tested before his peers. Also called Tokudaiji Sanesada 徳大寺実定 (1139-1992). 357 Kokon chomonjū, vol. 2, p. 211. This is story 632. 358 175 demonstration of proper eating does not seem to have been an uncommon occurrence. Throughout the banquet, more senior and experienced courtiers could instruct their juniors on etiquette. In the fifth round, the kitchen tent staff finished a series of dishes to serve to the guests. These were foods from the palace as well as grilled carp. Cooks pierced the carp with sticks and grilled it. Important guests received the palace dishes—so cheese and sweet chestnuts—brought by royal messenger earlier in the day. Diners also received a fish called hara aka 腹赤, which could be either a nibe croaker or a trout. It was a special fish shipped in from Kyushu that was served at the palace. Carp with vinegar, salt, and a spicy namasu were served as well. Such dishes were restricted—secretaries sitting in the main room would not expect to receive them. It is during the sixth and seventh rounds that various middling and lower level officials were rewarded. Minor counselors and controllers drank twice as much as usual, as a reward; and Yorinaga began the ceremonial calling for gifts for attendees. As Kurahayashi has proposed, this giving of additional sake and the presentation of gifts was a way to connect the host with all guests in the banquet, not just the most elite. As the seventh round began, the clerks returned 359 to the south garden and lined up, saying their names. Officials presented them with cloth, and they departed. Yorinaga would have given the sign, and dishes would have been cleared away. 360 Leftovers were carried off to be eaten by servants and lower level officials. While the clerks were receiving their gifts, officials hurried to set out cushions and furniture on the veranda. Once the clerks were gone and the phase of gift-giving completed, Yorinaga picked up his baton and was Kurahayashi, Kyōen no kenkyū, vol. 1, p. 502. 359 Taiki, vol. 2, pp. 87-88. 360 176 followed by other senior nobles out onto the veranda where seats had been laid out for him and the most important guests. Then the relaxed feast began. The relaxed feast was the final phase of the banquet, intimate and less formal. Foods for it were provided by noble supporters. In 1152 Yorinaga’s friend, Minister of Popular Affairs Fujiwara no Munesuke, sent the foods. Munesuke had his staff make enough for all the senior nobles with amounts suitable to their rank. There were three stands for each of the ministers, each one full of tall dishes that had their own little stands. One stand held dried fruits and nuts, another held “fresh” fish and meat with a side of salt, and the third held condiments. Counselors received only two stands—one of dried fruits and nuts, and the other, condiments and fish fermented in salt. They were served when Yorinaga gave the signal to Governor of Hyūga Sir Arisada who, flanked by three carriers of fifth rank, moved to serve Yorinaga. After the host had his food before him, Sir Mochiakira served the guest of honor. The counselors were served their relaxed feast by different, lower ranking men. As they settled in, performers approached and sat nearby, where they were served little square stands of food too. This was the established 361 procedure in which relaxed feasts continued to be conducted into the thirteenth century. 362 At Yorinaga’s Ministerial Banquet of 1152, Middle Counselor Suenari rose from his seat, and after prostrating himself to Yorinaga, left the group to tend to the sake. Yorinaga wondered about Munesuke’s having provided the sake, making a note to himself to ask for more details as to the provisioning. Suenari was joined by Fujiwara no Korekata of the Office Overseeing Provincial Governors, who carried the sake flagon. Yorinaga drank first, holding the earthenware sake cup, and when he finished drinking, he placed it on its saucer. Around and around the cup Taiki, vol. 2, p. 88. 361 362 See Watanabe, “Daijin daikyō to daijōkan.” 177 went among the high nobles. After a first round, servers came out with a big earthenware bowl of sweet yam porridge. From the big bowl, individual servings were dished out. Yorinaga was pleased. As for the flavor, he wrote that the porridge was “so delicious.” He noted that the ministers took their dishes in hand and ate it with chopsticks. I imagine that they lifted the bowls to their mouths and used the chopsticks to scoop the porridge into their mouths. Alongside the bowls of yam porridge, they received grilled fish. When they finished, “entirely eating” the food, carriers took up the empty stands of food and departed.363 Yorinaga watched as servants set up the instruments for a musical performance: lute, flute, zither, and clappers. He listened as the music flowed, and when the songs ended, likely celebratory songs performed at many elite banquets over the course of his life, he oversaw the proffering of gifts to his guests. Bolts of fine cloth for the many officials he would work with, directly or indirectly, as well as gifts for the actions undertaken for the banquet. The higher one’s rank, the later that individual received his gift. The guest of honor was given white and red cloth, as well as two horses, one with a chestnut coat and the other with a coat like a deer. Carefully chosen horses were a typical, magnificent gift for the guest of honor.364 The banquet ended a little earlier than usual—Yorinaga was not the only person to notice the timing. Taira no Nobunori recorded that counselors departed around four in the afternoon; Yorinaga put the end time around five. In Tadahira’s time in the early tenth century, his 365 ministerial banquet had ended during the Hour of the Rooster, from five to seven in the evening. This timing affected who was holding torches and the lanterns needed. Yorinaga rewarded the Taiki, vol. 2, p. 89. 363 364 For more on gifts in a ministerial banquet, see Yamashita, “Daijin daikyō kangen.” Taiki, vol. 2, p. 90. Hyōhanki, vol. 1, p. 72. 365 178 people for those services, even though the event had ended early. I wonder how he felt as he walked through the residence, the sun sinking below the western mountains. With the festivities over and the guest of honor having departed, Yorinaga left to go see his father Tadazane, who had taught him so much and to whom Yorinaga owed his rise in fortune. Yorinaga notes in his journal that he wanted to give his father a gift, but Tadazane discouraged it. He had not officially attended the banquet. “By precedent, the host’s father attends during the relaxed feast, so he receives a gift.” Tadazane had not done so. He had remained behind the blinds, watching, like other supporters who were not official attendees, including Yorinaga’s sister, Kayano-in. There is no record of Tadazane’s thoughts, but perhaps he stayed hidden to let Yorinaga lead. This was Yorinaga’s opportunity, the new beginning of a new chieftainship for the Regental Fujiwara. Yorinaga After the Banquet: A Time of Crisis After 1152, Yorinaga’s tenure as minister of the left was riddled with familial troubles and fraught political alliances. His elder brother, Tadamichi, continued to be a thorn in his side, as the elder son maintained his own powerful ministerial position and seems to have taken the loss of the chieftainship in stride. Beginning in the late 1140s, both brothers schemed to have their adopted daughters serve as consort to the monarch so that they could be a maternal grandfather to a future crown prince, the traditional role of a Northern Fujiwara regent. They both failed. Konoe Tennō died in 1155, and the messy aftermath of his succession became another battlefield for the brothers and other courtly factions. Then the situation became an actual battle, as opposed to the political one they had long known.366 Barndt, “Scholar, Minister, Rebel: Fujiwara no Yorinaga,” pp. 91-92. 366 179 Specifically, when Konoe passed away, there were two contenders for the throne, sons of living retired monarchs: Sutoku’s son, Prince Shigehito, and Toba’s son, Prince Masahito. At this pivotal point, Tadazane was sidelined, and Yorinaga, mourning the death of his wife, was absent too. Rumors circulated that Tadazane and Yorinaga had cursed Konoe, leading to his death. When succession deliberations concluded, Toba’s son ascended the throne as Go-Shirakawa Tennō (1127-1192). Yorinaga and Tadazane’s relationship with Toba worsened as Toba denied Yorinaga the position of tutor to the crown prince for his supposed lack of loyalty. For Yorinaga, who had dedicated much of his life to the careful study of the Chinese classics and rulership and who was well-known for his knowledge, this would have been a deep cut. The new monarch GoShirakawa also stripped him of his office of document inspector, essentially sidelining him at court. It was in these anxiety-ridden months of 1155 that Yorinaga found himself turning to the other person who might have been just as angry about what was happening. The retired 367 monarch Sutoku had grown up amidst rumors that he was actually the son of Shirakawa Tennō, the grandfather of his father-in-name, and he had been furious at being forced to abdicate in 1142. Not having his own son in line for the throne meant that Sutoku would never rule over the court as a retired monarch. Sutoku was full of grievances. He was not the first royal to have them, but unlike others who merely let their rage fester, he wanted to do something about it. Sutoku and Yorinaga put their heads together. They had tried the political diplomacy they both knew well, and it had failed. They would need fighting men. Yorinaga, indeed the Regental Line of which he was still chieftain, had connections with Minamoto warriors he could call on, and there were armed monks from Kōfukuji. Sutoku had allies as well. When Toba finally died Yorinaga’s conspiring and downfall in the Hōgen Rebellion is best described in English in Barndt, “Scholar, 367 Minister, Rebel: Fujiwara no Yorinaga,” pp. 94-109. 180 after months of illness, in the hot summer of 1156, the bitter pair launched a coup d’état to overthrow Go-Shirakawa. They attacked the Shirakawa Palace, but archers supporting GoShirakawa successfully kept them at bay. Go-Shirakawa and his allies, including Yorinaga’s brother Tadamichi, had known that something was coming. They had marshaled their own men, including Minamoto who might have gone to Yorinaga in other circumstances but who now sided with Tadamichi. And there were men led by Taira no Kiyomori, the powerful head of the warrior family whose ancestors had battled pirates on the Inland Sea. The combined forces of Go-Shirakawa and Taira no Kiyomori dwarfed those of Sutoku’s faction in a cramped fight on the palace grounds. The battle around the palace turned against them, and an arrow struck Yorinaga. With the battle lost, Yorinaga fled into the mountains and caught a boat south to Uji. Again, in a crisis he went south to see his father. We do not know what he hoped for. Perhaps he wanted advice, a path to rescue, reassurance, medical attention for the agonizing wound in his shoulder. Perhaps he wanted to apologize. Tadazane refused to see him. Yorinaga left his father’s doorstep for a monk’s residence, and after days and nights in anguish, he died alone.368 In the following weeks, Yorinaga’s sons and family were exiled from the capital. Kanenaga, his son who helped serve sake at his banquet, died young soon after being exiled. His eldest son, Moronaga, would make his way back to the capital years later and restore his standing, only to be exiled again when Taira no Kiyomori carried out his own coup d’état against Go-Shirakawa and seized control. Minamoto forces who were allied with Sutoku were executed or exiled. Sutoku himself, despite being a retired monarch, died in exile. In the aftermath, Barndt, “Scholar, Minister, Rebel: Fujiwara no Yorinaga,” p. 104. Barndt translates in full the account of 368 Yorinaga’s final days and his final visit to his father. The usual account of this is in the Tale of Hōgen, but it is a late compilation. Barndt draws on other sources to create an account of the events. 181 Tadamichi fought to regain control of the Regental Fujiwara and to claim Yorinaga’s estates, else they be taken entirely by Go-Shirakawa. He mostly succeeded. From this point onwards, it was Tadamichi’s Regental Line. But it would never be the same. Regental Fujiwara power had been diluted by the leadership of retired monarchs over the court. Furthermore, even those retired monarchs found themselves at the mercy of the new group of players in the game of thrones: warriors who had been invited into the capital to settle disputes over royal succession. Taira no Kiyomori eventually came to understand the unique power he held over the aristocrats who had called on him for help. In many ways Yorinaga represented a last gasp of Fujiwara greatness. Many things changed after that failed coup d’état. The very nature of the regental chieftainship, controlled by the Fujiwara since antiquity, changed. The Fujiwara would require royal approval for the chieftainship. No longer would the patriarch of the Regental Fujiwara be able to freely decide 369 the heir to the chieftainship, as Tadazane had done.370 Conclusion The ministerial banquet may not have originally been created for the Regental Fujiwara, but it had developed as the premier celebration for that lineage. The development of the procedure was ongoing in the days of Tadahira: Michinaga refashioned it in some ways, as did the other great men of the lineage, each adding his own twists and variations. They expressed themselves in its procedure and provisioning, knowing that their interventions would be considered precedent by their progeny. There is a contradiction here, however. Precedent was 369 Iwai, “Fujiwara chōja keishō hōshiki no hensan to shukki daiban.” For more on the twelfth-century divisions of the Regental Fujiwara and the development of rule by retired 370 monarchs during this tumultuous era, see Hurst, “The Development of the Insei.” 182 supposed to be paramount and maintained, but it could be modified by a man of sufficient will and knowhow. Of course, material culture affected the continuation of this banquet. Where are the Fujiwara regalia today? When Tadamichi received the regalia back following the coup, it was noted that the scales were missing. In the decades to come, more parts of the regalia would vanish. As Iwai has said, when the fortunes of the Fujiwara changed over time, so did the inheritance rites and the regalia. During the Kamakura period, the Fujiwara chieftainship lost its authority and consequently the banquet dishes ceased to have the same value. Tadazane’s 371 insistence on breaking into a storehouse to retrieve the regalia might have been puzzling to his descendants by the turn of the fourteenth century. The title of chieftain, however, outlived the dishes and ceremonial objects. Fujiwara chieftains served increasingly short terms: only four years in the thirteenth century, and then an average of three years long in the fourteenth century. As the Kamakura period came to a close, the vermillion dishes had disappeared from the record. Iwai investigated the Fujiwara chieftainship rituals of the fourteenth century and found no mention of the dishes, scales, or even a notable ceremony. By that time, Fujiwara chieftains were merely transmitting the documents that recorded their historic landholdings. Today the 372 vermillion dishes and tableware are not to be found in any museum. They are gone. By the Shōō era (1288-1293), the Regental Fujiwara no longer used the ministerial banquet as a display of power, or for community-building in the court society. The banquet ceased to involve the full court and its planners concerned themselves with less grand Iwai, “Fujiwara chōja keishō hōshiki no hensan to shuki daiban,” p. 23. 371 Iwai, “Shuki daiban kō,” pp. 86-88. 372 183 celebration. The appointment banquet, the lesser sibling of the ministerial banquet, continued 373 occasionally, particularly with appointments to palace minister, into the fifteenth century.374 Today, the ministerial banquet no longer exists. Many of the foods are not eaten anymore; their textures and flavors are unfamiliar. Nonetheless, the values, fears, and hopes represented in the banqueting account are somewhat familiar, in Japan and beyond. We know what it is like to host honored guests, to procure and serve foods that show where we are from and what we aspire to be. Ministers served foods from the palace to show the approval of and connection to the monarch. They served sake to their companions in government, and feted friends and foes. They dined together, and in turn, they performed the roles and rules of society through that dining. Even today we know how important eating together is for community-making. At the same time, there is much here that is unfamiliar today: the confections of fried dough, no longer made; fermented fish, harder to find in today’s Japan; the sweetener made from amazura, only available in university experiments. But if we only consider the foods, etiquette, and motivations that we recognize with ease, the past becomes a starved, ill-formed thing. If we were to consider only the elements of Yorinaga’s banquet that are familiar to us today, the account would be worthless. We would be fixating on rice balls for servants or perhaps prototypical sashimi; how strange, I think, Yorinaga would find that. Gone would be the flow of drinking, the falcon and the huntsman, or the fear that Tadazane experienced of being reborn as a bird, the prey of falcons. This is the very power of food history, to connect all the parts of us that gather around a table. Like light bouncing off the glossy lacquerware to illuminate the facets and unexpected corners of the past, that is the Iwai, “Shuki daiban kō,” p. 88. 373 Kurahayashi, Kyōen no kenkyū, vol. 1, p. 455. 374 184 power of food history. The very language of this chapter would be alien to Yorinaga. But the documenting of his procedures, the consideration of precedent, and the close accounting of journals with the gaps and inconsistencies, frustrations and answers—this would be intimately familiar to him. That was what made Taiki glorious. And what is not gone, fortunately, is Yorinaga’s journal. His brief term of leadership? Disastrous. His sons and lineage? Scattered. But in the decades following his death, his journal circulated among members of the court, and people copied its pages. We no longer have the text written in his own hand, and we no longer have journal entries from the final, rebellious year of his life because he might have been too busy to keep it. Or, if he did, it might have been dangerous for courtiers to copy those entries for their own collections. Still, parts of the journal were read, copied, kept. Why did they bother? Which brings us back to the banquet. They bothered not only for the banquet but because they wanted to know Yorinaga’s take on the ceremonial of court life: the royal events, formal visits, celebrations, and banquets, all places and times when where courtiers performed their status. Yorinaga had no doubt hoped that Taiki, a masterpiece of courtly ceremonial record and consideration of precedent, would become a guide for his sons’ brilliant careers. Through his written record, they would know how to conduct themselves, and yes, how to arrange a grand event like a ministerial banquet. Yorinaga had painstakingly studied the Chinese classical canon as well as the journals of great men of the Heian court. He probably hoped for his journal to be read and considered just as he studied earlier journals left by Michinaga and Tadahira. He might have failed at royal intrigue, violence, and political gamesmanship, but he was fluent in the procedures of the court. He hoped to pass that fluency on to his sons. His journal is not a text of intimacy or emotions—although it does have those things. In the end, it was prized by those who 185 sought its guidance. Our oldest surviving copies of Taiki show that even into the era of courtly decline in the Kamakura period, Yorinaga—called a traitor, Evil Minister of the Left—was being copied and consulted for his knowledge of the ceremonial. Early copies hidden away in Kyoto storehouses survived medieval turbulence, and many extant entries were copied in the seventeenth century when a Fujiwara named Kujō Michifusa copied Taiki more than fourhundred years after Yorinaga’s death.375 Taiki survives because the social world of the court, even as it changed and gave up more of its power to the men whose power was rooted in violence, was a complex, living thing, possessed of a language that evolved at the will of great figures. It is the record of a man who valued tradition and precedent. Food, the menu, and who ate what, were a key part of that. The project of mastering it fascinated courtiers and scholars long after the court declined and when the vermillion dishes had vanished. The oldest copies of Taiki, the Kujō and Sanjō manuscripts, date from the Kamakura period. The Fushimi no 375 Miya manuscripts date from the fourteenth century. Taiki, vol. 1, p. 2-3. Fujiwara and Onoe, “Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryōhensanjo shozō ‘Taiki’ Ninpei sannen fuyu ki.” 186 Notable Guests in Attendance at Yorinaga’s Ministerial Banquet in 1152376 Ranks Name Dates Taiki Hyōhanki Palace Minister内大臣 Fujiwara no Saneyoshi 藤原実能 1096-1157 * * Senior Counselor 大納言 Lord of Popular Affairs 民部卿 Fujiwara no Munesuke 藤原宗輔 1077-1162 * * Provisional Senior Counselor 権大納言 Fujiwara no Muneyoshi 藤原宗能 1085-1170 * * Provisional Senior Counselor 権大納言 Fujiwara no Kinnori 藤原公教 1103−1160 * * Middle Counselor 中納言 Agent and Left Major Controller 別当左大弁 Fujiwara no Shigemichi 藤原重通 1099-1161 * * Left Palace Guard Captain 左兵衛督 Fujiwara no Kin’yoshi 藤原公能 1115−1161 * Right Palace Guard Captain 右兵衛督 Kazan’in Tadamasa 花山院忠雅 1124−1193 * Provisional Middle Counselor 権中納言 Fujiwara no Tadamoto 藤原忠基 1101-1156 * Provisional Middle Counselor 権中納言 Fujiwara no Suenari 藤原季成 1102-1165 * Right Advisor 右宰相 Middle Captain 中将 Fujiwara no Norinaga 藤原教長 1109−1180 * Left Advisor 左宰相 Middle Captain 中将 Provisional Governor of Bitchū 備中権守 Fujiwara no Tsunemune 藤原経宗 1119-1189 * Advisor 参議 Saionji Kinmichi 西園寺公通 1117−1173 * Left Major Controller 左大弁 Fujiwara no Sukenobu 藤原資信 1082-1158 * * Right Major Controller 右大弁 Sir Fujiwara no Tomotaka 朝隆 (Asataka?) * This chart draws on Taiki, vol. 2, p. 79; Hyōhanki, vol. 1, pp. 64-65; and Kugyō bunin, pp. 428-429. Fujiwara no 376 Suenari (during the first round), Noriie (second round), Sir Mitsufusa (second round), and Tomotaka (fifth round!) arrived late and do not appear in the salutations lists. 187 Left Middle Controller 左中弁 Sir Mitsufusa 光房朝臣 * Advisor 参議 Attendant 侍従 Provisional Governor of Bingo 備後権守 Minamoto no Masamichi 源雅通 1118−1175 * * Advisor 参議 Left Middle Captain 左中将 Sir Fujiwara no Moronaga 藤原師長朝臣 1138-1192 * * Junior Counselor 小納言 Sir Naritaka 成隆朝臣 * * Right Middle Controller 右中弁 Sir Mitsuyori 光頼朝臣 * * Junior Counselor 小納言 Sir Norimune 教宗 * * Right Minor Controller 右少弁 Hino Sukenaga 日野資長 1119−1195 * * Council Secretary 大外記 Sahei 佐平 * * Left Secretary 左大史 Morotsune 師経 * * Assistant Council Secretary 少外記 Nakahara no Toshikane 中原俊兼 * * Left Assistant Secretary 左少史 Nakahara no Sanemoro ? 中原師尚 * * Assistant Council Secretary 少外記 Nakahara no Kagenaga 中原景長 * * Left Assistant Secretary 左少史 Miyoshi Nagayasu 三善長泰 * * Left Assistant Secretary 左少史 Ōe no Munekage 大江宗景 * Left Assistant Secretary 左少史 Ki no Suehiro 紀季廣 * * Right Assistant Secretary 右少史 Nakahara no Toshishige 中原俊重 * * Right Assistant Secretary 右少史 Nakahara no Chikamori 中原知盛 * * Ranks Name Dates Taiki Hyōhanki 188 Conclusion: The Ise Taira’s Fiftieth-day Celebration of 1179 At the beginning of this dissertation, I promised to transform dabs of paint from a famous illustration into real food. In this concluding chapter I will keep that promise. But instead of the fictional Kaoru in The Tale of Genji Illustrated Scroll, we will consider a fiftieth-day celebration that was held for a real baby, a prince named Tokihito. The fiftieth-day celebration, or ika, was held fifty days after a baby was born, and there were numerous banquet courses, drinking, and music in the manner we now know well from our consideration of early court banquets, such as the appointment banquet and the ministerial banquet. This particular fiftieth-day celebration in 1179, however, comes at an important moment in court history. In some ways, it represents a finale for the banqueting culture and the idea of consuming the realm explored in this dissertation. Its hosts were the Ise Taira, a warrior family whose rise to prominence was rooted in their military exploits and successes. Led by Taira no Kiyomori (1118-1181), the Ise Taira gained power at the Heian court at the expense of courtiers, and the ensuing civil war ushered in Japan’s medieval age. This banquet of 1179 comes at the cusp of this transition, and it shows warrior elites adopting courtly banquet culture to rule—that is, to consume the realm themselves. The banquet here was a stage on which the Ise Taira demonstrated their command of the realm’s resources, thus demonstrating their suitability for rulership. Our most detailed account of the fiftieth-day celebration comes from the journal of Nakayama Tadachika 中山忠親, Sankaiki. He kept a detailed event of the record because he recognized the political and ceremonial significance of Taira no Kiyomori’s grandson reaching his fiftieth day. Born in 1131, our courtier-diarist Tadachika had lived through many of the tumultuous conflicts of the twelfth century that had pitted different courtly and warrior factions 189 against each other. He had witnessed Sutoku and Yorinaga’s disastrous coup d'état and Taira no Kiyomori’s corresponding rise at court. He also served as the provisional director of the Queen Consort’s household. In 1179, the queen consort was Taira no Tokushi 平徳子, a daughter of Taira no Kiyomori. Kiyomori had risen to the first rank and became prime minister in 1167. For a man descended from governors, rebellion-crushers, and pirate hunters, Kiyomori had achieved an extraordinary ascent. His daughter Tokushi becoming queen consort to the monarch was a tremendous victory for his line, and when she gave birth to Prince Tokihito in 1178, she tied the Taira to the royal family as the maternal kin of a potential crown prince. Marrying into the royal family had been the winning strategy of the Northern Fujiwara of Tadachika’s ancestors. Now the Ise Taira were ascendant through the same strategy. To celebrate their success, they planned a spectacular banquet that featured drinking, banquet fare, and the ritual consumption of mochi. Mochi, often translated as rice cake, was a confection made of pounded rice, ranging in size from a mouthful to a grapefruit, and flavored with grains and beans. In the absence of other details, it is safe to assume that mochi was a white, chewy confection made of glutinous rice. Its role was important because the first confirmable instance of a fiftieth or hundredth-day celebration had occurred in 950 with the birth of Prince Norihira, a son of Murakami Tennō (926-967), and the banquet had featured the baby prince being presented with mochi. This custom remained for fiftieth and hundredth-day celebrations 377 until they ended in the early fourteenth century. In its early days in the tenth century, Arai Shigeyuki argues that this event was a household celebration for the mother’s family and those raising the child. It was a relatively 378 For this first confirmable instance, see Fujiwara no Morosuke, Kyūreki, pp. 203-4. 377 378 See Arai, “Kōshijo no ika momoka ni tsuite.” 190 private banquet. Overtime, however, like the ministerial and appointment banquets, this household celebration grew to be a more ceremonial event that incorporated more members of the court. By the eleventh century, fiftieth-day celebrations came to include senior nobles and royal intimates from prominent families who were invited to serve food. Not only members of the mother’s family but also elite noblemen and ladies from other households attended to serve, eat, drink, and celebrate. Murasaki Shikibu narrated a long account of one such party in her own diary and included two such celebrations in The Tale of Genji, which would be visualized in illustrated scrolls. This involvement of the wider courtier community is especially clear from 379 records of Michinaga’s era, particularly with the birth of Prince Atsuhira. Michinaga was not one to miss an opportunity to demonstrate his brilliance and superiority. Inviting senior nobles and intimates and making these high ranking officials serve food while celebrating the close relationship of their host’s family with the throne was a strikingly visible demonstration of Michinaga’s seemingly unstoppable success as a court leader. It is no surprise, then, that in 1179, after generations of Northern Fujiwara celebrations, the Ise Taira also wished to demonstrate their power through a banquet in the presence of the monarch. The baby’s lineage, however, was not the only unusual element in the celebration, as Tadachika makes abundantly clear in the opening to his entry for the day. Prince Tokihito was about to be named crown prince and destined to ascend to the throne, despite being just over fifty-days old. Tadachika could think of only four monarchs who had been named crown prince within the first year of their life, and two of them—Seiwa and Toba—had not received the designation until they had reached their hundredth day. “There is no precedent for this,” writes In The Tale of Genji, there were Fiftieth-day Celebrations mentioned in the fourteenth and thirty-sixth 379 chapters. For the detailed diary account, see Murasaki Shikibu, Murasaki Shikibu nikki, pp. 280-2. 191 Tadachika. This created questions about what kind of procedures should be followed given the 380 child’s high status. How many banquet courses should there be, and how should foods be served? The officials working for the royal households of the queen consort, crown prince, and retired monarch had to procure the ingredients, payments, and gifts for attendees. “For a prince, there is the Jōryaku (1077-1081) example to use,” suggested Minister of the Left Fujiwara no Tsunemune. “Things for the banquet meal should come from various provinces’ stores. After the child is crown prince, the provinces should financially support him, his staff and the guards for the child’s household.” Until Prince Tokihito’s own household was formed, Kiyomori’s 381 household had to organize the banquet, including procuring ingredients from the market, estates, and provinces. They could also work with the experienced cooks laboring in the Kan’in kitchens where the event was being held. Those cooks would know how to prepare the dishes. So, how to procure the food? The Minister of the Left’s comment meant relying on the ritsuryō food system through governors and provincial tax goods. And provincial governors 382 featured prominently in the 1179 banquet: They prepared mochi, decorated serving vessels, prepared fruit baskets, and presented other necessities. Indeed, as we have seen, the governors linked the capital and the provinces in a system now centuries old. By relying on the provincial Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 184. 380 Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 185. 381 The Ise Taira had built their foundations for wealth and power over the course of three generations of 382 governorships. And in his own lifetime, Taira no Kiyomori’s political fortunes had grown through his military support for the retired monarch Go-Shirakawa 後白河院, allowing him to rise far beyond provincial governors. Nonetheless, much of Kiyomori’s career saw him subordinated to Go-Shirakawa, with the retired monarch as supreme patron for the Ise Taira. Estates acquired through conflict went directly to the retired monarch as senior patron (honke). It was only in 1179 after his coup détat that Kiyomori was able to establish a meaningful portfolio of his own estate proprietorships, which might have affected provisioning for an event such as Tokihito’s fiftieth-day celebration. Mass, Yoritomo and the Founding of the First Bakufu, pp. 22-31. 192 governors, Kiyomori’s Ise Taira were showing that they could call on the resources of the realm like the monarch himself. Mochi from the Marketplace Precedent dictated that special mochi be served at the fiftieth-day celebration. In this era mochi refers to a cake most often made from pounded glutinous rice, but it could refer to any kind of sticky dumpling. When pounded, steamed glutinous rice transforms from starchy clumps to a smooth dumpling. Cooks could coat mochi with a savory or sweet sauce. They might roll out rounds and fill the mochi “dough” with a dollop of bean paste, then pinch it shut. In some cases, a skilled cook might shape a mochi into ovals or strips, or they might grill it over a fire, scorching the mochi skin and lending it a smoky complexity. Mochi was not simply a menu item. It held special ritual significance in courtly life: it was for the New Year, and at key points in a person’s life, like marriage or when a woman entered the palace. For Prince Tokihito’s fiftieth 383 day, only special mochi would do. To procure this special mochi, Tadachika tells us that an official, Nakahara Nariaki, went to Kyoto’s Eastern Market with two laborers to help transport the large quantity of mochi to be purchased. One mochi had to be purchased for each day of the child’s life, so for a fiftieth-day celebration, fifty mochi were required. The mochi was purchased with one bale of rice—this was a large amount of rice and of great value, as one bale of rice was said to be enough to feed a single person for a year. Tadachika thought that spending so much for this mochi was wasteful: “I asked the third-level manager why this [payment] was the same as the hundredth-day For more on this long history of mochi, see Rath, “The magic of Japanese rice cakes.” Mochi was used 383 in numerous court events. Courtiers ate mochi at the New Year, a tradition that continues for most Japanese to the present day. When couples decided to marry after three nights together, they ate mochi, and when women entered the monarch’s palace as consort, she too ate mochi. See Fukutō, “Mikkaya mochi no gi no seiritsu to hen’yō: heian ōchō kizoku no kon’in girei.” 193 [celebration], and he answered, ‘As a precedent, one bale is sent for the fiftieth-day [mochi].’” 384 The Ise Taira, as relatively new arrivals in court leadership, did not have the familial institutional knowledge about how to conduct the banquet like other established families would have had. Tadachika’s own ability to engage with precedent and protocol came from a Fujiwara trove of knowledge based on diaries, ritual manuals, and experienced courtly relatives. The Ise Taira did not have any of that. They had risen to power at court in just two decades. Tadachika noted his concerns about sake-drinking etiquette, food preparation, and the arrangement of equipment. Perceived failures in protocol were a way for Tadachika to criticize Kiyomori’s organization of the banquet, and ultimately his leadership of the court. In the end, Nakahara Nariaki set out with the two laborers, who transported the one bale of rice as well as cloth and paper. They gave the payment to a shrine official at a market-side shrine called Ichihime Shrine 市姫神社, and in return they received “market mochi” 市餅 (ichi no mochi). Procured from Ichihime Shrine, these were one important component of the 385 celebration. It seems that these mochi had spiritual power. Fujiwara no Tameyori wrote of a 386 Fiftieth-day Celebration where partitioned food boxes were decorated with the kami’s form or insignia (katachi).387 These fifty mochi were not bite-size confections. They were large mochi to be cut up before service. Back at the palace organizers had to coordinate with the provincial governors to prepare the mochi. Things could go wrong at this point if provincial governors prepared Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 188. 384 Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 188. 385 Two such entries that address the cost and procurement are present in Fujiwara no Nagakane’s 386 Sanchōki 三長記 and Taira no Sadaie’s Kōheiki 康平記. Both entries note that officials exchanged one bale (koku) of rice and cloth for the mochi. See Fujiwara no Nagakane, Sanchōki, Kenkyū 建久 6 (1195).10.7 (p.1); and Taira no Sadaie, Kōheiki, Kōhei 康平 5 (11062).11.2 (p. 269). Fujiwara no Tameyori, Tameyorishū zenshaku, p. 174. 387 194 unfashionable boxes or, worse, mishandled the mochi. In an account of another celebration that took place in 1195, one exasperated courtier wrote, “The Bitchū [governor’s] mochi were not round. There were mochi that were as they ought to be, but small. It was quite strange. How did this happen?” Fortunately, nothing seemed to go wrong with the preparation of Prince 388 Tokihito’s mochi. The fifty mochi were divided among four provincial governors—those of Tanba, Inaba, Wakasa, and Kai. Each governor provided properly decorated boxes, showing 389 his knowledge of protocol and fashion through the use of color, filigree, carvings, and flora decorations. Only a quite wealthy noble family could marshal the resources to purchase such 390 mochi, and only a noble family at the top of the court hierarchy could command governors and other members of officialdom to prepare them for presentation. The Ise Taira were rising to the occasion for their baby crown prince by procuring costly goods from the provinces and the marketplace. The Banquet Procedure The next day, Tadachika arrived at the Kan’in palace for the banquet as preparations were underway. Mats had to be spread, blinds hung at the eaves, and partitions arranged in the hall so as to be worthy of the participants: senior nobles, royal intimates, the queen consort, and the Fujiwara no Nagakane, Sanchōki, Kenkyū 建久 6 (1195).10.7 (p. 2). 388 All of these governors were associated with the Ise Taira. Fujiwara no Kanemasa 藤原兼雅 was the 389 provincial proprietor (chigyōshu) 知行主 of Tanba and married to one of Kiyomori’s daughters. He advanced rapidly through his relationship with the Ise Taira. Fujiwara no Takasue 藤原隆季 was the provincial proprietor of Inaba, and his aunt, Fujiwara no Shūshi, was married to Taira no Tadamori. Relationships between his father and the Ise Taira were close through marriages and appointments, which benefitted Takasue’s career. Taira no Tsunemori 平経盛 was the chigyōshu of Wakasa and the half-brother of Kiyomori. It is unclear who was the provincial proprietor of Kai at this time, but I assume they had a connection to the Ise Taira. Ishimaru Hiroshi has drawn on Sankaiki and Gyokuyō to determine the Taira’s connections with provincial proprietor and provincial governors leading up to Kiyomori’s coup d'état in late 1179. It makes sense that when drawing resources for Prince Tokihito’s celebration, the Ise Taira would rely on men who had close ties with their family. Ishimaru has created a useful chart outlining who occupied different provincial proprietor positions, and I draw on his analysis here. See pp. 65-69. Tanba is in modern Kyoto and Hyōgo Prefectures; Inaba in modern Tottori; Wakasa in modern Fukui; 390 and Kai in modern Yamanashi. Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, pp. 187-188. 195 monarch. This palace had often served as a residence for monarchs, and now it housed His Majesty and Queen Consort Tokushi. Tadachika was not pleased, however. He found it 391 cramped. Well over a hundred courtiers, not including servants, would crowd the verandas and halls overlooking the garden. Torch lights could not be placed in ideal locations. Some attendees would have to sit in the Fishing Pavilion by the pond. Utensils and equipment had still not been set up under the eaves, and stations for officials and servants preparing the food and dozens of trays had yet to be set up. The mochi were carried out to a temporary spot in the Fishing Pavilion until their presentation during the banquet and drinking rounds.392 Like other Heian banquets, the fiftieth-day celebration began with rounds of sakedrinking, followed by a main banquet course in the third round. Tadachika was frustrated with the failure of Kiyomori’s people to follow proper drinking protocols. He wrote afterwards that a Taira had taken the sake cup to drink before the higher-ranking minister, Kujō Kanezane, did. “There are examples of a minister taking a cup from a fourth ranker. However, if they are sitting face-to-face, the second person does not take the cup from a minister; but if they are sitting in a row, then they do take the cup. In this case, the left and right ministers were sitting together properly. I really think he should have taken the cup.” Courtiers’ behavior during such 393 moments in ritual setting was how Heian men and women performed their status, and this seemed an opportunity for Tadachika to criticize the Taira again. During the third round, servers presented dozens of dishes to each diner. They also served fruits, nuts, and confections on elegant trays decorated with gold and colored paper. 394 Ōta, Shindenzukuri no kenkyū, pp. 538-60. 391 Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, pp. 185-187. 392 Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 189. 393 Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 187. 394 196 Serving Mochi to a Baby At the end of the second round of the prince’s celebration, the focus turned to the mochi and the infant himself. Tadachika records that some of the carefully procured mochi was presented on a silver tray, and then cut into pieces and placed in a silver bowl. “The rice-cooking water was poured inside a silver jar that was brought over. Mid-level ladies-in-waiting conveyed this to Second-level Manager Sir Taira no Shigehira… Using the wooden pestle, [the mochi] were ground into the rice-cooking water… The ladies-in-waiting took it and placed it on the first tray.” This rice-cooking water was a by-product of one method of making rice that consisted of cooking rice in boiling water, then draining excess water off, and returning the rice to a pan to steam it and complete the cooking. By grinding the mochi into this starchy rice-cooking water, the courtiers created a thickened mochi soup. Queen Consort Taira no Tokushi was seated, and mochi on the six trays were served.395 Tadachika does not detail the contents of these six trays, but in 1195, Fujiwara no Nagakane 藤原長兼 wrote about the six trays served to Queen Consort Kujō Ninshi and the baby Princess Shōshi: “The first tray [held] chopsticks, spoon, pestle, and the four condiments [of salt, sake, vinegar, and hishio]. The second tray was four dishes of Tang confections 唐菓子 (tōgashi). The third tray was the same. The fourth tray was four dishes of different types of mochi. The fifth tray was the same. The sixth tray was four dishes of tree sweets 木菓子(kigashi). On one tray of the same makie lacquer [design] was the rice liquid soup (shōzen), and the above items were in silver dishes.”396 As described here, servers presented six trays with Tang confections, mochi, fruits, and rice liquid soup before the queen consort and her baby. Most of the trays contained either mochi Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 190. 395 Fujiwara no Nagakane, Sanchōki, Kenkyū 建久 6 (1195).10.7 (pp. 1-3). 396 197 or fruits and confections, but there was a tray for utensils and the four condiments. The sweets and dishes served to Prince Tokihito are similar to the fiftieth-day celebration diagram in a thirteenth-century encyclopedia, From Two Almanacs 二中歴 (Nitchūreki). There would have been fruits, nuts, and confections.397 This “Ika mochi no zu” 五十日餅図 appears in Part 8 of the Nitchūreki. A manuscript of the text that 397 includes the fiftieth-day celebration diagram has been digitized by the National Diet Library. The table map for a Fiftieth-day Celebration says, “pine [nuts]; beech [nuts]; pomegranate instead of apricot; dried jujubes; dried and ground chestnuts instead of plums” should be used, which means that dried sweets could be substituted for certain fresh ones. Given that Crown Prince Tokihito was celebrating his fiftiethday in the First Month of the year, it would be unreasonable to demand fresh fruit. Other dried sweets were used. 198 The From Two Almanacs diagram of the six trays of sweets for a fiftieth-day celebration. Trays from left to right, top row: mochi, Tang confections, and dried sweets. Bottom row: mochi, a silver tray, and four condiments. National Diet Library. What kinds of mochi were served? Mochi could be served plain, but there were other varieties distinguished by type or color. There were yellow, green, black, red, and white mochi. These had various additions, such as adzuki, sesame, millet, and soybeans. From Two Almanacs specifies white, yellow, and green mochi on one tray. On another tray, the diagram simply says “mochi” twice, and “millet,” which might refer to black mochi made from millet. The 398 remaining spot on the tray was reserved for a dish that we presume was the bowl used for the mochi soup. At a banquet like that for Prince Tokihito’s Fiftieth-day Celebration, it was not adequate to merely have delicious foods in various forms. They also had to be appropriately presented. Fiftieth-day banquets not only featured boxes of mochi; they customarily featured partitioned boxes of sweets and fruit baskets 籠物 (komono). The baskets were made of bamboo and decorated with cloth and silver. Michinaga himself may be responsible for the tradition of silver decorations. In 1013, in preparation for the hundredth-day celebration of his granddaughter Princess Teishi, Michinaga ordered that intimates prepare three sets of silver fruit baskets. They did so, but the baskets were a nuisance and heavy to carry. For Michinaga, this event was an 399 opportunity to show off his wealth, to conspicuously consume, even if he had been disappointed by Kenshi giving birth to a girl. For one as powerful as Michinaga, more splendor was always 400 The above mochi ingredients appear throughout the Engi Protocols. “Black millet” is listed as an 398 ingredient for making black mochi. This was millet that had been allowed to ripen to the point that it developed black coloration. See Torao, Engi shiki, vol. 2, 606-7. Millet can be made into mochi without using any glutinous rice. See the entry for Chōwa 長和 2.9.20 (1013) in Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Gendaigoyaku Shōyūki, vol. 6, 399 pp. 90-91. 400 Fujiwara no Sanesuke mentions Michinaga’s displeasure over the baby’s sex in his entry for Chōwa 長和 2.7.7 (1013) in Fujiwara no Sanesuke, Gendaigoyaku Shōyūki, pp. 12-13. Michinaga does not mention any kind of disappointment in his own journal. However, Princess Teishi’s Fiftieth-day Celebration sounds a terribly awkward affair from Sanesuke’s telling. Despite sake being poured, no one drank, and even after multiple rounds of pouring, no one became drunk. The conversation was chilly, one assumes because of Michinaga’s displeasure, and no amount of resplendent silver decorations or banquet sets seemed to have helped. See Chōwa 長和 2.8.27 (1013) in the same volume, pp. 64-66. 199 good. In 1179, however, Prince Tokihito did not receive the expected fruit baskets. There had been problems with protocol and communication. Officials had decided against providing the special partitioned fruit baskets when planning the event, but a communication problem resulted in Tosa Governor Taira no Munezane preparing fifty baskets anyway. Unfortunately Munezane prepared the fruit baskets incorrectly, so they were not used in the celebration.401 In the ceremonial climax of the banquet in the third round it was time to serve mochi to the baby. Courtiers lined up to present the many decorated boxes of mochi. Each intimate offered one box of mochi, with the boxes being placed in a north-south line at the western columns on the veranda, and facing the queen consort. Governors had prepared different decorative boxes with varying degrees of fashion and success: Orihitsu food boxes were decorated with pine and crane designs— auspicious symbols to ward off disaster— and silver, as well as scenes of the natural world recreated in suhama miniatures. The boxes with the most ornate and valuable components were offered up by the most powerful men in the realm. The motifs of pines and cranes with gold and silver accents were repeated across standing trays and cloth coverings.402 His Majesty Takakura appeared. As intimates hurried to lay out mats for his path, the monarch approached his son. Held by a wet nurse, the baby crown prince dressed in white was arranged to face an auspicious direction. Using wooden chopsticks, the monarch fed his son from Munezane appears to have taken a creative approach to his mis-assignment. Tadachika saw a manager 401 bring one out after the event, revealing a basket with “bristling,” pineapple-like tops 髯籠 (higeko) with no colored decorations. The inside of the basket was partitioned, which was a feature of the usual fruit basket, but it held only mixed pieces of low grade colored cloth and chestnuts. Someone had made up a pine branch from silk and thread for the pine needles, as well as a butterfly knot. Nakayama Tadachika’s own writings on protocol were later used in the thirteenth-century Oral Teachings of Sanjō Nakayama三条中山口伝 (Sanjō Nakayama kuden), which explicitly states that baskets of sweet chestnuts 甘栗籠 “should not be used as an alternative to mixed sweets 交菓子.” It is also possible that the “bristling baskets” were improper for this context. Chestnuts were considered a sweet, but were unacceptable in this case, and that was likely why a manager showed one of the baskets only after the event. Sanjō Kinfusa, Sanjō Nakayama kuden, p. 376. Typically these fruits baskets were full of mixed fruits in a partitioned container. Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 190. 402 200 the mochi soup dish. He did this three times. Then the baby prince was taken away and the 403 monarch could enjoy his own meal. There was music, and at the end, participants were served mochi and given rice balls. Tadachika stayed long enough to assist with finishing the event before he departed.404 In the past, scholars have proposed that the fiftieth-day celebration may have served as a ritualized transition whereby the baby was weaned off of a wet nurse’s milk. By this 405 interpretation, when a monarch or maternal grandfather, like Michinaga, fed the baby, he was beginning the process of getting the child accustomed to solid foods. But babies are not capable of eating solid foods at fifty days or even one hundred days. In addition to presenting challenges to the baby’s digestive system, a mochi-feeding rite would have been a choking hazard. Moreover, the mana hajime 魚味始, which consisted of feeding a baby after it had reached twenty months, would seem to have fulfilled this life-cycle function better. My view is that the true purpose of the Fiftieth-day Celebration was not really to feed a baby mochi at all. Rather, it was to provision and consume. Like the palace preparing an elaborate meal for a monarch who would not eat it, or a host serving dozens of dishes for an absent guest of honor, the purpose was to provision and present a display of wealth and authority over the realm. Its purpose was to host court society and have provincial governors offer up elaborate boxes decorated with gilt, paint, and paper; to have trays painted with pines and cranes; and to recreate the natural world in wooden carvings of landscapes and branches crafted of silk and thread. In early instances of this rite, the Regental Fujiwara provided a tiny lacquer set of dishes with food —in her diary, Murasaki Shikibu described such a set: “[The prince’s] tiny tray, bowls, chopstick Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 191. 403 Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, pp. 193-194. 404 See Arai, “Kōshijo no ika momoka ni tsuite,” p. 135. 405 201 holders, and the suhama miniature looked like dolls’ accessories.” Lacquerware was a luxury, 406 never mind a tiny lacquerware set intended for serving food to a baby not old enough to eat it. The Ise Taira may not have managed the fruit baskets or tiny lacquerware, but they called on officials of the realm to prepare elaborate boxes, trays, and equipment in that same performance of wealth and leadership to celebrate their immutable connection to the throne at the apex of courtly society. Murasaki Shikibu, Murasaki Shikibu nikki, p. 281. 406 202 Small lacquerware dishes were piled high with foods for a baby prince. Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki. Gotoh Museum of Art. 203 Fujiwara no Michinaga attends to his grandson, Prince Atsuhira, at the baby’s fiftieth-day celebration. Minamoto no Rinshi holds Prince Atsuhira. The faint outline of a tray before Michinaga suggests that an earlier version of the scroll had illustrations of the tableware and mochi. Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki. Tokyo National Museum. Conclusion The famous eleventh-century courtier Sei Shōnagon wrote that people impatiently waited for babies to be born, and then when they celebrated their fiftieth and hundredth days, people wondered what kind of future the child would have. Surely this was the case with young 407 Prince Tokihito, who was made crown prince with such unprecedented haste. The hopes and 408 efforts of this banquet were one part of the Ise Taira’s ambitions to establish their supremacy as court leaders in the twelfth-century. In the short term, they succeeded. One year later, in the Fourth Month of 1180, they forced Takakura Tennō to abdicate the throne, and Prince Tokihito ascended it as Antoku Tennō. He was two years old. The removal of elites outside of the Ise Taira sphere, as well as 409 Takakura Tennō’s abdication forced by threat of violence, created resentment. Prince Mochihito, the adult son of the powerful retired monarch Go-Shirakawa, issued a call-to-arms against the Ise Taira, and members of a rival warrior family, the Seiwa Minamoto, answered. The ensuing civil war drove the Ise Taira elites and the child monarch Antoku Tennō from the capital in 1183. At the naval battle of Dan no Ura in 1185, the Ise Taira-led coalition was defeated and many perished. Antoku Tennō drowned. He was seven years old. Not all children, even crown princes, who reached their fiftieth day had bright futures, and the death of Antoku Tennō is one of Japanese history’s most famous tragedies. 407 Sei Shōnagon, Makura no sōshi, p. 202. See entry 153, “Things that make one impatient.” Nakayama Tadachika, Sankaiki, p. 194. Interestingly, Tadachika remarks that this Fiftieth-day 408 Celebration was also intended to serve as Prince Tokihito’s itadaki mochi rite as well, even though such a ceremony would customarily be done later in his life. Takakura abdicated on the twenty-first day of the Second Month, and Prince Tokihito ascended the 409 throne the next day. See Gyokuyō Jishō 治承 4.2.21 and 2.22 (1180), Kujō Kanezane, Gyokuyō, pp. 82-97. 204 But in 1179 no courtier knew what would come to pass. An important part of rulership was procuring resources, and Kiyomori’s family and supporters worked the system to do so. Expensive mochi was purchased at the marketplace shrine, packed in ornate boxes, and presented by high-ranking officials in rows. Provincial governors procured food and performed its presentation. By presenting the fruits of provincial and marketplace labor, the matrilineal family of the new prince not only feted elites and His Majesty. They also asserted their wealth and status over all other courtiers—even if some, like Tadachika, criticized their performance. So it was that the Ise Taira warrior family joined in the long tradition of consuming the realm, even in the twilight of the classical age. The banquet they held for their little prince ushered in conflict that upended the old order and ultimately ended the court’s dominance and the Heian period in 1185. Following the Ise Taira’s attempt to put their prince on the throne, another warrior leader, Minamoto no Yorimoto, founded the first actual warrior government, beginning centuries of dual courtier-warrior rule in Japan. Although Yoritomo and his warrior allies gladly accepted illustrious ritsuryō titles from the court, the systems of governance and economy at the core of the ritsuryō food system gradually ended as warriors gained more control in the decentralized estate system. Warrior elites would develop new ways to consume the realm. Court leaders of the Heian period created dazzling banquets that reinforced hierarchies and displayed the material wealth of the realm that they commanded. We have seen how this came about. In Chapter One, we explored the ritsuryō food system, created by officials to provision ingredients from all over the realm. Centralized administration and taxation was buttressed by older provisioning networks originally created by cooking clans, the Takahashi and the Azumi. From the early eighth century, provinces sent diverse foods to the monarch’s capital, like sardines from the Inland Sea, salmon from the Sea of Japan coast, or various abalone 205 preparations. The ritsuryō food system also established structures for the production of special foods enjoyed at the palace, such as dairy ranches for making so cheese, ice houses, and a network of provinces producing amazura syrup. In Chapter Two, we saw how diverse ingredients were taken from this expansive food system and prepared for the monarch’s table. Every morning, palace attendants ritually presented ingredients from the provinces and prepared them for His Majesty’s consumption. The fundamental culinary categories for this high cuisine are clearly articulated in Notes from the Palace Kitchen, allowing us to understand palace food culture. Its categories formed the foundation of Heian high cuisine. Over the course of the Heian period, the monarch’s life was increasingly ritualized, as we can see through rules for the Royal Secretariat and the Royal Meal Office’s offerings and daily meals. It is clear that a key element of ritsuryō kingship was provisioning His Majesty’s meals and offerings because this food system made the ruler’s command of the realm visible. And yet, as we saw from the description of the ceremonial Afternoon Meal, the provisioning and presentation were more important than the actual bodily consumption. In Chapter Three, I showed how Fujiwara no Michinaga used protocol to elaborate his appointment banquet, incorporating palace foods such as so cheese, sweet chestnuts, and dumplings into his banquet menu. By adding foods eaten in the royal palace, Michinaga demonstrated his close relationship to the monarch and increased the prestige of his event and himself. Looking beyond Michinaga, we also saw how aristocratic hosts used the culinary categories to incorporate seasonal ingredients without deviating from procedures based on precedent, the foundation of court life in Heian times. 206 Regental Fujiwara banquet culture, which flourished during Michinaga’s era, reached its apex in the ministerial banquet. In Chapter Four, we examined Fujiwara no Yorinaga’s Ministerial Banquet of 1152. As the chieftain of the Regent’s Lineage, his ministerial banquet required hundreds of vermillion lacquer dishes that made up the regalia of his family. We also saw how ministerial banquet hosts continued to use the ritsuryō food system as well as personal networks to provision these celebrations. The banquet itself was a magnificent stage for performances of provisioning, feting allies, and reinforcing court hierarchies. Food culture became spectacle. In these chapters I have shown the close relationship between the ritsuryō food system and court banqueting culture. The ritsuryō food system allowed the monarchs to consume their realm, and with the decline of the ritsuryō-based administration, food culture necessarily changed. Some items ceased to be made. The ranches that produced cheese for the court declined, leading to so cheese becoming a mysterious food lost to time. The network of 410 icehouses faltered in the thirteenth century—warrior elites would come to build their own network for sourcing ice. Tang confections, fried in expensive oils and made according to 411 directions known only to palace cooks, also faded from the record. As the economy evolved, however, commoner cooks made noodles and dumplings from flours that were sold in the medieval marketplace, pivoting away from the fried items for court banquets made from flours. Officials going to the Kyoto marketplace to purchase special mochi in the twelfth 412 century show us an evolving commercial food culture that would become a prominent part of medieval life. Even as one system declined, others arose to shape the foods people ate. Hirono, Kodai nihon no miruku rōdo, p. 73. 410 Takei, “Nihon ni okeru himuro, yukimoru no rekishibunka to sono genjō,” pp. 8-9. 411 For the full story of this development, see Matsumoto, Men to wagashi no yoake. 412 207 In this concluding chapter, we saw how yet another group used Heian banquet culture. As warrior elites new to court, the Ise Taira might not have bothered with a grand Fiftieth-day Celebration. But their efforts reveal the powerful appeal of hosting courtly banquets. They were not alone in that—other warrior elites would appropriate banquet culture from the court and create their own ceremonial calendars in centuries to come. In 1179, however, the Ise Taira were seeking continuity with a long Nara and Heian tradition of kingship. They wished to show that their prince too would consume the realm, just as the mythical Keikō had when he ate the clams and bonito cooked by Iwaga Kamutsukari—because to consume the realm was to rule the realm. 208 Bibliography Primary Chūjiruiki 厨事類記. In vol. 19 of Gunsho ruijū 群書類従, pp. 728–756. Zoku Gunsho Ruijū Kanseikai, 2002 (1932). Dairi shiki 内裏式. In vol. 1 of Shintō taikei chōgi saishi hen 神道大系朝儀祭祀編一, pp. 301-72. Shintō taikei hensankai, 1980. DNS Dai Nihon shiryō 大日本史料. Ed. Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo 東京大学史料編纂所. Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1910—. Engi shiki, Yakuchū Nihon shiryō Engi shiki 訳注日本史料延喜式. Ed. Torao Toshiya 虎尾俊哉. 3 vols. Shūeisha, 2000-2017. Fujiwara no Michinaga 藤原道長. 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Creator Warren, Emily (author)

Core Title The Heian origins of Japan's high cuisine, 794-1185

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School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

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Abstract This dissertation is a study of the high food culture of the Japanese court in the Heian period (794-1185) through provisioning and banqueting. Provisioning had long been an important aspect of kingship, and the presentation of foodstuffs by local elites across the archipelago constituted a submission to the Yamato kings. When monarchs consumed food from all over, they manifested their authority over the realm. Tax goods of the ritsuryō food system allowed for elaborate daily meals and offerings to the monarch that represented his authority. Within the palace, cooks led by the Royal Meal Office and Palace Kitchen prepared the monarch’s meals according to pre-determined culinary categories that allowed them to use available seasonal ingredients while still following protocols, and these culinary categories and etiquette of dining in the palace were adopted by the monarch’s ministers, particularly the Regental Fujiwara, who designed grand banquets and celebrations in their own residential palaces. These new banquets were not only provisioned through the ritsuryō food system, but also through personal networks and estates. Through the Appointment Banquet of Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1028) in 1017 and the Ministerial Banquet of Fujiwara no Yorinaga (1120-1156) in 1152, we can see that provisioning and banquets were important displays of authority and wealth for court ministers. The Fiftieth-day Celebration of Prince Tokihito in 1179 shows how this elite food culture was adopted by warrior elites at the end of the Heian period who wished to consume the realm in the same grand manner as the monarch.