Home Life in Tokyo

by Jukichi Inouye

SUSHI AND SOBA.

But it is in winter evenings that there is a great deal of eating to while away the dreary hours after the early supper. Children, students, and others to whom inexpensiveness is a consideration, take to sweet potatoes which are boiled in slices or baked whole or in pieces. Another article, equally in favour for its cheapness, is a kind of cracknel made by baking and dipping small disks of rice or wheaten flour in soy. Parched peas rolled in salt or sugar and roasted acorns and chestnuts are also much in demand.

The variety of confectionery is very great. This is due to two causes. First, it is the custom to take a present with us when we go to visit a friend whom we have not seen for some time or to pay our respects to a superior. It may be some fruit in season, or a box of eggs, a brace of wild ducks or geese, or a case of beer, handkerchiefs, or, indeed, any article conceivable; but the commonest is confectionery. If one goes to ask a favour or express thanks for a service rendered, or to keep oneself in the other’s good books if he is a superior, where, in short, some personal advantage is sought immediately or prospectively or has been gained, one naturally makes presents of some value; but if it is only to pay the compliments of the season and merely to remind the other of one’s existence, articles of slighter value, such as confectionery, are given. In the latter case the recipient makes to the other a similar present when he returns the call. This exchange of presents takes place among friends, especially at the end of the year. So general is the custom that on a man with a wide circle of acquaintances these gifts about the New Year’s tide entail serious expenses. He may of course send to a friend a present he has received from another; but he has to be very circumspect how he disposes of such presents, for it sometimes happens that this repeated passing on of a gift from one person to another ends in its reverting to the original donor in a condition by no means improved by its frequent journeys. Similar presents are made in midsummer, though the custom is not so general as at the other season.

The second reason for the variety of confectionery lies in the custom of setting some cake before a visitor. When any one calls and is shown in, tea is brought before him together with a plate of confections. The tea is of course drunk, but the cake is more frequently left untouched; it ought in that case to be wrapped in paper and given to the visitor to take home, but the rule is not always observed and the cake is often left to do duty before successive callers until it becomes too stale for presentation. In a family with children, they generally manage to make away with it as soon as the visitor is gone. When, however, a doctor is called in, the cake is always wrapped in paper and given to him; and the doctor takes it as a matter of course.

These two customs, then, naturally create a large demand for confectionery of all kinds. The most common cake for making a present of is a sort of sponge-cake. It is not of Japanese origin, but appears to have been introduced by the Spaniards in the early days of foreign intercourse more than three centuries ago. It is put in a cardboard or wooden box; and, in view of the custom above referred to of passing a present on from one to another until it grows stale, the best confectioners in Tokyo now put on the box the date of its sale so that their reputation may not suffer through the deterioration of their confection by its repeated travels. The precaution, however, is hardly necessary as the custom is too widely known for any one who receives musty sweetmeats to accuse their maker of dishonesty.

A BOX OF SPONGE-CAKE.

The bulk of confectionery is made of rice, red beans, millet, or sugar. Glutinous rice is steamed, pounded in a wooden mortar into a pasty consistency, and left to cool. This is made into little cakes, which are boiled and eaten with greens in soup at the beginning of the year and are at other times baked and dipped in soy and sugar. But for making confectionery, the pounded rice is not allowed to cool as it is, while hot, soft enough to take any shape. It usually forms the outer cover of dumplings filled with a sugary mixture. The red bean is boiled, pounded, and strained through a coarse cotton bag to get rid of the skin, though the latter is sometimes retained, in which case the straining is unnecessary, and finally mixed with sugar. This red bean jam is the most important ingredient of Japanese sweetmeats as there is in our confectionery no other equivalent of the fruit jam. Sometimes, however, other beans are substituted for it, especially when a white jam is needed. The red-bean jam is also used in making red soup into which small rice dumplings are thrown; this soup is much in demand, especially in winter, to while away the tedium of long evenings. The red bean is also boiled with rice to give it a colour; the red-bean rice is eaten in old-fashioned families three times a month, on the first, fifteenth, and twenty-eighth. A kind of white candy is made from a mixture of glutinous rice and rice-yeast. Agar-agar, or the Bengal isinglass, which is obtained from a seaweed, is used for making jellies. Starch extracted from the root of the kuzu (pueraria Thunbergiana) is also much employed in confectionery.

Numerous as are the confections made, the more common among them are the following, which may of course be varied by the addition of other ingredients. A kind of Turkish delight is made from a mixture of glutinous rice, syrup, and white candy, boiled and brought into proper consistency by throwing in a little kuzu starch. By steaming a mixture of red beans, sugar, wheat, and kuzu, we get a sweet dark-red cake, which is almost as popular as the sponge-cake. A mixture of glutinous rice steeped in water and rice-yeast left overnight in a hot-water bath is, after being strained and steamed with a small quantity of wheat, made into little balls around a lump of red-bean jam. This is also a very common confection. Caramels are made with long beans or peanuts inside. By boiling a mixture of agar-agar and sugar for some time over a slow fire, we get a soft, translucent jelly which is put into a mould and afterwards cut up.