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 during the Tokugawa feudalism, when the people’s taste of tongue grew most delicate and specialized, and their heart at once responded to the call of the first bonitos which, as Basho wrote, would have been left living at Kamakura; I am told a story perhaps true that the Yedo people (present Tokyoans) were pleased to buy them even when they had to raise the price by pawning. Oh, dear, rotten, foolish, romantic old Tokugawa civilization! It may not have been their taste itself; what they craved was, doubtless, just the feeling that they had eaten the first bonitos of the year; indeed, for that feeling, not only in food but in any other thing, they lived and died. Oh, most unpractical old Tokyoans, what slavishness to the senses!

The other day I opened the books written by Shamba, and came across a little thing called “The Face and the Back of a Man Proud in Cooking,” somewhere, with the following lines:

“I presume that your cook has been changed. No, he has not been changed? Oh, yes, he must have been changed. This honorable Rh