THINQon : Sushi and Sacrifice

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Mia Vialti

Sushi and Sacrifice

Latest Post: November 21, 2011 at 4:55 PM

67 followers

What's the appeal of watching your food be prepared? I would have said, say, cleanliness, but perhaps there's something much deeper.

If we ask Roland Barthes (from memory so misquotation is mine) we'd see that

"If Japanese cooking is always performed in front of the eventual diner it is probably because it is important to consecrate by spectacle the death of what is being eaten"

Is this true? If so what does it tell us?
Would be interesting to make a catalogue of sacrificial undertones in everyday activities. Perhaps non-religious activities, to be safe.
Would also be interesting to know whether the consecration he mentions appeals mostly to the Japanese sensibility, or whether it is more general.... Ideas, examples?

Reply to:

Qian Lin

November 21, 2011 at 3:55 PM

11 followers

Witnessing food traveling from source to plate gives me an impression of freshness and wholesomeness.

In 2006, my family spent a summer month in Xylokastro, a small seaside town in Corinthia, Greece. We would be asked to point to which fish that's still swimming in the tank when ordering a fish dish, and be invited to watch it being cleaned and grilled. The town is surrounded by agriculture, so one feels that the tomatoes and cucumbers are simply being picked and handed to you in no time, again, the freshness is what makes the salad taste so good...

At least at the dinner table, it has never occurred to me to link food on the plate to death. If I had such "Japanese sensibility", I doubt that I would still have any appetite left.

Reply to: or

Linda OReilly

November 21, 2011 at 4:55 PM

88 followers

Sacrifice is an offering, a kind of a mystical trade off. If I take a life and then have a ceremony over it, i.e. watch it prepared properly or say grace over it I honor the death as ‘necessary’ and sacred.

In the USA it’s largely forgotten that all life lives on other lives and that’s just the way it is.

The sushi in its living fish form lived on other fish; the plants in the salad lived on the minerals and proteins that had been returned to the soil by other plants and animals.

There can be good sense in a sacrifice if it contributes to our respect of other living things. In the end humans go back to the earth or to the ether and become the foundation of new life. That’s another reason for not polluting our planet and our bodies any more than we have to: others will grow on what we leave behind.