Factbook

A Dynamic Compendium of Interesting Japanese Literary and Publishing Facts
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    • UNESCO

    Mount Fuji, which is featured in Japan’s oldest fictional prose and first collection of poetry, is still a powerful literary motif[UPDATED: 12-1-2021]

    In June 2013 the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO announced that Mount Fuji would be recognised as a World Heritage Site. The official proposal that led to the mountain winning this status was known as ‘Fujisan: Sacred Place and Source of Artistic Inspiration’. 

    Mount Fuji, also known as Fujiyama, and Fujisan is Japan’s highest mountain. It is volcanic and last erupted in 1707-1708. Mount Fuji has had a huge impact on Japanese culture including its literature in all its forms and formats. According to UNESCO, it has “inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries”. 

    Japan’s oldest extant fictional prose The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, from the Heian Period (794-1185), which tells the tale of Princess Kaguya, features the mountain at the end of the story. Mount Fuji also features in the Manyoshu, Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, Japan’s oldest surviving book of poetry, which was compiled even earlier during Japan’s Nara Period (710-794), when the nation’s capital was located in Nara. 

    Japan’s first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Yasunari Kawabata (1899- 1972) used it in his works, including First Snow on Fuji; as did the Zen master and poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) who wrote poems about it. Contemporary authors including Randy Taguchi, whose collection of short stories Fujisan about the lives of dysfunctional Japanese individuals living under the shadow of the mountain, continue to draw on it for inspiration. 

    The mountain has been an enduring icon and influence on Japanese literature and the nation’s creative communities. Academics have written books on its influence; books like The Literature of Mt. Fuji: Japanese Classic Literature and Mount Fuji: Icon of Japan. It has also famously featured in woodblock prints by some of Japan’s best-known artists as well as many other Japanese art forms. 

    Its power and influence endures to this day – and it is probably too early to predict if or when Mount Fuji, which stands at 3,776 metres, will reach its cultural and literary peak.

    Mount Fuji, which is featured in Japan’s oldest fictional prose and first collection of poetry, is still a powerful literary motif Posted by Richard Nathan
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    • UNESCO

    50 years before the first Michelin Guide, Tokyo already had a popular guidebook for its foodies[UPDATED: 4-14-2019]

    It has been widely reported that for more than a decade Tokyo has had more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city in the world. But what isn’t generally known is that Tokyo, or Edo as it was previously called, had its own guidebooks for Japanese gourmets long before the two French industrialists behind the famous Michelin Guidebook were even born.

    These included Edo Shuhan Tebikikusa, The Pocket Guide to Eating and Drinking in Edo, a copy of which resides at the British Museum library in London.

    Some of these Japanese guidebooks mimicked the approach taken at the time to rank Sumo wrestlers of varying stature grading eating and drinking establishments with similar terminology, as opposed to awarding stars as the Michelin Guidebooks currently do. 

    The Pocket Guide to Eating and Drinking in Edo, published in 1848, lists the names and addresses of 594 restaurants, as well as specialist sushi, soba and eel restaurants in Edo. The guide, like its modern counterparts, was selective – only including, for example, 90 eel specialists from a possible pool of around one thousand or more.

    Japan and Edo may have been isolated from the rest of the world at the time of the publication of The Pocket Guide, but Edo was one of the world’s largest and most literate cities with a strong publishing culture and a very vibrant nightlife.

    The first Michelin Guide was published 52 years later in 1900. At this time there were only a few thousand cars in France, so in order to encourage the French to buy cars and drive across France, two brothers launched the Michelin Guide, which initially focused exclusively on France. The first issue was distributed free to encourage people to buy cars and tyres made by the brothers’ company, Michelin, which they had set up a decade earlier in 1889.

    In the 2018 Guide, Tokyo has the most Michelin-starred restaurants with 234 – ahead of Osaka with 96 and Paris with 92. These are the three leading cities among the 28 countries that the guide currently covers.

    Given all this, it is perhaps not surprising that in 2013 Japanese cuisine, Washoku, was added by the United Nations’ organization UNESCO to The Representative List of The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Other Japanese items included on this UNESCO’s list are Kabuki, Noh and ritual rice planting.

    50 years before the first Michelin Guide, Tokyo already had a popular guidebook for its foodies Posted by Richard Nathan