Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/242

 not possible, of course, to speak with much detail of this subject, but, reducing the matter to arithmetic, it appears that rice was prepared in ten different ways; that there were nineteen staples of fish diet and twenty-two ways of cooking them; that there were three relishes; nine edible sea-weeds; twenty-four kinds of vegetable; seventeen varieties of fruit; eleven kinds of cake; six kinds of flesh of animals and birds, and three kinds of beverages. Religious superstition interfered with diet as with everything else. The flesh of deer, boar, and cattle ceased to be eaten, but as the sport of flying hawks at wild duck and pheasants survived even the veto of Buddhism, the flesh of those birds as well as of barn-door fowl appeared constantly on the tables of the upper classes. Milk, however, and a species of cheese or butter obtained from it, went entirely out of vogue. Many combinations of edibles were tabooed from superstitious motives. For example, sesamum must not be eaten with onion; vinegar with clams; parsley with the flesh of the wild boar; ginger with plums and so on. Nearly every month, too, had its list of forbidden foods.

A strange custom had its origin in the importance attached to cleanliness in the art of cooking. Before dinner was served, the cook, dressed in ceremonial robes, came into the guest-chamber, made his obeisance, placed a cooking-board on the ground, and holding a knife in his right hand