Chopstick in Japan : The History

Chopsticks are a mainstay of dinner tables in Japan and throughout Asia. Traditional Japanese food is almost never eaten with anything else by Japanese people. You can get a fork, spoon or spork in a Japanese restaurant if you can’t manage the chopsticks. In fact, in many places they’ll provide one when they see your foreign countenance.
 

History

Chopsticks came from China. The earliest chopsticks were found in China and date from around 1200 BC. Even earlier, there are records of a Chinese emperor asking his servant to make him chopsticks from around 4,000 years ago. The Chinese term for chopsticks is kuaizi (Chinese: 筷子; pinyin: ] kuàizi). The first character (筷) is a semantic-phonetic compound with a phonetic part meaning "quick" (快), and a semantic part meaning "bamboo" (竹).

It’s believed that the first primitive chopstick was a tool for cooking, stirring the fire, and retrieving food, and not as eating utensils. As food gradually began to be cut into smaller pieces for easier preservation and faster cooking, people found it easier to handle these small food chunks with two rather than one.

Chopsticks began to be used as eating utensils during the Han Dynasty. Chopsticks were considered more lacquerware friendly than other sharp eating utensils. It was not until the Ming Dynasty that chopsticks came into normal use for both serving and eating. They then acquired the name kuaizi and the present shape.

You can get a fork, spoon or spork in a Japanese restaurant if you can’t manage the chopsticks. In fact, in many places they’ll provide one when they see your foreign countenance. But chopsticks are still Japan’s favorite eating utensil. Traditional Japanese food is almost never eaten with anything else by Japanese people.

In Japan

In Japanese, chopsticks are called hashi (箸). They are also known as otemoto (おてもと), a phrase commonly printed on the wrappers of disposable chopsticks. Te means hand and moto means the area under or around something.


The oldest records in Japan are from the Kojiki, written in 712 AD, but chopsticks probably made their first appearance here around 500 AD. This is the era when Chinese culture began flooding into Japan via Korea. Other countries record this as the time when chopsticks were first used.

At first, chopsticks were considered precious and only used for religious ceremonies. These early chopsticks were made from one piece of bamboo that was joined at the top like a pair of wooden tweezers. Gradually, they came to be used for eating. Around the 10th century, we have the first recorded instance of separated chopsticks being used.

Type

• Length: Very long, large chopsticks, usually about 30 or 40 centimeters, are used for cooking, especially for deep frying foods. In Japan they are called ryoribashi when used for cooking and saibashi when used to transfer cooked food to the dishes it will be served in.
• Taper: Chopsticks are usually tapered, either China's blunt or Japan's sharp and pointy.
• Material: Chopsticks are made from a variety of materials: bamboo, plastic, wood, bone, metal, jade, porcelain and ivory.
• Embellishments: Wooden or bamboo chopsticks can be painted or lacquered for decoration and waterproofing. Metal chopsticks are sometimes roughened or scribed to make them less slippery. Higher-priced metal chopstick pairs are sometimes connected by a short chain at the untapered end to prevent their separation.

How To Use It

Some of the most important rules to remember when dining with chopsticks are as follows:

• Hold your chopsticks towards their end, not in the middle or the front third.
• When you are not using your chopsticks, or have finished eating, lay them down in front of you with the tips to left.
• Do not stick chopsticks into your food, especially not into rice. This is only done at funerals with rice that is put onto the altar.
• Do not pass food directly from your set of chopsticks to another's. Again, this is a funeral tradition that involves the bones of a cremated body.
• Do not spear food with your chopsticks.
• Do not point with your chopsticks.
• Do not wave your chopsticks around in the air or play with them.
• Do not move plates or bowls around with your chopsticks.
• To separate a piece of food in two, exert controlled pressure on the chopsticks while moving them apart from each other in order to tear the food. This takes some practice. With larger pieces of food such as tempura, it is also acceptable to pick up the entire piece with your chopsticks, and take a bite.
• If you have already eaten with your chopsticks, use the opposite end to take food from a shared plate.