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William Gray Dixon (1854–1928), who came to teach at the Imperial
College of Engineering in Tokyo in the 1870s, has left us with a description
of his Japanese cook, which unveils the relatively high status enjoyed
by the domestic servants of a Westerner in late nineteenth-century Japan.
Dixon writes that the cook ‘rejoiced in the possession of more than one
suit of European clothes, and might, on important occasions, be seen in a
velvet coat and striped trousers, and with a gilt watch-chain and seals
hanging from his breast and a cigarette in his mouth . . . His skill in cooking
was great, and his ambition still greater.’ 20 Determined young people
like Dixon’s cook were the ones responsible for constructing the foundations
of Western-style gastronomy in Japan.
Aiming at their own comfort and mostly unconscious of the longterm
implications that their presence entailed, Western residents of
Hakodate, Nagasaki, Yokohama and Kobe did their utmost to replicate in
Japan the living conditions at home. By doing so, they created a multiplicity
of channels that facilitated the future diffusion of Western food among
wider sections of the Japanese population. Handing over the knowledge
and skills of Western cookery to native Japanese constituted one of the
most important channels.
Domesticating Yōshoku
A characteristic feature of pre-modern Japanese cities was a full-blown
and differentiated gastronomy. Restaurant culture had flourished since the
late seventeenth century, with the city of Edo, with a population exceeding
one million, clearly taking the lead as the culinary capital. 21 The variety
and refinement of eating-out facilities in the pre-modern cities were
reflected in the abundance of restaurant guides and other culinary publications
that appeared during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often
issued as marketing devices by the restaurateurs themselves. 22 Exclusive
restaurants developed under the patronage of wealthy merchants and the
samurai class, while cheap eateries and food stalls catered for all-comers.
The eating establishments were usually classified according to the type
of food they served, for example, a sobaya served buckwheat noodles
(soba), a tenpuraya deep-fried fish in batter (tenpura) and a sushiya, sushi. 23
However, foreign cuisine was entirely lacking. Nagasaki – the Japanese
merchant enclave that since the seventeenth century had held state monopoly
on international trade – was an exception; eating places that specialized
in catering for Dutch traders and restaurants serving hybrid Japanese-
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