Japan's Tableware & Serving Culture

About this book

You can cook Japanese food. Can you serve it? Japan's Tableware & Serving Culture is the complete guide to 200 vessels, utensils and serving practices — the bowls, plates, trays, cups and tools in their working lives at the table, and the plating art, placement grammar and manners that govern them — in one uniform format, every entry giving The Vessel Itself, Serving & Use, Plating, Pairing & Placement, and Manners, Choosing & Care, each entry written in full at 200+ words.

The rice bowl and the soup bowl, the lidded reveal and the donburi. Sashimi plates, tempura paper, jūbako tiers and the tray that is a table. Ochoko and tokkuri, chataku and chasen, the ladle at the nabe and the paddle in the rice. Then the systems: ichijū-sansai placement, kaiseki sequence, moritsuke's empty space and five colours, oshaku pouring, two-handed receiving, and the care that keeps lacquer, clay, wood and glass in service for a century. A closing entry distils the whole book into ten vessels to own first, in order.

Kilns and chopstick types have their own volumes in this series; this is the missing one — the serving itself. Prices, stock and opening details are never asserted; every entry points to the official source for anything that can change.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.