Appeared in The Digest: Newsletter for the Interdisciplinary Study
of Food, 1991.
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     Dragon Cucumber/Tsukemono Fair
     September 15 and 16, 1990, New York City

     Pickles are to Japan what cheese is to France.  Each region
uses local produce and traditional processes of fermentation to
produce distinct varieties of pickles that are closely identified
with the area where they are made.  To eat Japanese pickles is to
eat a piece of Japan--its soil, climate, history, and culture--with
all the specificity that comes from local knowledge.  Like cheese
and wine, pickles are a "cultured" product.  
     Rice, soup, and pickles are the three basic elements in a
classic Japanese meal.  Many pickles are traditionally made at home
and are the test of a good cook, particularly in rural areas. 
Families will keep the same rice bran pickling "bed" alive for
generations, passing it, as well as their pickling utensils and
techniques, through the family.  Extending the abundance of summer
into the harsh winter, pickling locks the fragance of the season
into a delicious package that can be savored all year long.  The
distinctive results are an edible expression of the ties that
connect family members to each other and to their locale.  
     But the term pickle does not quite capture the meaning of the
Japanese term tsukemono, which refers more broadly to steeping a
food--for as little as an hour or as long as several years--to
alter its texture and flavor.  Bracken, radish, turnip, cabbage,
eggplant, cucumber, onion, mushroom, plum, cherry blossom,
chrysanthemum flower, kelp, and wasabi are traditionally treated
with salt, vinegar, rice bran, sake lees, koji (a mold), miso, and
shoyu.  The result is a stunning array of colors, textures, shapes,
and flavors that offers an intense contrast to the plain rice with
which pickles are generally eaten and a rich source of vitamins,
particularly during the winter when fresh vegetables were once in
short supply.
     On this clear autumn weekend in Midtown Manhattan, the
Japanese-American Club celebrated tsukemono in Shinwa, an elegant
Japanese restaurant in the lobby of Olympia Tower, just off Fifth
Avenue where the 12th Annual New York Is Book Country street fair
was in progress.  Recently founded by Koshiji Takeishi, an
enterprising business woman, the Japanese-American Club (1556 Third
Avenue, Room 408, New York, NY 10128-3105) organizes social events
(buffet dinners, cocktail parties, tea ceremonies), classes (Za-Zen
meditations, calligraphy, cooking), and language exchange
gatherings, in addition to its job referral services.  The Club's
primary aim is to promote "goodwill between Japan and America by
bringing Japanese and Americans together to become friends and to
appreciate each others historical and cultural traditions and
business relationship."  
     The tsukemono festival combined these objectives perfectly. 
The restaurant had been transformed into a combination pickle trade
fair, pickle party, and pickle demonstration.  Arranged round the
perimeter of the restaurant were displays of the tsukemono
specialities of regional manufacturers from the length and breadth
of Japan, including Tokyo Yamashiroya and Nanki Umeboshi.  Company
representatives, attired in bright green jackets bearing the
manufacturer's logo, were eager to explain their products and see
how we liked them.  Equipped with a tiny rectangular styrofoam
"dish" and a toothpick, I moved from table to table, sampling well-
established traditional favorites as well as many new pickles.  
     First, innovators extend the repertoire of what can be pickled
--we sampled pickled papaya, star fruit, chayote, apples, grapes,
kiwi fruit, and celery.  Second, they expand the range of flavors
from the traditional ginger, garlic, dried fish, and siso (a member
of the mint family--perilla or beefsteak plant, particularly the
red variety) to include fruit juice (one manufacturer featured a
fruit salad made of daikon that had been marinated in orange juice)
and, most surprising, a daikon pickle in coffee syrup.  Third,
there are innovative presentations of pickled vegetables:  a
hollowed pickled daikon is stuffed with cheese; various layered and
rolled pickles reveal contrasting colors and textures when sliced;
pickles are presented on crackers or in bread sandwiches.  Fourth,
there is a strong emphasis on health, particularly on new low(er)
salt pickles.  
     Eri Yamaguchi, restaurateur and author of The Well-Flavored
Vegetable: Novel and Traditional Recipes from Japan (Tokyo and New
York:  Kodansha International, 1988), demonstrated the art of
making tsukemono on the marble bar of the restaurant.  Asserting
that pickles are Japanese "soul food," she showed how to make the
"dragon cucumber".  She rolled a long narrow thin-skinned cucumber
in salt, applying pressure to it with her hands in order to soften
it.  She then wedged the cucumber between two chopsticks to stop
her knife from cutting all the way through the cucumber when she
thinly sliced it straight across and then on the diagonal. 
Finally, she presented the "dragon cucumber" coiled in a large bowl
of clear soup.
     Following the demonstration, representatives from each company
were introduced and said a few words about their products.  The
event concluded with a raffle--everyone had been encouraged to
throw their business card into a bowl at the door when they bought
their entrance ticket ($5.00 for members, $9.00 for non-members). 
The raffle was entirely in keeping with the spirit of the event. 
The displays became prizes and everyone won something.  The pickles
of Japan had found new homes in the apartments of New York City. 
             
                    Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
                    Contributing Regional Editor for the Northeast