Japan's Sesame & Oil Culture

About this book

Every Japanese kitchen holds a bottle almost nobody asks questions about — the oil. This guide asks them all, in 200 entries devoted not to the seasoning bottle, not to the dish, but to the material itself: sesame and the oils of Japan. It begins with the seed where the oil sleeps — sesame in its three colours, mountain egoma, island camellia, rapeseed, rice bran, the olive that keeps its oil in flesh. It walks the growing map from Kikaijima's sesame fields to the camellia islands and the Aizu perilla mountains; enters the press house of the wooden tamajime screw and the modern expeller; reads the whole supermarket shelf bottle by bottle — tai-haku and roasted sesame, natane and canola, bran, soybean, salad oil and the fryer's blends; follows the keepers — oil pots, measures, Osaka's old market, the crushing ports, the label's law and the waste-oil collection rounds; walks the long history from Jomon walnuts and temple lamps to the wartime ration and the egoma revival; studies how oils actually behave — emulsions, smoke, drying, oxidation, the lamp's drink and the blade's film; and ends with the people of the oil: pressers, cooperatives, breeders, tasters and the towns staking their future on a seed. Every entry follows the same four fields and closes with its own official check, so any two oils can be compared in seconds. This book claims no health effects, ranks no maker, brand or region, and repeats no origin legend as fact. Written and produced in Japan by a Japanese author and publisher.