---

Samurai Movies (16)

January 20, 2022

Scene 4: Stairs outside of Temple There was a man who was sitting in front of some stone stairs which led to a temple. Children stood around him watching the man make something. They were wearing kimonos and wore a simple type of chonmage. The man was wearing a 'tenugui', a thin cotton towel, around on his neck. Tenugui was a multi-purpose cloth with which you can wipe your hands, face, etc. It can also be a hairband, called a 'hachi-maki', when one twists it up. People can also use it to cover their head, like a cap. Temples and shrines were half public spaces, there were a lot of temples and shrines in many any areas and some neighborhood events, like 'bon' dancing, were held at those locations. He could remember that in his childhood days he went to a circus on the premises of a shrine in his city. He had heard that on that premise there were sumo tournaments held during the Edo period. The sumo ring is called a 'dohyo', which was square-shaped. His han's sumo wrestlers were famous nation-wide for their size and strength. Scene 5: Street in Downtown (night) There was a subtitle of 'Sinagawa juku'. 'Juku' means an 'inns town'. Shinagawa was one of the main gates of Edo. Both sides of the roads had a lot of inns. Each wooden building had white paper screen sliding type of windows called 'shoji', they looked orange when the fire torches inside were burning. At that time there were no glass panels, so they used white paper screens as windows. They could stop the cold air from outside, but also could take in light. In this humid country, paper was useful to absorb humidity along with other materials: thatch, wooden plates, and tiles for roofs; earthen material and paper screens for walls; wood for pillars; tatami mats for floors. For light, they used lanterns with candles in their houses and handy ones for traveling. Candles were expensive so they also used oil in a tray with a wick. You can easily guess that those combinations of paper and wooden materials of houses and oil lighting could easily result in fires. In Edo, there were so many fires that it was called, "Fires and fights are flowers of Edo." Scene 6: Cabaret (Brothel) Geisha girls wearing beautiful kimonos played 'shamisen', a cat skin banjo, drums, sang songs, and performed dances in front of customers.   Scene 7: Room A geisha girl left the room, leaving her acquaintance by himself, telling him to eat something. The man took a rice-serving tub from the cupboard, opened it, and served the rice into a bowl. He also opened a small jar, and took some food for a side dish called 'tsukudani', small boiled fish with soy sauce and sugar added, and he started to eat them. He was eating white rice. In that era, eating brown rice was common. Brown rice is more nutritious than white rice. It has more vitamins, minerals, and fiber. At the time, people didn't eat animal meat, various kinds of vegetables were limited, and preserving fish wasn't so easy, so they mostly ate brown rice. But, Edo people started eating white rice because it was delicious. Mills for rice polishing were invented and spread throughout the region.   They didn't eat white rice just because of the taste reason. In Edo, they used cooking stoves as few times as possible being afraid of fires. They cooked rice in the morning and ate three meals with it. White rice keeps longer than brown rice, especially in humid and hot weather. And, maybe, sushi was good with white rice. He had read that for samurai who came to Edo from the various hans, it was a grand experience to eat white rice. As some people ate white rice but few other ingredients, they got 'beriberi', which is the result of Vitamin B1 deficiency. At that time 'beriberi' was called 'Edo Sickness'. (To be continued ...)

No.462



*thatch :萱（かや）
*earthen :土製の、粘土製の
*wick :ろうそくなどの芯
*result in :帰する
*grand :大きな
*ingredient :食材
*beriberi :脚気（かっけ）
*deficiency :欠乏