In 1863, a Japanese man who had been working at a Dutch-owned, Westerner-supported dairy in Yokohama opened his own shop in the area and began selling milk to Japanese patrons.

Thus, the dairy industry in Japan was born.

Soon after, he was asked by Gyūba Kaisha, the government's newly-established milk and meat monopoly, to train its workers in Western milking techniques. (Unfortunately, Gyūba Kaisha lasted only a year because, in an attempt to help the legions of restless, out-of-work samurai, the government had filled the company's ranks with only ronin. The samurai, finding the milking of cattle less glamorous than sword fights and seppuku, conducted business in a haughty, disinterested manner, which damaged the company's reputation beyond repair.)

To encourage the normally meatless and dairyless people of Japan to get on the cow, the company distributed propaganda which linked meat-eating and milk-drinking with national pride, propaganda which included statements like, "By utilizing milk to live a long life, maintain a healthy body and invigorate the mind, the Japanese shall save their name from dishonor." (Had it been a century later, they could have just imported a whole lot of Strawberry Quik and had no problem getting people to finish their milk.)

Before the 1950s, milk was mainly sold in drinkable form, not processed into cheese or butter, and usually consumed by only the young, the ill and the weak. Even today, with many people in Japan consuming milk and yogurt on a daily basis, natural cheeses and butter are less popular than their processed counterparts (nearly-plastic cheese and margarine, respectively). The aversion to butter may be due to butter's disastrous Japanese debut in the 1930s when, because there were no production facilities in Japan, butter had to be imported from far-off countries and often went rancid on the long boat ride over. During the late Edo and early Meiji periods, an insulting way to describe someone who ate Western food or adopted Western manners was "stinking of butter" (bataa-kusai). Butter has never really recovered from the blow.

When making liquor (like sake) from a starchy substance (like rice), the starch must be changed to sugar with the enzyme action of a substance (like saliva).

…Wait, what?

It’s true. The first sake in Japan was made at big rice-chewing parties. Everyone in the village would show up, chew some raw rice, spit it into a container, then go back home, content in the knowledge that they would soon gather for another village party, this time fueled by spit-soaked sake, known as kuchikami no sake, “chewing-in-the-mouth sake.” After the chewing party, water would be added to the saliva-rice and then the mixture would be monitored until it smelled alcoholic—what poor sap had that job? and was he likely to drink the most or least at the party?—at which point, everyone would gather again to drink their very communal concoction.

This type of liquor is not exclusive to Japan; in South and Central America as well as other parts of Asia, people were chewing their way toward drunkenness during the seventh through tenth centuries. In Taiwan, the custom was practiced until the early twentieth century. In Hokkaido and Okinawa, the northernmost and southernmost parts of Japan, they prepared the drink for special festivals and only women chewed the rice.

Luckily, koji was discovered, a useful little mold which not only turned starch into sugar for sake, but also came to be used to make miso, natto and soy sauce. Where would Japan be without you, Aspergillus oryzae?

…Drinking a whole lot of backwash, that’s where.

Until kitchens with gas and plumbing became common in the 1920s and ‘30s, housewives in Japan had to cook rice on a wood-burning stove, a complicated process which required maintaining a low flame, then a high flame, then—at exactly the right moment—removing the wood from the fire and finishing the cooking over the coals. All this, and without lifting up the lid to peek, which would have ruined the pressurized conditions needed for the rice to cook properly. This was a jingle used back then to describe the rice-cooking process:

Hajime choro-choro
Naka pa-ppa
Akagao ga naite mo
Futa toru na.

First it bubbles,
Then it hisses.
Even if the baby is crying from hunger,
Never remove the lid!

So housewives would stand patiently over the stove as the rice cooked, using the various sounds and smells coming from the pot to decide when to pull the burning pieces of wood out of the stove. Most likely while wearing a kimono and standing a dirt floor, which was the standard for traditional kitchens. Ye olde Japanese housewives were hardcore.

Nowadays, of course, almost everyone has an electronic rice cooker, which became household staples after they debuted in Japan in 1955. The rice-cooking process is the same—low heat to slowly warm everything inside the pot, then high heat to stew the rice in boiling water, then very low heat to let the grains steam in the remaining water—only now it is monitored by electronics rather than women wielding burning pieces of wood. I guess that’s what they call progress.

Japanese rice is short-grained and more sticky than the long-grained rice eaten in countries like Thailand and India, which makes it easier to eat with chopsticks. The ideal Japanese rice is tender, full-flavored, glossy and moist; to achieve this, the rice must be thoroughly washed before cooking to remove all surface starch. Measure your rice into a bowl, cover it with water, swish the rice around until the water becomes cloudy, pour off the water and repeat the process until the water runs clear, usually after four to six rinsings. You can save the starchy water for watering your plants (which I do) or boiling vegetables. After the final washing, drain the rice into a mesh colander and let the excess water drip away for a minute or two.

When cooking Japanese rice, the official water-to-raw-rice ratio is 1.2:1, but, in addition to preferring whole numbers to fractions, I prefer rice that is a little more stiff and sticky, so I use a 1:1 ratio. Also, I get my rice from a teacher at school who has a rice field, and I find her rice is a little less dry than store-bought rice. (I know, rice from a real field! It’s a novelty I still appreciate.) Rice is harvested in the fall and the grains gradually lose their moisture during the course of the year, so they are their driest at the end of the summer, and you may have to add extra water then.

Japanese Cooked White Rice

Note: I always use my rice cooker when making rice, so the stovetop directions are based on the instructions in Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh.

Makes 2 cups cooked rice

1 cup Japanese-style white rice, washed
1 cup water (or 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons for drier rice grains)

If you have a rice cooker: Place the rice and water in the cooker and start it. Once the active cooking cycle is over, make sure the rice remains in the cooker for 10 minutes, lid closed, to steam the grains. This ensures the proper texture. Stir the rice before serving.

If you don’t have a rice cooker: …You should get one. It’s worth it. In the meantime, put the rice in a straight-sided pot with a lid. Let it sit in the water for 10 minutes to absorb some moisture.

Place the pot on high heat and bring to a boil, which should take 3 to 5 minutes. Don’t open the lid; instead pretend you are a Japanese housewife and listen for the sounds of boiling (choro-choro) and look for the steam chattering the pot lid.

Reduce the heat to low and cook for about 5 minutes or until you hear a low hissing sound, indicating that the water is almost absorbed. If you have to peek, now is the time to do it, but replace the lid quickly. Increase the heat to high for 30 seconds to dry off the rice.

Remove the pot from the heat and let the rice steam for 10 minutes with the lid on. Stir before serving. There will probably be a crusty, browned layer of rice in the bottom of the pot. This is a delicacy in many rice-eating countries. In Japan, it’s called okage. You should eat it, either by mixing it in with the rest of the rice when you stir, or by itself, sprinkled with a little salt.

The first version of sushi, called narezushi (“matured sushi"), was originally a method of preserving large amounts of fish caught at the same time. It was made by spreading a layer of boiled rice on the bottom of a wooden cask, then covering it with a layer of salted fish, more layers of rice and fish, an inner lid, a stone weight and water to the top of the container. After about six months, the rice would ferment and lend a tangy flavor to the fish, which was eventually removed from the rice remains, sliced and eaten raw. You might call it the cheese of the fish world. (Or you might just call it gross. And really, I can’t blame you.) Narezushi, versions of which exist all over Southeast Asia, has been made in Japan for the past 1,000 years and is still being made in the Lake Biwa area, though no information exists as to why.

Around the fifteenth century, namanare-zushi (“raw-mature sushi”) appeared. It was the fast-food version of narezushi, ready to eat after fermenting for several days to a month. In that amount of time, the rice would ferment enough to take on an acidic taste, but still remain whole, and was eaten along with the fish. Unlike narezushi, it was only made in small quantities, usually for festivals and other special events.

In the late seventeeth century, someone thought, “Wait—this is still kind of gross. Why don’t we just add some vinegar to the rice instead of packing it in a box for a month?” and thus hayazushi (“quick sushi”) was born. It was later popularized in Edo as a snack food called nigiri-zushi, which is the sushi we eat today.