Japan's Sengoku period can be described as the spring of many military generals. Oda Nobunaga, Takeda Shingen, and others are idols of many modern Japanese "recruiting" boys, and even their words and deeds have become the norms for many modern Japanese soldiers. For example, the 16-character program that Takeda Shingen plagiarized from Sun Tzu's Art of War, "Its disease is like the wind, its Xu is like a forest, its plunder is like fire, and it is not moving like a mountain", which has become a requirement for the practice of the modern Japanese army.
Stills of Takeda Shingen, from Shadow Warrior
In modern Japan or neighboring countries, there are many Warring States fans, and they also want to travel back to the dynasty where "warriors burst out", and here Yuda Jun advises fans to restrain themselves. Because in the era of chaotic wars in the Warring States, not only was personal safety not guaranteed, but the food at that time was simply a disaster for people today.
So what was the diet of japan's Sengoku period?
The dangerous Sengoku period of Japan, from Sanada Maru
Because of its unique terrain and climatic conditions, Japan has always been dominated by paddy fields, so in the Warring States period, most of Japan's grain was mainly rice, so their staple food was rice. However, due to the low yield of paddy fields at that time, and the priority of rice as a tax for the samurai and daimyo who fought, the crops grown in Japan at that time were in addition to rice. Farmers also have millet, oats and weeds.
Restoration of rice cultivation in Japan (Yayoi period)
Millet and oats, although not good, are still staple foods for the lower samurai and peasants. But in addition to these, the weeds that grew next to the rice, the barnyard, was also one of the staple foods of the Japanese during the war, and the barnyard was used as a pest grass by the farmers at that time in the Ming Dynasty to feed the fish, and the grain of the weed was used as fodder for livestock and poultry.
White rice from Akira Kurosawa's film Seven Samurai
So I really crossed over to the Warring States, became a farmer, and let the stomach of modern society eat grains such as barnyards and millet, I am afraid that it will really be indigestion. And even the rice that the daimyo ate at that time was different from now, the level of productivity was limited at that time, and the dehulling technology of rice could not meet the requirements at all, so unless you were a daimyo with more than 10,000 stones who could eat polished rice, otherwise the rice that some samurai ate was probably the kind of coarse rice mixed with chaff or even small stones, and I was afraid that I couldn't really eat it without a good tooth.
Akira Kurosawa's movie Seven Samurai, a farmer cooking
With the rice, the meat should not be less.
Japan has always been based on china as a teacher, in the Nara period, after the introduction of Buddhism to Japan, it was welcomed by the emperor and nobles, so the Buddhist habit of not killing and not eating meat was also implemented at that time, and Emperor Tenmu promulgated the "Meat Prohibition Order" in 675 AD, stipulating that Japan could not eat five kinds of meat "cattle, horses, dogs, apes, and chickens", and this custom continued until the Sengoku period.
The image of a pig in a clay pot in ancient times
Japan's prohibition on eating these animals is actually very understandable, cattle are used to cultivate the land, not to mention Japan, even in the Tang and Song Dynasties as an important tillage, cattle can not be slaughtered casually. Not to mention horses, which can transport goods and can also be used as cavalry combat, it should be known that the Warring States Takeda Shingen relies on hundreds of dwarf mountain horses to fight the surrounding areas constantly surrender. Dogs can take care of the home, and chickens can wake up in the morning.
In the Takeda family cavalry of the Sengoku period, horses were strategic weapons
Then these can not be eaten, the Japanese in the Warring States period can provide very little meat, because Japan is close to the sea, so fish has become the main source of their meat, basically became the people and daimyo meat standard, and in addition to fish, the Japanese people who are good at hunting will also fight some deer, rabbits, wild boar to supplement protein.
Interestingly, "pig" in Japan refers to wild boar, and the pig we are talking about now is called "dolphin" in Japan during the Warring States period because the cuisine is not good, and the upper nobility of Japan do not eat "dolphin", or feed it to hunting dogs or give it to the samurai and soldiers below, while some hungry farmers use it as a source of meat supplements.
Now Japan's "tortoise bone" ramen
Therefore, crossing back to the Warring States, if you want to eat meat, you have to hunt or eat fish by yourself, and because the fish is not easy to preserve, many times the fish that are hit must be pickled for long-term preservation, so even if you basically eat fish by the sea, it is mainly salted fish. If saury or sardines are fine, the taste is similar to the current one.
But many times the farmers' pickled fish is a salted fish like bonito, which is as hard as wood. You have to take a blade or a planer to cut it into thin slices to eat, which is also the famous "cat rice" method in Japan.
Push repeatedly with a planer
Thin fish fillets that are planed into slices
Therefore, if you want to eat wagyu beef, horse meat, chicken cutlet, and pork chops in Japan during the Warring States period, you should eat salted fish and rice for three meals a day. Poorer than the poor are now...
Knowing what specialties Japan had during the Warring States period, what did you eat for the peasants and nobles in Japan during the Warring States period?
First of all, the peasants, in Japan, the peasants are the most inferior group, 60%-70% of the grain produced by normal farmers belongs to the daimyo, while the farmers who hand over a large amount of grain can only eat some millet and weeds that are difficult to swallow, and when the harvest is good, they will eat a meal of rice. Some farmers at the seaside will go to the sea to catch the sea, to find some shellfish, sea vegetables, crabs and shrimp to supplement the rations.
Japanese vegetable soup is improved from the Warring States
Speaking of samurai, the samurai, as a mercenary of the daimyo, although he lived better than the peasants, was actually just a kulak. Before Toyotomi Hideyoshi practiced the "separation of peasants", the samurai also had to cultivate land, but the land was larger, the land was more fertile, and their staple food was basically rice. However, not all samurai could eat rice, and when the harvest was not good, the samurai sometimes had to eat rice at lunch, and the rest either drank porridge or millet with other dishes. And failed to eat hundreds of meters. Even in the relatively well-supplied Edo period, the samurai were not able to eat white rice every meal.
Sansei and Shima Zuojin eat tea and rice together
And the samurai failed to eat white rice also made an embarrassing joke, in the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese army composed of subordinate samurai, in the Sino-Japanese War, the frontal combat casualties of only a few thousand, and because of the disease fell behind tens of thousands of people, and the main disease that caused this fall behind was beriberi, and after the war, when the Japanese military was looking for the cause of beriberi, good guys, it turned out that it was because the samurai who could not eat white rice, because the army's food was too good, Eating refined rice (white rice) in the army led to a lack of vitamin B, which also allowed the Japanese army to add some grains such as wheat or millet to later meals.
Stills from "Officers and Soldiers of the Military Division", Kuroda samurai leading the rice ball
Of course, the samurai also have times to improve their food, when fighting, the treatment standards of the samurai will be raised, and the lords will naturally provide them with "official food" when they want to fight, and most of these official grains are rice balls, and sometimes they will add salted plums or kelp on the rice balls, and the samurai will even bring a little salt to sprinkle on it to eat. For the march on the main course, they will make taro root into a rope and tie it to their bodies, cook it next when cooking, and eat it with miso soup.
Samurai cooking with taro root, from "Sekigahara Battle"
Next up are the daimyo. Although the daimyo has achieved the freedom of white rice, but basically the food is not much better, the standard of normal daimyo is three dishes and one soup, which is also the standard of their reception or banquet, three dishes refers to: pickles + meat dishes + vegetarian dishes. In the meat of many daimyo who do not rely on the sea, basically eat salted fish, so although they are 3 dishes and a soup, but basically salted fish, it is estimated that this is also the reason why the Warring States daimyo generally do not live long, after all, 3 meals a day are salted fish, must not be inflamed to be strange. And salted fish is still a kind of small marine fish, and if you want to be a big fish, you have to wait until the New Year's Festival.
Takeda Shingen eats, and each daimyo has his own small dining table
Daimyo's recipes are different due to differences in strength and other reasons. For example, the "Hideyoshi Set" that is popular in Japan is the recipe of Toyotomi Hideyoshi of that year, which includes: wheat rice + taro root + miso + octopus.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi set meal at a modern Japanese restaurant
And Tokugawa Ieyasu is a very frugal and healthy person, which is one of the reasons why he sought the world, his recipes are very simple, pickled radish + plus white rice is the standard, to say that radish is the standard of the Japanese at that time, radish can be pickled and boiled soup, fried to eat, radish root and leaves can also be added to the dish. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who pays attention to health, rarely eats salted fish, and presumably not eating pickled products is also the reason for his longevity.
Tokugawa Ieyasu stills
In addition to these rulers, the recipes of some foreign daimyo were basically also around three dishes and one soup, and the Hojo brothers were called tea brothers because they liked to eat tea and rice.
Tea brew rice loyal fans, Hojo clan masa stills
Date Masamune, on the other hand, is an authentic "sardine" lover, and when he was a child, date Masamune followed his father to the beach to eat pickled sardines once, he vowed to eat grilled sardines three times a day. When he became an adult, his wish was fulfilled, and Date Masamune, who was transferred from the interior to Sendai (by the sea), also achieved sardine freedom.
The Sendai Elementary School Meal in Japan is equivalent to the Date Masamune Set Meal
In the Sengoku period of Japan, although it seemed that heroes were full of heroes and aspirations, in fact, their productivity and living conditions were still difficult, the low-level peasants and samurai were still living hard, and they wanted to eat a meal of white rice, and the daimyo of the Warring States did not have the luxury they imagined, and they had to spend their lives eating salted fish.
Therefore, in the Warring States period, Yu tian Jun felt that it was better to let him appear in games and novels, and if normal people traveled through the past, they could not pass the level of eating alone.
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