Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Japanese recipes, part of the Asian continent. This page provides links to all the Japanese recipes presented on this site, with 42 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Indian recipes added to this site.

These recipes, for the major part, originate in Japan. Otherwise they are fusion recipes with major Japanese components.

Japan, (日本国 Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku in Japanese) is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the five main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the 'mainland'), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the country's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.

Japan has over 125 million inhabitants and is the 11th most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its highly urbanized population on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world. Japan has the world's highest life expectancy, although it is experiencing a population decline due to its very low birth rate.

Japan has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic period (30,000 BC). Between the fourth and ninth centuries AD, the kingdoms of Japan became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyō. Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators (shōgun) and feudal lords (daimyō), and enforced by a class of warrior nobility (samurai). After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868. In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution, and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. Amidst a rise in militarism and overseas colonization, Japan invaded China in 1937 and entered World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War and two atomic bombings, Japan surrendered in 1945 and came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it adopted a new constitution.

Under the 1947 constitution, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet. Japan is a developed country and a great power, with one of the largest economies by nominal GDP. Japan has renounced its right to declare war, though it maintains a Self-Defence Force that ranks as one of the world's strongest militaries. A global leader in the automotive, robotics, and electronics industries, the country has made significant contributions to science and technology, and is one of the world's largest exporters and importers. It is part of multiple major international and intergovernmental institutions.

Japan is a cultural superpower as the culture of Japan is well known around the world, including its art, cuisine, film, music, and popular culture, which encompasses prominent manga, anime, and video game industries.

Etymology: The name for Japan in Japanese is written using the kanji 日本 and is pronounced Nippon or Nihon. Before 日本 was adopted in the early 8th century, the country was known in China as Wa (倭, changed in Japan around 757 to 和) and in Japan by the endonym Yamato.[13] Nippon, the original Sino-Japanese reading of the characters, is favoured for official uses, including on Japanese banknotes and postage stamps.[12] Nihon is typically used in everyday speech and reflects shifts in Japanese phonology during the Edo period.[13] The characters 日本 mean 'sun origin', which is the source of the popular Western epithet 'Land of the Rising Sun'.

The name 'Japan' is based on Wu Chinese pronunciations of 日本 and was introduced to European languages through early trade. This still reflects in modern Wu languages, for example Shanghainese Zeppen ([zəʔpən]) or Wenzhounese Zaipan. In the 13th century, Marco Polo recorded the Early Mandarin Chinese pronunciation of the characters 日本國 as Cipangu. The old Malay name for Japan, Japang or Japun, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect and encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia, who brought the word to Europe in the early 16th century.[16] The first version of the name in English appears in a book published in 1577, which spelled the name as Giapan in a translation of a 1565 Portuguese letter.

Food and Cuisine:

Japanese cuisine offers a vast array of regional specialties that use traditional recipes and local ingredients. Seafood and Japanese rice or noodles are traditional staples. Japanese curry, since its introduction to Japan from British India, is so widely consumed that it can be termed a national dish, alongside ramen and sushi. Traditional Japanese sweets are known as wagashi. Ingredients such as red bean paste and mochi are used. More modern-day tastes include green tea ice cream.

Historically influenced by Chinese cuisine, Japanese cuisine has also opened up to influence from Western cuisines in the modern era. Dishes inspired by foreign food—in particular Chinese food—like ramen and gyōza, as well as foods like spaghetti, curry and hamburgers, have been adapted to Japanese tastes and ingredients. Traditionally, the Japanese shunned meat as a result of adherence to Buddhism, but with the modernization of Japan in the 1880s, meat-based dishes such as tonkatsu and yakiniku have become common. Since this time, Japanese cuisine, particularly sushi and ramen, has become popular globally.

Rice is a staple in Japanese cuisine. Wheat and soybeans were introduced shortly after rice. All three act as staple foods in Japanese cuisine today. At the end of the Kofun Period and beginning of the Asuka Period, Buddhism became the official religion of the country. Therefore, eating meat and fish was prohibited. In 675 AD, Emperor Tenmu prohibited the eating of horses, dogs, monkeys, and chickens.[3] In the 8th and 9th centuries, many emperors continued to prohibit killing many types of animals. The number of regulated meats increased significantly, leading to the banning of all mammals except whale, which were categorized as fish.

In truth, however, there is no such thing as 'Thai cuisine'. More accurately, Thai Cuisine should be described as four regional cuisines corresponding to the four main regions of the country: Northern, Northeastern (or Isan), Central, and Southern, each cuisine sharing similar foods or foods derived from those of neighbouring countries and regions: Burma to the northwest, the Chinese province of Yunnan and Laos to the north, Vietnam and Cambodia to the east and Malaysia to the south of Thailand. In addition to these four regional cuisines, there is also the Thai Royal Cuisine which can trace its history back to the cosmopolitan palace cuisine of the Ayutthaya kingdom (1351–1767 CE). Its refinement, cooking techniques and use of ingredients were of great influence to the cuisine of the Central Thai plains. In addition, Western influences from the 17^th gave rise to fusion dishes such as foi thong and sangkhaya.

In 1854, Japan started to gain new trade deals with Western countries when a new Japanese ruling order took over (known as the Meiji Restoration). Emperor Meiji, the new ruler, staged a New Years' feast designed to embrace the Western world and countries in 1872. The feast contained food that reflected European cuisine.[9][10] For the first time in a thousand years, people were allowed to consume meat in public. After this New Years feast, the general population from Japan started to consume meat again.

Japanese cuisine is based on combining the staple food, which is steamed white rice or gohan (御飯), with one or more okazu, 'main' or 'side' dishes. This may be accompanied by a clear or miso soup and tsukemono (pickles). The phrase ichijū-sansai (一汁三菜, 'one soup, three sides') refers to the makeup of a typical meal served but has roots in classic kaiseki, honzen, and yūshoku cuisine. The term is also used to describe the first course served in standard kaiseki cuisine nowadays.

In February 2012, the Agency for Cultural Affairs recommended that 'Washoku: Traditional Dietary Cultures of the Japanese' be added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. On December 4, 2013, 'Washoku, traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese, notably for the celebration of New Year' was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage, bringing the number of Japanese assets listed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list to 22.