Two recipes:
One, millet rice, two pieces of boiled radish
Two, rice, one small fish two fingers wide, one small dish of pickled radish, one cup of boiled wild greens in plain water, one small bowl of miso soup
In fact, the first recipe is the breakfast and lunch of a poor man's family in the Warring States period, while the second is the breakfast and dinner of a rich man's family in the Warring States period. It seems that these two recipes are as shabby as each other, but the people of the Warring States period did live from day to day eating such things. Peasants who ate millet rice dreamed of eating rice like the nobles.
7
All life in the Warring States period revolved around war; eating to live, living to fight, and fighting to eat better.
Japan - a rice-producing country - grew rice on almost all of the country's farmland. But rice was a luxury in those days for the common people who grew it.
In Akira Kurosawa's film "Seven Samurai," mountain thieves in the hills covet the small amount of rice in the villages below, so they come down to rob the rice during the fall harvest. In order to defend their rice, the peasants take what little rice they have left in the village and go to the towns to recruit poor samurai to defend the village, and the only condition of recruitment they can come up with is that they eat enough rice at all times.
While I don't know why the bandits didn't change a rich place to rob, but they were staring at the village which was poor to the point that there was nothing but rice, but this also proves from the side that rice is really a rare thing in this era. Later, the village farmers also really rely on the conditions of this meal have rice to eat, recruited seven varied standards of the samurai, although the seven samurai said that in order to protect a party so unpaid, but can eat rice on them more or less is also a certain attraction, after all, in that era, the men are always hungry, can eat is really a rare thing of beauty.
The story of Takeda and Imagawa's attack on the Hojo family's Matsuyama Castle is particularly representative of how expensive rice was in Japan during the Warring States period.
Takeda and Imagawa attacked Matsuyama Castle of the Hojo family, which was located in Musashi, and the two armies fought hard for many days, and the Hojo army's water supply was cut off, and the castle was about to be destroyed. The two armies thought that Matsuyama Castle was about to fall, but they found that the defenders of Matsuyama Castle actually washed their horses with water in the most conspicuous place of the castle, and the defenders of Matsuyama Castle, who had problems in drinking water, actually had abundant water to wash their horses, which made the attackers very frustrated. In the end, both sides succeeded in their peace talks and Matsuyama Castle was peacefully taken over by the Imagawa family. Later, when the victorious side asked about the washing of horses, they realized that there was really no water left in the castle at that time, and what the soldiers used to wash their horses at the castle was rice. The soldiers used rice to wash the horses at the city gate. They poured the rice in a basin down the horses, and from a distance it looked as if they were washing them with water. At that time, most of the soldiers were ordinary farmers who seldom came into contact with rice in their lives, so from a distance, even if they felt suspicious, they would not suspect that the substance disguised as water was actually rice.
Then the era of Japan's low food production, and even insufficient to supply the whole country to eat, the general public to ensure that do not starve to death, in addition to fishing seafood will have to play game, even in the year of abundance of the mountain to dig wild vegetables. Plus that time also does not pay attention to what import and export of food, countries are their own full count, but in the end can not eat that depends on the conditions of the countries.
There were very few resources available in Japan at that time, and agricultural productivity was all very low, so the reason why many lords kept plundering other people's territories was actually to grab resources within other territories. As for the common people, it can be said that almost all of them ate chaff and drank more than enough, so many of them simply gave up farming and went to war, and if they were lucky they might even be able to get credit for their work and be rewarded. At that time, the Japanese nation for poultry and livestock breeding is not common, many poultry and livestock only large landowners have, the general people caught fish will not eat, because they also pay taxes to the lord, so for fish such as meat and fish is generally sold and not eat, the people are usually most of the chaff to drink thin.
As for other local lords, if they are close to the sea, they usually take fish from the sea as their main meat and fish food, and on rare occasions, they will go hunting and eat some wild game in the mountains during special festivals. Takeda family because of the Kofu country in such a mountainous area, so even the sea fish such as meat is very little, usually eat some of the small fish from the nearby rivers or go to other countries to buy sea fish, of course, rare also go to hunt some game, but after all, hunting time-consuming, and can be hunted animals are not much. However, lords like Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu, who had large territories afterward, were able to eat a lot of game that was difficult for ordinary people to enjoy, such as venison, swan, wild boar, hare, and sea cucumber, etc. But for the relatively low status lords, they were able to eat a lot of game. But for the relatively low status of the lords are not so lucky, so at that time their daily life is still quite economical, weekdays also did not eat what delicious, do not economize naturally can not ......
8 words back, it is because of the production of rice is very low, so that this white rice has become the lords around the particularly designated as a major strategic material. Peasants in the ground toil for a year to plant rice is basically in the completion of a task, the collection of rice is often all to be sent as a tribute to the lord's castle, they can only eat millet rice nibbling carrots and eating vegetables, some farmers have never even tasted their own planted rice what flavor.
Just as the introduction of corn and potatoes made China's population grow, the thing that made the Japanese barely able to feed themselves was the daikon radish.
Daikon radish was only about the thickness of a finger when it was first introduced to Japan, but after the hard work of Japanese farmers, it finally became about the thickness of an arm. Radish nutritious and easy to grow, soon became the main food of the farmers, even the nobles also favored radish, so that on the table of the aristocracy, and almost to the point of no radish without the feast.
Even if the rich eat rice, the poor eat millet radish, mountainous Japan food is still not quite enough to eat. So in the ancient times, the Japanese people have formed a day only to eat breakfast and lunch two meals of habit, the morning to the afternoon to work, so must eat to maintain physical strength, the night is rest time, plus that time people do not have a lot of entertainment, as long as early to bed on the stomach is not hungry, so it will be able to save a meal of food. This custom was not only observed by the farmers, but also by the emperor and the samurai, and it became an unwritten rule that all the people in the country did not eat dinner. Only, the nobles had a richer night life, so when they were really hungry, they could still find some snacks to eat.
Some conditions of the Japanese people eat meals are adhering to the split-meal system, each person in front of a small table, which is set with three dishes, a soup and a bowl of rice, even if the party is held is also so that each eat their own. The biggest difference between these rich and poor recipes is that you can eat a little meat dishes. However, the rich could only make do with fish and shellfish, which was already the most extravagant food they could eat. But strangely enough, Japan, being an island nation, neither the nobles nor the samurai would let go of eating seafood at will, and their meat dish for a regular meal would usually only consist of a piece of fish small enough for only a few bites, or a few slices of pickled shellfish. Fish and shellfish basically do not appear at the same time, a meal of meat dishes can only appear one, the rich people always maintain a meat, two veggies and a bowl of soup diet specifications.
The reason for maintaining the three-course meal standard is said to be because early Japanese nobles avoided the four-course meal because it harmonized with death, so they did not engage in the four-course meal like the Chinese.
Of course, some rich people occasionally eat something else for a change. In the historical drama "Takeda Shingen," the commander of the Hojo family, Hojo Shikan, used to enjoy the sea breeze and eat seafood like shrimp and shellfish simmered in large pots (kind of like Northeast China's messy stew) on the beach.
Even for lords, such delicacies are not eaten whenever they want. Usually they want to have a small drink or something with the main meal, and the small dishes that can go down well are nothing more than a small finger-thin piece of salted fish, or two pieces of pickled daikon radish. During the Warring States period, the Japanese faithfully practiced the Zen Buddhist teaching of "not to eat without reason," and seldom ate outside of the main meal, though of course they did not have the means to do so. Even if they were rich, the fish they ate at the main meal was only enough for one meal, and the really high quality fish and big fish were only eaten at weddings and New Year's celebrations.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, who later created the Edo period, ate frugally even after the unification of the Warring States period, seldom ate any fish and ate some pickled radish with rice every day. One day he was walking around his house and saw some maids complaining, so he went over to see what was going on.
The maids of honor said, "Now the food is really too bad, small dishes are pickled radish! "
Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was known for treating people gently, smiled and said, "Well, since you don't like it, don't eat it."
From then on, the pickled radish, which the maids used as a side dish, was withdrawn, and the maids had to eat white rice dry.
This story, while showing Ieyasu's pettiness, also shows us the recipes for rice and pickled daikon radish, the recipes of the noble lord of a country, and the poignancy of the situation is palpable.
The Warring States period was a time of unprecedented chaos in Japan, when food production hit rock bottom and samurai were often underfed, and many lords had to grow their own food from time to time, and their wives would take some of their men up into the mountains to dig for wild vegetables.
When the city lords lived so miserably, the peasants' lives were even more miserable. In Japan, it has become the norm to tax the six communes and four people, meaning that 60 percent of the output goes to the government and 40 percent to themselves, and that's not counting the landlords' share of the land rent. Sometimes, ruthless lords would set the tax at seven kongs and three mins, or even eight kongs and two mins. The cause of the Shimabara Peasants' Revolt was the lords charging 100,000 koku of rent on land that only produced 80,000 koku of grain.
There were simply not enough rations to go around, so to fill their bellies, the peasants picked shells and fished for fish and dug for wild vegetables, and they would find and eat whatever they could - and that wasn't even in the wilderness years. The poor Japanese did not know that across the sea in China there was a good thing called "Guanyin earth", which, if eaten, would make the stomach swell for a day without food, although occasionally the swelling would kill.
Hunger was an insurmountable problem throughout the Warring States period, when everyone from samurai to peasants couldn't get enough to eat, let alone eat well. I'm afraid both the rich and the poor would have been happy if they could have eaten the two recipes listed at the beginning of this post.
During the Warring States period, as wars became more frequent, food became a priority for the samurai. Originally, meat was not consumed among the nobles (it is said that the emperor of which generation had some kind of meat ban, and of course it was the ministers who had these preoccupations), and meat food was eaten only by peasant hunters who had no status. Gradually the ministers became malnourished, while the farmers or hunters who hunted everything were much healthier.
The samurai who fought in wars compared their lives with their vain status, and in the end probably felt that it was their lives and their stomachs that were more important. And venison is the best of the best, hence the famous dish of roasted venison with pepper and salt. However, pepper salt roasted venison is not suitable for dry food, and it takes some time to make this dish well, which is a bit inappropriate on the battlefield.
In Japan during the Warring States period, although there was no rule forbidding peasants to eat rice, peasants basically didn't have a chance to eat it because it was produced in small quantities, and even the smallest amount of output was taken away by the lords. It was because eating rice was almost the monopoly of the privileged class that the lords sent people carrying rice to recruit soldiers, and there were no other favorable conditions for being a soldier, except that you could eat rice all the time, and by the way, you could also rob the enemy's territory to supplement your family's income. Of course, the latter is only worthwhile if you come back from the battlefield alive, but the former is just too attractive to idle peasants who don't have enough to eat, and so there are many peasants who voluntarily go to the front line to fight for their lives in order to taste what their own grown rice tastes like.
The most important use of rice as a strategic material was to be eaten as military food when marching to war.
As a mountainous country, Japan's transportation is very undeveloped, so it would have been too much trouble for the Chinese army to march and fight with a large number of pots and pans. In order to ensure mobility when marching through mountainous terrain, it was best not to take anything with you, so rice balls became the main form of military rations in the Warring States period.
The biggest advantage of the rice ball is that it is easy to carry, easy to eat, no need for containers and chopsticks, you can eat it, and it is not easy to go rancid. The production of rice balls is also very simple, is the rice with the hands into a ball, in the heart of the hand repeatedly compacted on it. In order to make the flavorless rice balls taste better, sometimes a small plum is put inside, and for the more advanced ones, the outside is wrapped in seaweed cut into small pieces, which is said to be still common nowadays, and I think it's called sushi, but the filling is much more luxurious.
The making of onigiri was most often done before the war, and they were usually made by the women of a soldier's or samurai's household as a dry ration to take with them. After making them, they were wrapped up in long strips of dried food cloth, and according to the standard of one rice ball for one meal and two rice balls for one day, then a rope was used to tie a knot on the outside of the bag, and finally tied diagonally on the shoulder of the soldier or samurai, and this kind of dried food was usually carried for no more than ten days at the most. When you need to eat, just pull the knot, you can take out enough rice balls for one meal, which is really a convenient design. This type of cloth bag for carrying soldier's rations was called "obi".
In addition to the dry rations carried by individuals, lords also had to make large quantities of onigiri (rice balls) as communal rations, a task that was often done by the lord's wife with the handmaidens of the town and the women of the samurai's household who volunteered to do it as a collective labor force. In fact, it was not an easy job for a lord's wife in the Warring States period. Not only did she have to take care of her husband, but she also had to lead the maidservants and samurai women to go digging in the mountains for wild greens, to tie up arrows, and even to clean and make up the heads of the enemies, which was not only hard work and daring, but also a great deal of organizational skills.
These rice balls, which were used as public rations, had to be rolled up in clean straw mats after they were made and transported on large carts pulled by human power, ready to be distributed to soldiers for consumption. In addition to the prepared food, a lot of raw rice had to be prepared as military rations to be eaten in case the war was prolonged.
After the general ordered a rest, the soldiers would find a clean piece of grass to sit on, build a fire, boil some hot water, and take out a meal's portion of rice and roast it over the fire to eat. Some people like to put the rice balls in the fire to char, so that eating is also a unique flavor, and later this grilled rice balls also became an important form of staple food in the Japanese cuisine to this day.
The sour umeboshi juice seeps into the rice, making the onigiri even more flavorful to eat, and the seaweed, which has a salty sea salt flavor of its own, makes it possible for onigiri eaters to eat it as a side dish. In addition, wrapped in the rice balls outside the seaweed also plays the role of wrapping paper, so that the user does not need to directly touch the sticky rice, hand dirty, this point is very much a reflection of the Japanese people in the details of the heart; and umeboshi has a certain antiseptic effect, and can kill the gradual deterioration of the rice balls of the Escherichia coli and Streptococcus bacteria, the warring states era of the Japanese may not be aware of this, but later scientific evidence, umeboshi put in the rice balls really have many benefits. However, it has since been scientifically proven that ume plums in onigiri have many benefits. Seaweed has a variety of nutrients and is easy to dry and eat, so it's a brilliant design solution for wrapping paper and portable dishes.
8While onigiri was easy to fill, it was also easy to make the samurai thirsty, so the samurai carried roasted miso cubes with them, and when they went into battle, they could drink it after dissolving it in soup. Thus, miso soup, which is absolutely indispensable in Japanese cuisine, was born. For the samurai, who could enjoy a serving of miso soup, katsuobushi was a luxury item. The noodles were imported from China before the Muromachi period, and at that time, in addition to soy sauce and sake, seasonings such as shibori and kombu were also invented, adding to the flavor of the soup.
It is impossible to talk about noodles without mentioning Shingen Takeda, the Tiger of Kofu.
The Battle of Kawanakajima was an inconclusive battle between the Takeda and Uesugi clans, two of the most powerful warriors of the Warring States period. The total number of troops deployed by both sides was more than 30,000, which is definitely a strategic battle worthy of being written about in the Warring States period, when a battle could easily involve hundreds of men.
In this battle, Takeda's army used the woodpecker tactic, dividing his army into two groups, one large group sneaking up on the Uesugi army's home position at Tsumugi Mountain, and 8,000 troops laying out in Hachiman Plain, ready to give the Uesugi a gyoza (dumpling) attack. As a result, Takeda Shingen's plan was uncovered by Uesugi Kenshin (who is said to have seen the cooking smoke inside Takeda's army formation and felt that something was not right - it still had something to do with food), and so he came down from the mountain ahead of time to attack Takeda's main formation, which only had 8,000 men, and in the end, it is said that Uesugi rode into Takeda's camp on a single horse, and almost took Takeda Shingen's head off. Thanks to these 8,000 people fought to the end and finally carried until the reinforcements appeared, which turned out to be safe.
The time of the battle was 7:30 in the morning to the afternoon, in the middle of the two sides did not have time to eat (where this effort ......), but the strength of the army disadvantage of the 8,000 Takeda army has not been the absolute superiority of the Uesugi army to be routed. Analyzing the reason, besides the usual training and Takeda Shingen's command scheduling and leadership, there is also a little attention is that, although they are both famous generals of the Warring States period + the division of a hundred battles, the Takeda army in the physical strength of the Uesugi army is not necessarily better, so even if they did not eat lunch also still able to hold out.
The secret lies in the fact that Takeda Shingen usually promoted the consumption of easy-to-digest knife-shaved noodles among his troops and ate pasta year-round.
In fact, there was no real sense of noodles in Japan at that time, and that stuff was not brought to Japan until Zhu Shunshui, a great Confucian scholar in the Ming Dynasty, after the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the eastward transition. What was eaten at that time was actually a Japanese version of knife-shaved noodles said to have been brought over from the Tang Dynasty, sometimes called houtou noodles, or udon noodles. It was also very convenient. When taking a break from fighting, the warriors simply drew out their knives, chipped the dough piece by piece, boiled it in a pot, and mixed it with salted vegetables. The food favored by Shingen Takeda's Koshu army was to cook this with vegetables and flavor it with miso, which was extremely nutritious for the soldiers of an army that had to use physical strength to win.
Salted vegetables, too, are said to have been greatly promoted by Shingen Takeda. The main varieties of pickles at the time were those made from radishes and wild greens. Pickles are very salty, cut a small piece of rice, and easy to carry, not easy to deteriorate, but also to ensure that the soldiers can take in vitamins, is really marching and fighting to kill the necessary.
Long eat knife-shaved noodles with salted vegetables, so that the Takeda army's physical strength to be greatly superior to only eat rice Uesugi army, so a day of combat down, hungry Uesugi army physical strength has long been overwhelmed, it is estimated that there is because of hypoglycemia fainted attrition. The Takeda army, which does not have the advantage in terms of numbers, was able to hold out with the bowl of noodles they ate in the morning.
Well, it's just a joke, but perhaps Takeda Shingen's promotion of knife-shaved noodles and pickled vegetables in his army was really for that purpose. In Yamanashi Prefecture, Shingen's hometown, knife-shaved noodles are still a local specialty, and some big restaurants still have a sign in front saying "This is where Shingen's power originated!"
Some samurai who were picky about their food were unwilling to join the soldiers in eating dry rice balls, and ate bento boxed lunches like office workers. These boxed lunches had rice and vegetables, and were still hot and freshly cooked in beautifully lacquered lunch boxes, so naturally they were much tastier than rice balls.
cx19800425 daikoku shou 8 In fact, the Uesugi army also had its own specialty to carry military food, known as "Hinomaru Bento".
Making this Hinomaru Bento is very simple, using a container that can hold two and a half scoops (about 350 grams) called a "noodle bucket", filled with rice with a small plum in the middle, and then put the whole thing into the "waist", it is a guest! Bento. This is probably the origin of the earliest bento, even though it wasn't even called a bento at that time.
Naturally, at that time, the word "bento" did not exclusively refer to boxed lunches, and "receiving a bento" was not an unlucky word at that time.
In addition, the Takeda Army used miso as a side dish for their rations. The Takeda army consumed "field miso," also known as "white miso," which was made by fermenting soybeans, currants, salt, and soybean broth. "It is said that this miso not only tastes good with rice, but also relieves fatigue and cures stomach problems. Takeda's army was especially strong after eating the "field miso," which was one of the reasons why Takeda's army was physically stronger than Uesugi's.
In addition, Takeda's army was also more powerful than Uesugi's army in terms of physical strength.
Another person who used miso as food for his army was Date Masamune, who used "Sendai miso," which had a long shelf life. During the invasion of Korea, almost all of the miso brought by the generals went bad, but only the Sendai Miso of Date's army still tasted fresh. "Sendai Miso" became the traditional military miso of the Date family during the Edo period, and was shipped to Edo every year by boat from the Sendai Clan. However, since there were as many as 3,000 Sendai Clan soldiers in Edo, it was very time-consuming and labor-intensive to transport the miso, so they decided to make their own Sendai Miso at their residence in Ooi, which was located in Edo. The smell of miso came out of Date's house all day long, and the people of Edo called Date's house in Edo the "Miso House".
cx19800425 daikoku mamoru 8 back to the onigiri side.
On a normal day, soldiers only eat to 80% full, and only two meals a day, two rice balls are enough to ensure that a soldier's physical strength for a day; coupled with the scope of the battle at that time is not large, most of the time only within a few kilometers of the circumference, and the most far away is not more than a hundred kilometers, the Kansai hegemon Mouri Motomu on the battle with the tycoons of the Oda family, the two towns are less than two kilometers, the actual time will be spent in the travel time! It wasn't that long, so those skirmishes would often be over by the time the soldiers finished eating the rice balls they carried.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi's two large-scale marches in his life, the first was to eliminate Akechi Mitsuhide's "China Turnaround", and the other was to eliminate Shibata Katsuya's Battle of Bitch Lake, and he didn't carry a lot of rations in order to move forward with light loads in the two battles. At that time, Hideyoshi took out ten times the price of gold and silver as a price, and ordered the people and merchants on the roadside to open their warehouses, take out all the rice from their houses, cook it, wrap it in straw bags with salt water on the inside, and carry it with the army by oxen and horses. If the army trotted along the way and became hungry, they would reach into the rice bag and take a handful of rice soaked in salt water and eat it. The purpose of pouring salt water is to ensure that the rice is not rancid, penetration of salt water hot rice in the hungry soldiers eat actually extraordinarily delicious. It's just that in those days before appendectomy, I don't know how many soldiers got acute appendicitis and hung up while eating on the run.
Of course, the rice balls were just expedient food made for ease of portability; they weren't as good as freshly cooked food, after all.
ReplyCollectedReply12Floor2012-07-30 17:12Report |I'll chime in
cx19800425 Daikoku Shou 8I remember in the movie Oda Nobunaga, depicting the Shotokuji meeting at the banquet, Nobunaga and Dosan were siging and squeaking as they drank thin rice along with their kimchi. From this we can see that probably because of the war, even the so-called banquet was only on such a scale. But we can learn from another perspective that rice and kimchi were indeed more common foods at that time, and not just at breakfast and dinner.
At the temples, both the Ichijo sect and the old sect of Honganji Temple, vegetarianism was the order of the day. Tofu made with oil and miso, which was started in the Kamakura period, gradually became the main dish of the monks. I don't know whether it was because it was so easy to make with wheat flour or because the monks were influenced by the customs of northern China, but wheat-flour noodles, udon noodles, bean paste buns, and other wheat-flour foods were served as afternoon tea snacks.
Now let's talk about tea. Tea was already very popular in the Kamakura period. There is a record of a third-generation general named Minamoto Mitsushige drinking tea and getting rid of his hangover immediately. And, as a result, tea was believed to have a life-prolonging effect.
Tea-flavored rice, often encountered when watching some of the literature and films depicting ancient Japanese themes, seems to be a fairly Japanese food. In fact, it is not, not only in Japan, China also has, folk is not there "delicious but tea bubble rice" said? But what I'm going to talk about here is just the Japanese tea puffed rice.
To talk about tea and rice, we have to talk about the ancient Japanese diet. In ancient times, the aristocrats generally ate rice and fish, and chicken, there were no domestic pigs and sheep in Japan, cattle were not allowed to be beheaded, beheading of farm cattle is a serious crime, which is the same as almost all of the farming nation, the domestic pig and sheep were later introduced to Japan after the Meiji Restoration. As for wild boars, they were food for the peasants. The samurai class, because of their grueling training and intense war life, ate a lot of "dry rice" (which is a Japanese term for a food similar to Chinese rice cakes), chawanmushi, and onigiri (rice balls).
As the name suggests, tea soaked rice is made with cold rice in hot tea water and topped with salt, dried plums, and seaweed, etc. The tea is usually green tea, cut into strips, and soaked with the rice. The tea is usually green tea, cut into strips and soaked with the rice so that the tea's fresh aroma can penetrate the rice. Samurai who are more conscientious about their diet and have some financial means also serve it with fish.
The preparation of chawanmushi is very easy, and the ingredients are very simple, as long as the cooked rice, tea, salt and boiling water are all available, you can make a bowl of the most basic chawanmushi. The ingredients were also easy to carry, and eating it saved time and tasted good. That is why the samurai class, especially in battle, commonly relied on teabobs as their staple food.
This characteristic allowed the samurai order to fight to a greater extent. They didn't have to carry too much fresh food in battle like ancient Chinese or Indian armies did, so that they didn't rely excessively on logistical supplies from the rear. Although a chronic lack of fresh food could lead to malnutrition and reduce a soldier's fighting ability, Japanese battles were not very intense battles, so chappatis were up to the task. During the intense life of battle, chappatis became the most popular food among the samurai.