Texts that discussed food and eating in Tokugawa Japan came in both informational and in literary forms. Many texts that would be considered informational gave advice primarily on what to eat and how to eat. Authors frequently related food to medicine, talking a lot about what to eat to be healthy in general, and also what to eat to cure ailments; Chinese medicine understandings on the relationship between food as medicine were commonly brought up. Another important type of circulating food text was cookbooks. Cookbooks could be considered either informational or literary to different people, and this depended on the social class of whoever was reading it. The circulation of certain food texts in Tokugawa Japan influenced a national understanding of health in relation to Chinese medicine highlighting a difference from the West at that time, and the circulation of cookbooks in his period helped to maintain the separation of social classes by giving citizens to practice the sumptuary laws, which restricted certain classes from eating certain foods, a way to enjoy and fantasize about foods they could not eat. Many widely circulated food texts in Tokugawa Japan doubled as medical texts, providing information based on Eastern medicine on the more clinical applications of food and maintaining certain diets. Yojokun: Life Lessons from a Samurai by Kaibara Ekiken was published in 1713 and was a commonly circulated medical text and is still studied by Eastern medicine practitioners. This is one example of a text that helped shape the Japanese view of food at the time, as it produced examples of food as medicine instead of just fuel. Ekiken explains that “Food nurtures the body and should not become a means of damaging the body. Thus, you should always choose food that is nourishing and has a beneficial quality.” Texts like this influenced a view in Tokugawa Japan of food that valued nutrition, and Chinese medicine played a big part in what nutrition meant because of these texts. However, in this specific time period cookbooks were hugely important culinary texts, which had vast social influence and implications. While citizens were required to follow the food-related sumptuary laws that were in place, cookbooks did not; cookbooks were not restricted in what types of food they could talk about and were also not restricted from certain readers.
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The books were also controlled by the fact that the recipes were extremely vague and unlike a typical cookbook recipe one would find today. For instance, a recipe for “Kōren” in The Southern Barbarian’s Cookbook published in the 17th century reads: “With white rice flour and rice flour dyed red, yellow, and blue, make four colors of flowers. Grill these separately. There are oral instructions.” The recipe provides little detail or explanation, and the allusion to “oral instructions” implies that one would have to have outside knowledge or instruction to even begin to make this dish, which peasants and readers-for-fun would obviously have no access to. In his book The Practices of Everyday Life, Michel De Certeau delves into the idea that, “there is a ‘diet hierarchy’ that overlaps a social hierarchy.” Cookbooks perfectly illustrate and reinforce this overlap, as one’s social standing would determine what one ate and what one knew how to eat, and would therefore become a visible diet hierarchy in Tokugawa
The books were also controlled by the fact that the recipes were extremely vague and unlike a typical cookbook recipe one would find today. For instance, a recipe for “Kōren” in The Southern Barbarian’s Cookbook published in the 17th century reads: “With white rice flour and rice flour dyed red, yellow, and blue, make four colors of flowers. Grill these separately. There are oral instructions.” The recipe provides little detail or explanation, and the allusion to “oral instructions” implies that one would have to have outside knowledge or instruction to even begin to make this dish, which peasants and readers-for-fun would obviously have no access to. In his book The Practices of Everyday Life, Michel De Certeau delves into the idea that, “there is a ‘diet hierarchy’ that overlaps a social hierarchy.” Cookbooks perfectly illustrate and reinforce this overlap, as one’s social standing would determine what one ate and what one knew how to eat, and would therefore become a visible diet hierarchy in Tokugawa