Quote:
Originally Posted by steven
That brings up something interesting... I have a theory that putting soy sauce on rice might've come from Japan during the occupation as there were plenty of Americans there and it was a relaively poor (monitarily speaking) point in Japan's history. If that's the case, then the idea of putting straight soy sauce on rice like that came from Japan, and now Japanese people look at Americans for being weird for doing that (not that too many Japanese people know that Americans do that or anything).
Does anyone have any info on that? I thought it was an interesting idea.
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An interesting idea... But unfortunately at that point in time rice was the gourmet bit of the meal. Most people were eating other grains (if grains at all...), and white rice was quite expensive. Wheat okayu was apparently the most common of the grain foods, and if there was rice it was also boiled down into okayu and mixed with any vegetables available. But in general, types of root vegetables (potatoes, satoimo, etc) were the main staple.
Soy sauce on a bowl of rice would have been a pretty fancy meal, and wasteful to say the least. Now it would feel "poor", but that`s because rice is the current staple. The production before and during the war was almost entirely consumed by the government - being used as food for higher ups and in part for the army.
White rice being eaten by the "normal" people is actually a very recent thing. After the war, in the 50s I believe, there was a huge movement to grow rice and make it the regular staple food. People jumped over to rice from other grains because it had been such a special food, and because they really hadn`t been able to eat it before. Just one of the ways that people were made more equal.
To the people who lived through it, imo and wheat okayu is THE food of the war/after war period of poverty. This is part of the reason it has virtually disappeared... After spending years of eating
only that, people avoided making it at all if possible.
When it comes to soy sauce on rice - my guess isn`t that it came from Japan at all, but rather from China or from Chinese restaurants in the US.
As for how I eat my rice... Erm, it depends on what I`m eating with the rice. It is part of pretty much every meal, so hard to think of as something alone.