Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/138

 from generation to generation. Here, again, just as in the ceremonials of tea-drinking and incense-burning, there is found an elaborate code of rules, prescribing not only the dimensions and shapes of every implement and utensil, but also the precise manner of manipulating each instrument in preparing different viands, and the mode of serving, marshalling and decorating the dishes. The vocabulary of the science is curiously abundant, probably even more so than the nomenclature of the French cuisine, and superstition is invoked to prevent combinations of viands considered contrary to natural canons. Thus, if wild-boar and leveret were served together, or pheasant and badger, or salmon and tunny-fish, or sazae (Tsubo cornutus) and dried cod, the eater might look forward to some grievous calamity within a hundred days. Another regulation prescribed that when fish and flesh formed part of the same dinner, the products of hill and garden should be marshalled on the left, those of sea and river on the right. Nearly every dish had its appropriate dressing leaves, and these were placed face upward at feasts of congratulation and face downward on occasions of mourning.

Elaborate enactments extended to the etiquette of eating and drinking as well as to the science of cooking. Wine had to be drunk to the limit of three cups, or five cups, or seven cups, or three times three cups; and even the mode of