The Manga Guide to Japanese Food by Hiroshi Nagashima

It’s no secret that I harbour a strong interest in Japanese food and drink. I’m currently planning our next trip to Japan for autumn 2025 and I have always enjoyed sharing Japanese recipes and cookbook reviews here on Kavey Eats. But the latest book on this topic to join my collection of Japanese food writing is quite different from all the rest–author Hiroshi Nagashima explains the history, ingredients and folklore of Japanese cuisine through manga!

Manga are graphic novels (most commonly translated into English as comics) and are a hugely popular medium aimed at a wide variety of audiences. You’ll find manga in genres as diverse as action and adventure, comedy, crime and mystery, horror, historical drama, science fiction and fantasy, erotica, sports, and even business and commerce themes. These days, Japanese manga are popular around the world and many are translated into other languages to reach a global audience.

Hiroshi Nagashima, formerly the executive chef and managing director of Shisui restaurant at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Honganji Temple, is a popular food book author in Japan. In the years following, he was named a Master Craftsman of Edo (2003), a Contemporary Master Craftsman (2008) earned a Yellow Ribbon Medal in recognition of his expertise (2013), was named a Goodwill Amabassador for Japanese Food (2015), as well as a Cool Japan Ambassador (2016), and in 2019 he received the government’s highest civilian honour, the Order of the Rising Sun Gold and Silver Rays.

Aware that Japanese food was and is becoming increasingly popular outside Japan–Washoku (traditional Japanese cuisine) was added to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013, and 2019 statistics from the Ministry of Agricultire, Forestry and Fisheries recognised over 156,000 Japanese restaurants outside of the country, a number that was and continues to grow fast–Nagashima started to ask himself whether the Japanese themselves know enough about their own food culture and heritage.

He decided to create a manga format book about the topic to reach and influence the younger generations in both Japan and further afield. Writing and editing was provided by Harumi Yaguchi, and artist Megumi Osaki creatied the graphics to illustrate the food stories, and there are also some full colour photographs of ingredients, relevant cultural artworks, tableware and food to give further insight.

The original Japanese title published in 2021 has now been translated into English and published by Tuttle as The Manga Guide to Japanese Food.

The main characters within the manga are Manabu, a teenage boy wondering whether he might want to be a chef when he grows up, his 70-year old grandfather chef, and Emma, a 21 year old French woman who has come to Japan to learn about Japanese cuisine by way of training under the tutelage of Grandpa.

As I make my way through the book I quickly realise that The Manga Guide to Japanese Food isn’t presented as one long manga work; in fact the manga elements form only a small part of the whole. Much of the book is passages of written text interspersed with plenty of helpful diagrams (and occasional photographs). The manga pages interject a little personality into what might otherwise be impersonal text–sometimes a manga passage introduces a topic, sometimes it shares the characters’ reactions to subject matter (conveyed through text and illustrations), and occasionally, a topic is covered wholly by Grandpa teaching Manabu and Emma within a manga segment.

This use of different formats brings Japanese culinary history and traditions to life so vividly; the combination of manga character conversations, passages of informative text and graphical illustrations is a powerful one that works very well for the topic of food, culture and history.

The book is structured into three parts. Part 1 covers The Eight Pillars of Japanese Cuisine, and its eight chapters are The Story of Rice; Pure Water, Delicious Food; Japan’s Wooden Tableware; Seafood on All Sides; Food for the Gods; The Importance of Cutting; Fermenting for Flavour; and Umami, the Fifth Flavour. Between the main chapters are Big Picture items on Seasoning Food on Your Plate or in Your Mouth?; Creating Flavour Takes Time; How The World Eats; Imitation Crab, an International Favourite; Religious Food Prohibitions; Kitchen Hierarchies in France and Japan; Fermented Foods Around the World; and International Umami Innovations; plus a Feature on Japanese Food Words in the Global Vocabulary.

Part 2 is titled A Brief History of Feast Foods and Sushi and has 6 chapters for The Heian Period: Zen Monks Create a Cuisine; The Muromachi Period: Classic Samurai Feasts; The Azuchi-Muromachi Period: Tea Ceremony Food; The Edo Period: Commoners Join the Party; and The History of Sushi, from the 7th century to today. There are also two features on Japan’s Food Culture Through the Eyes of Missionaries, and Eating in Kansai vs. Kanto.

Finally, Part 3 is Putting It All Into Practice, which is split into The Elements of Kaiseki Cuisine; Tableware and Food Presentation; and Dining at a Traditional Japanese Restaurant, plus another feature, Should the Left Side or the Right Take Precedence? Finally, an Afterword covering Why Japanese Cuisine Fascinates Chefs Around the World.

In this section, the walk through of a typical modern-day kaiseki meal is a useful insight into what to expect should you visit Japan and enjoy such a meal. There is also practical advice on presenting and serving such a meal yourself.

An aspect I’ve particularly enjoyed about the book is how the different strands of information are so cleverly woven together. The book gives us information about the origin, histories and development of a particular food item (such as rice or sushi) or food-related product (such as lacquerware and pottery) or style of Japanese eating (including honzen ryori and chakaiseki ryori) along with insight into how that topic fits into the Japanese culinary landscape and into wider Japanese culture. There are helpful comparisons to how other cuisines approach a topic (such as dashi stock versus French and Chinese stocks, or Japanese chopsticks versus Korean and Chinese ones). And these intertwine with practical or scientific exposés on diverse topics (such as the chemistry of koji mould and fermentation, or the geology of Japan and how the physical elements of rice paddies contribute to both rice agriculture and natural flood management).

The more I progressed through the book, the more I came to appreciate the unique way its contents are presented, and how deftly diverse strands (such as ingredients and their development and production, multiple facets of history, culture, tools and vessels, the impact of geography, and more) are incorporated into a coherent whole. I had wondered ahead of reading whether the inclusion of manga might be a little frivolous or superfluous to the topic but it worked really well, and added a lightness to balance the incredible wealth of information covered. Indeed, I found myself delighted by just how much knowledge I was able to pick up from a relatively small book of 188 pages.

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Kavey Eats received a review copy of The Manga Guide to Japanese Food by Hiroshi Nagashima from Tuttle Publishing. Images from the book are courtesy of Tuttle Publishing. 

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