I am a Japanese food writer and cookery teacher who promotes Japanese cuisine. In the 1970s, when I first arrived in Britain as a schoolgirl, Japanese food was hard to find, to say the least. Today, to see it sold and eaten everywhere is beyond my wildest dreams. Of my many kitchen gadgets and utensils — a collection that keeps on growing, much to my husband’s bemusement — chopsticks are my ultimate essential. I cook and eat with them and carry a pair in my handbag, even when I go to non-Japanese restaurants.
Chopsticks are used in China — where they originated — the Korean peninsula, Japan and other east Asian countries such as Vietnam. Yet, while other cultures often use them with spoons, Japan is unique in only eating with chopsticks. Legend has it that the Japanese adopted them from the fear of being seen as “barbaric” by the 7th-century Sui Chinese, who were already using them.
From this copycat beginning chopsticks became deeply embedded in Japanese life and culture — hence the alternative name “life stick” (inochi no tsue). Indeed, Japanese life begins and ends with chopsticks. As a symbolic rite of passage on their 100th day, newborn babies are presented with rice and fish and a pair of chopsticks — though not expected to eat, of course. Forget learning times tables — by the time they start school, children are expected to have mastered the art of eating with chopsticks. Newly-weds, meanwhile, are given matching “couple chopsticks”: his measure 23cm~25cm, while hers are shorter — there is no such thing as chopstick gender equality. If a Japanese person asks another to “have a nabe [hotpot] with me”, it is the ultimate invitation to friendship. As a country, we are notoriously obsessed with hygiene but when we wish to make friends, we are prepared to dip chopsticks in the same hotpot to eat food together.