Download - Brainshare Public Online Library

various types of meat indicates that the aura of defilement was associated
with the game stew served there. Sakura (cherry) signified horsemeat,
momiji (maple) venison and botan (peony) wild boar, the last also being
known as ‘mountain whale’ (yamakujira). 41
While a fresh supply of game was available, good quality beef was
very scarce. Records of preserved beef being sent as a gift to the bakufu
officials by the vassals of the Hikone domain, where cattle were raised,
indicate that the Tokugawa elite occasionally consumed it despite the official
prohibition and that this health-booster was very precious. 42 An entry of
1839 in Kuwana nikki, a diary of a lower ranking samurai from the Kuwana
domain, suggests that beef was regarded as a treat by members of his
class – stewed beef is recorded to have been served to the grandson of the
diary’s author on the occasion of his birthday. 43 At the same time, beef of
dubious quality and origin ended up in the lowest type of ‘beast restaurants’,
as is admitted by Fukuzawa Yukichi in the recollection of his beefeating
experiences in Osaka in the mid-1850s:
Our way of drinking was very crude. When we did not have
much money, we would be contented to buy three or five gō of
wine and have it in the dormitory. When we felt rich – which
meant we had as much as one or two shu to spend – we would
go to a restaurant for a carouse. That was a great luxury which
did not happen often. More frequently we went to the chickenrestaurants.
Still oftener we went to the cheapest place – the
beef-stand.
There were only two places where they served beef; one
was near Naniwa Bridge, and the other near the prostitute
quarters of Shinmachi – the lowest sort of eating places. No
ordinary men ever entered them. All their customers were
gorotsuki, or city bullies, who exhibited their fully tattooed
torsos, and the students of Ogata’s school. Where the meat
came from and whether it was a cow that was killed or that had
died, we did not care. They served plenty of boiled beef with
wine and rice for a hundred and fifty mon. Certainly this meat
was often tough and smelled strong. 44
To sum up, at the point when it was officially proclaimed that beef and
mutton had just entered the emperor’s daily diet, the position of meat eating
in Japan was very ambiguous. On the one hand, it was considered defiling
by most Japanese, and those who engaged in it undertook measures to
28