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Although simplicity was a defining feature of the original, sixteenthcentury
kaiseki, over time the style gradually became less austere and more
beautiful to the eye. This change became particularly pronounced when, in
the course of the nineteenth century, kaiseki was embraced by prestigious
restaurants. Restaurant chefs changed somewhat the succession of the
courses; for example, instead of serving rice at the beginning of the meal,
they served it at the very end in order to keep their customers hungry and
let them enjoy a long sequence of dishes.
A Conventional Restaurant Kaiseki Meal: 63
First course: an assorted dish (kuchitori)
Second course: sashimi
Third course: simmered dish (nimono)
Fourth course: grilled dish (yakimono)
Fifth course: steamed dish (mushimono)
Sixth course: deep-fried dish (agemono)
Seventh course: vinegared dish (sunomono)
Eighth course: rice, soup, pickled vegetables
Restaurateurs not only altered the structure of kaiseki, but also made it
more extravagant, changing the character of the meal from that of ritualized
tranquillity to that of epicurean enjoyment of excellent food. At this
point two different styles of kaiseki began to diversify – a specialized meal
served at tea gatherings and generally referred to today as chakaiseki (tea
kaiseki), and an exclusive haute cuisine served at restaurants generally
known as enkaiseki (banqueting kaiseki). In order to distinguish clearly
the tea kaiseki from its restaurant copy, a new set of ideograms (but pronounced
exactly the same) came into wider use. While the original set of
characters had an ordinary meaning of a ‘banquet’, ‘meal’ or ‘menu’, the
new set of characters, which began to appear in tea-ceremony literature
from the middle of the seventeenth century, had a strong ideological connotation.
In a literal translation it meant ‘rock held to one’s bosom’, referring
to the fact that in the same way that Zen monks, during the course of
their austerities, placed warm stones in the bosoms of their robes to stave
off hunger, this was a simple meal intended to help people bear hunger
pangs. 64 The new set of characters stressed the spiritual value of tea kaiseki,
and the popularization of the new term during the nineteenth century
was clearly a reaction to the increasing dominance of the more flamboyant
version of kaiseki in prestigious restaurants.
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