Before modern times, if you look at the kingdom of heaven and heaven, Japan was a "barbarian state" with poor mountains and bad waters and extremely poor materials.
Even the nobles and princes (daimyo) had three meals a day, only dried fish, pickled radish, pickles, plums, seaweed, and rice, soup rice, etc., and thus invented sushi (plum pickled rice balls), tea bubble rice and other unique foods.
Although Japan is an island country surrounded by the sea on all sides, its ancient fishing and preservation techniques were very low, (until modernization, it was possible to catch whales to supplement protein.) ）
Fresh fish are not easy to preserve, easy to deteriorate, and Oda Nobunaga, who ruled most of Japan, blamed his subordinates Mitsuhide for this, which indirectly led to the "Honnoji Change" that affected Japan's centuries-old history.
The Hojo clan, the ruler of the Kanto region of Japan, was sighed by his father simply because he put an extra spoonful of spices when he made rice with miso soup: "The Hojo clan is going to perish."
You know, the total area of Japan's Kanto Plain is 16,000 square kilometers, and the territory is already equivalent to the Spring and Autumn Medium Countries such as the Song Kingdom and the Zheng Kingdom. If it is any normal ancient country, a noble lord who rules a large area, eats soup and rice... Even if you add ten more bowls of soup, what is it?
Is this actually worth talking about? Is it worth keeping in mind? Is this also worth a father's lesson to his son? Even the monarch of a small country in China's Spring and Autumn Period a thousand years ago would not be so cold, with a large bear in charge and a large mouthful of fish soup and turtle soup to drink casually.
As for tempura (fried batter, wrapped in fish and shrimp) and sashimi, it is a rare top food for the Japanese nobility.
The founder of the Edo shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu, after eliminating his confidante Toyotomi clan and unifying Japan, he was finally able to eat tempura comfortably, because he lived to be more than 70 years old, never ate such delicious greasy food, and his stomach could not stand hanging.
His descendants, the shoguns of the Tokugawa shogunate, took it upon themselves to be taken as a warning, and no one dared to taste food anymore, and even regarded it as an important ancestral precept. So up and down, everyone had to keep the poor recipe.
As for the commoners who were stripped to the extreme by the shogunate, the princes, the nobles, and the samurai, only wild vegetables and omnivorous foods could barely wrap their stomachs. Therefore, the happiness brought about by "eating a bowl of white rice" and the paranoia about rice have become the biggest paranoia of generations of Japanese people, even in the modern era of abundant materials, which still remains in their national memory.
As for Chinese audiences watching Japanese costume dramas, they will be surprised that even the Diet of the Japanese aristocracy is so poor, just because we are too accustomed to using the instinct of "heaven and heaven" to compare other countries.
As everyone knows, in the thousands of years before modern times, China's Chinese civilization was the most highly developed civilization in the world at that time, with abundant products, exquisite clothing, literary and Chinese customs, earth spirits and masterpieces, zi classics, poetry articles, and ceremonial crowns, all of which were far ahead of the world.
There is no need to compare the various daily diets listed in the Ming and Qing dynasties, such as "Golden Plum Bottle" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Even the two earlier menus:
Tang Dynasty Prime Minister Wei Juyuan's roasted tail feast menu:
Caged Golden Soufflé (Ghee Cake), Mandala Sandwich Cake (Oven Scone), Jushengnu (Sesame Dim Sum), Guifei Red (Red Shortbread), Brahmin Light High Noodles (Cage Steamed Cake), Imperial Yellow Queen Mother Rice (Covered Yellow Rice), Seven Return Cream (Steamed Cake), Golden Bell Burning (Butter Scone), Huoming Shrimp (Fried Fresh Shrimp), Tonghua Soft Beef Sausage (Beef Sausage), Raw 24 Air Wontons (24 Kinds of Filling Raw Ravioli), Raw Duck Flower Soup Cake (Noodles), Concentric Raw Knots (Air-Dried Meat), See wind (Fried Cake), Cold Toad Soup (Clam Broth) , Tang An Gong (Tang An Box Cake), Gold and Silver Sandwich Flower Flat Cut (Crab Yellow Dim Sum), Crystal Dragon Phoenix Cake (Jujube Cake), Ceiling Gong (Pilaf), Xiang Xiang Zongzi (Honey Dried), White Dragon Fish (Mandarin Fish Fillet Soup), Shallot Vinegar Chicken, Red Sheep Branch Stick (Roasted Whole Lamb), Eight Immortals Plate (Eight Boneless Chickens), Steamed Bear (Steamed Bear Dried Meat), Warm Han Flower Stuffed Donkey Steamed (Rotten Steamed Donkey Meat), Water Refined Calf (Qing Stewed Veal), Tangled Flower Cloud Dream Meat (Yun Dream Elbow Flower), Everywhere Brocade Turtle (Qing Stewed Turtle), Soup Bath Embroidery Ball (Poured Sauce Big Meatballs) and so on.
The Southern Song Dynasty general Zhang Jun feasted on the menu of Emperor Gaozong of Song' Zhao Zhao:
Embroidered high line: citron, real orange and other 8 fruit base. Lexian dried fruit fork bag a line: lychee, round eye and other 12 preserved fruits. A line of golden herbs: brain flowers, licorice flowers and other 10 flowers.
Carved nectar frying line: carved plum balls, red flowers and other 12 nectar frying. On two lanes. A line of salty and sour incense: ginger plum, plum meat cake and other 12 preserved fruits. On two lanes.
A line of breasted pork: 10 courses of pork ribs, meat melons and other dishes. Eight plates: pick bees, new coconut ivory board and other 8 fruits.
One line of cutting fruit: spring root, cut green orange, raw lotus root collar and other 8 fresh fruits.
A line of new fruits: salted bayberry, sugarcane white incense and other 12 new fruits.
A line of salty and sour incense: change lychee manna cake, sugar frosting jade bee and other 12 preserved fruits.
Fifteen drinks: 2 dishes per dish, a total of 30 dishes, namely flower cooking quail, lychee white loin, milk room stick, three crisp soup, lamb tongue stick, budding belly, palm stick, quail soup, belly fat, mandarin duck fried belly, shark belly, fried shark lining soup, eel fried horseshoe, goose leaf soup, crab stuffed tangle Milkhouse jade soup, fresh shrimp hoof soup, southern fried eel, handwashed crab, crucian carp fake clam, five treasures, crab clear soup, quail crystal soup, pork belly fake river, shrimp fir, shrimp soup, jellyfish, two-color cocoon soup, clam raw, blood powder soup.
Cuttings: 5 dishes, namely fried white loin, hot belly, hot quail, run chicken, run rabbit, hot cooking cake, non-hot cooking cake diaphragm.
Persuade the wine fruit library to be ten times: carved nectar frying, shixin fruit, etc. 10 times, each fan 12 fruits, a total of 120 fruits.
Ten flavors of kitchen persuasion wine: a total of 10 dishes, namely jiang fried belly, jiang sheng, cockle stick, ginger vinegar raw snail, fragrant snail fried belly, ginger vinegar fake public rights, simmered oysters, oyster fried belly, fake public power fried belly, cockroach fried belly.
Ten dishes: a total of 10 dishes, namely lotus duck skewers, cocoon soup, three treasures, southern stir-fried eel, jellyfish, quail soup, fish soup, three crisp soup, hand crab, fried belly.
The dishes are divided into three rounds, each round has a different pattern, and there are also four tables on the thin base, and two tables on the second fine base, which contain honey fried salty acid, shixin breast wax and other pieces.
Although these Chinese food menus hundreds of years ago from the Ming Dynasty lacked a large number of spices and ingredients imported from the Americas after the great geographical discovery, they were enough to make the imperial diets of any country in the world before industrialization ashamed of themselves, let alone a poor and hungry state like Japan.
It is true that the extravagant life of the ruling class is certainly above the people's fat and people's anointing of tens of millions of people, but in ancient China, the eleven-year-old tax system and the fifteen-one tax system were widely implemented for a long time, and the general tax burden was 6% to 10%, and some dynasties (such as the Han Jing Emperor) and even the thirty-one tax system.
As for Japan, the Hojo clan mentioned above, in the land under their rule, engaged in the "four gong and six people system" (40% tax burden), which is already a rare good governance in Japan, and made itself a public enemy of other princes who generally engaged in the "six gongs and four people system" (60% tax burden), and was finally eradicated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Even in some periods, some princes, such as the Tokugawa shogunate, engaged in the "seven princes and three people's system" (70% tax burden) was also common.
Therefore, compared with Japan, a very poor and small country, ancient China was of course a dream country like a god, a veritable heavenly kingdom.
It is also in this environment of extreme poverty of materials that the Japanese will develop a national nature of extreme inward rolling and contempt for life, on the one hand, a large number of newborns are drowned, on the other hand, the elderly take the initiative to starve to death in the mountains and forests as soon as they are old, or bury themselves in the belly of wild animals to reduce the burden on their children. Moreover, "you can't cause trouble for others", the fear of social death is far more than physiological death, and when a difficult problem arises, it has become the instinct of the Japanese to commit suicide and apologize.
In fact, a basic common sense that many people do not know, China's agricultural taxes have been the lowest in the ancient world since ancient times. Every qualified emperor understands the most simple truth, that is, to lightly dispense with thin endowments, and to be a Ming Jun.
However, the low social productive forces have led to the fact that the [self-employed peasants] are often unable to withstand large-scale natural disasters, and they have to sell their land, become tenant farmers, cultivate land for landlords, and only need to pay taxes with the government when they have land.
Therefore, in the early years of the rise of each dynasty, a large number of self-cultivating farmers existed, natural politics was clear, and the peace and prosperity were prosperous.
In the middle and late period of the dynasty, with the passage of time, the land annexation was serious, and a large number of peasants sold their land and became the tenants of the powerful landlords, the light and thin endowment of the imperial court, the benefits all went to the landlords, the natural people did not have a good life, rebelled in groups, and the princes divided, until through the annexation war, a new dynasty was formed, which is the so-called "three-hundred-year dynastic cycle law".
However, this kind of flowing water is not corrupt, the household center is not beetle, and the cycle of the three-hundred-year dynastic cycle law is repeated, and the old and the new also determine the advanced nature of the Chinese civilization compared to the European medieval aristocratic civilization, let alone the well frog land that advocates the "Son of Heaven and the Son of Heaven".
In fact, the so-called popularity of [Japanese cuisine] is the result of Japan's efforts in recent decades to export culture to Europe, the United States and East Asia, just as the history of Japan's Sengoku period has been popularized through the game and animation industries.
Things like plum rice balls and fried batter, even if the surface is carved to be exquisite and abnormal, it is difficult to change the essence of its small amount and tastelessness, as for how much "craftsman spirit" is contained in it, who is really stupid.