The banquet may continue with soup, often created from fish stock and fermented soybean paste called miso. The soup arrives in closed lacquer bowls, on the lids of which will be embellished a design of the season, perhaps a bamboo shoot or a chrysanthemum blossom. Beneath this lid is a tranquil sea of semitransparent marine broth, tinted amber and seasoned with delicate green scallion rings and cubes of bland white soybean curd. The bottom of the bowl may shelter a family of thumbnail-sized baby clams, still nestled in their open shells. The soup hints of the field and the sea, but in delicate nuances, like an ink painting executed in a few suggestive strokes.
The parade of tiny dishes continues until the host's imagination falters or your appetite is conquered. Green beans, asparagus, lotus root, carrots, tree leaves, legumes . . . the varieties of plants will seem virtually endless. Each taste and texture will be slightly different, each color subtly orchestrated. Yet it all seems perfectly natural, as though the world of mountain and sea had somehow presented itself at your table to be sampled. You become acutely aware of the natural taste of the plants ripening in the fields outside at that very moment. But to enjoy this cuisine you must sharpen your senses; no flavor is allowed to be dominant, no spice overwhelming. You must reach out with your sensibilities and attune yourself to the world around you.
The haute cuisine of Japan is known as kaiseki, the name of the special meal served with the Zen tea ceremony. Kaiseki is the great preserver of cuisine aesthetics in Japan. The tea ceremony, the supreme transmitter of Zen culture, also happens to be the preserver of Japan's finest ideals in the realm of food. The governing principle of kaiseki is that the foods served should be natural, even as an unpainted traditional house reveals its fresh woods. Whereas artificiality would draw a diner's spirit away from the real world, naturalness brings him closer to it. The colors, of both the foods and the ceramics, are meant to suggest nature. The servings are simple, never elaborate or contrived, and the foods chosen must never be obviously expensive. A host is expected to display his skill and imagination in combining delicate flavors, not his wealth or extravagance in being able to buy the most expensive items he can find. Again it is the Zen idea of wabi, a deliberate turning away from the ostentatious.
But to speak of Zen dining in terms of flavor is to miss a good part of the pleasure. The display of glazed ceramic dishes on a Japanese table is carefully orchestrated by color and shape to form a unified, naturalistic, asymmetrical aesthetic whole. The sensitive Japanese regards the Western weakness for marshaled arrays of matched china as a demonstration of limited artistic vision. All the concepts of beauty developed in the tea ceremony have been transmitted to the Japanese formal dining experience, and a dimension has been added: in a formal meal the ceramics are decorated with foods; the various foods are positioned, down to the last bean, with care almost worthy of the stones in a Zen garden, and the color and texture of each is attuned to the color and texture of its dish. Thus dining becomes a display of art and design that tests the aesthetic discernment of both host and guest.
Perhaps in no other land is the serving of food so manifestly both a form of art and an expression of philosophy. But it seems less incredible if viewed merely as the last convolution of Zen culture. From monks to modern housewives, Zen culture has touched every aspect of Japanese life. There are, of course, other voices and other rooms in the complex world of Japanese cultural history, but when you think of the finest moments in Japanese civilization, more often than not you find yourself thinking of Zen.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It is not surprising if the religious need, the believing mind, and the philosophical speculations of the educated European are attracted to the symbols of the East, just as once before the heart and mind of men of antiquity were gripped by Christian ideas.