Ep.10 Kamogawa Restaurant
Written by Cordelia Shan; edited by Grace
In this episode, we are going to talk about a book called 鴨川食堂 (Kamogawa Restaurant) and a little bit about its TV adaptation.
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Summary
Kamogawa Restaurant is based on a novel series by Hisashi Kashiwai, and was first published in 2013. It was Later adapted into a TV series, which aired on NHK from January 10 to February 28, 2016. There are a total of seven books in this series.
In the story, Kamogawa Restaurant is a small restaurant hidden in an alleyway in Kyoto that serves delicacies. Kamogawa is a river; to break it down, Kamo means duck, and gawa means river. This river wounds its way across the city of Kyoto.
The restaurant stands next to Higashi Honganji Temple (東本願寺) on the bank of Kamogawa. It has no signboards or curtains, but it is still unforgettable for many people, not only because of the food but also the special services they offer. Their advertisements contain just a few words in a food magazine, and it says, “Looking for food for you.” Customers can't order food here, and the Chief, Nagare, will arrange it carefully to bring surprises to guests' taste buds. There is a creative gourmet detective agency on the second floor of the cafeteria, which is run by the Chief’s daughter, Koishi.
This is a book where you have to eat a full meal before reading,or bring snacks. Because the more you read, the hungrier you will get.
The TV Show
The TV adaptation has eight episodes in total and perfectly portrays the restaurant, Kyoto's scenery, Kyoto dialect, and Kyoto’s food in moving picture form. The stores are mostly picked from the first two volumes of the series.
The Writer and the Book Series
The Writer of this novel series, Hisashi Kashiwai (pen name Keiichiro Kashiwagi) was born and raised in Kyoto. He loves to travel and is particularly fond and proud of his hometown. He has even written numerous essays on the charm of Kyoto and Kyoto’s cuisine.
Kamogawa Restaurant is a series of short stories first published in 2013; after being serialised in the literary journal Story Box, it has been published by Shogakukan since 2013. The latest seventh-volume, Kamogawa Restaurant: the Hospitality, was published in 2020. The first two volumes have also been translated into multiple languages, but have yet to be translated in English.
The Stories
I finished the first two volumes and started the third volume last week, and I have to say, this is a very addictive series.
As I carry along with my reading, some questions pop up in my head, such as: What kind of magic is hidden in ordinary food, to the point that it can change the course of one’s destiny? And why is someone so obsessed with some current food that they have to ask for a specialized detective to find it for them?
Kamogawa Restaurant also has a different name, which is the Kamogawa Detective Agency. Koishi records the clues provided by the guests, and two weeks later, Nagare will serve the same food that the guests have longed for. After eating the memory of the taste, the guest sighs and sighs, and the dark knot inside them is stretched and softened by the hotness of the food. After tasting that flavour and standing up, the warmth and strength of the food fills the stomach and travels to the heart, and the inner lines become a little clearer.
Kamogawa Restaurant is lost and found; every found dish or recipe can untie a knot in someone’s heart. Everyone has a taste that they must eat, and it is this taste that lays the foundation of one's life.
For example, in the first volume, a man named Hidetsuji Kuboyama is about to settle in his fiancée's hometown, but he can't forget his ex-wife's pot roast udon noodles. His fiancée also can't make it the way he remembers. So he walks into the Kamogawa Restaurant and hopes they can help and restore his last ex-wife’s recipe.
Also, in another story, when asked by her daughter about how it felt to be proposed to, a character named Nobuko remembers how, fifty-five years ago, when the boy she loved proposed to her, she panicked and rushed away, leaving a half-eaten can of beef stew on the table. Because the smell of that pot of beef stew remained with her for the next fifty-five years, she finds Kamogawa Restaurant and wishes to eat the food again and share the feelings of the experience with her daughter.
In addition, after Suiko Hirose's husband became seriously ill and passed away, she visits the Kamogawa Restaurant and requests to reproduce the pork cutlet her husband made in the past, to celebrate his life by remembering the taste of the food.
All six stories are about food and about taste. However, the food is only the introduction, and the sweet and sour story of life behind it is the most moving part of the novel.
In the story, Nagare not only makes food but helps with searching for the food. The food he searches is based on the research his daughter Koishi did, and is a discovery of stories that were buried by the years, and a search for a life that has gone by.
The first reading is a light warmth, complemented by a shallow sigh. When I look deeper, it is sadness in all its forms. Like a sushi roll, the filling is a mixture of life, death, illness, love, separation and inability to live, as well as great regret and loss. The crust is the warm, soft white rice that wraps everything and erases everything. Just as rice cannot cover the delicious taste of sushi with its different textures, neither can a warm and shallow narrative hide the vibrations it triggers in a reader's heart, like mine.
To go back toone of the stories I mentioned, where a woman named Nobuko searches for the taste of that pot of beef stew in her memory, Nokubo is left wondering about what would happen if that meal had continued, if she had said yes to that boy's proposal, if her life would never be the same again. Fifty-five years later, she still wants to confirm this, even though it is too late…
And how relatable is that? Almost everyone thinks back on those choices they made in the past, and wonders if their life would look different. That taste is called regret, and is present for almost for everyone in the stories.
Hirose's story, on the other hand, carries an air of heart-stopping suspense. Her husband is not seriously ill but has passed away. Making the kind of pork cutlet her husband used to make for her when he was alive is an outlet for her immense grief. Not being a good cook, she burned her hand, which she cherished most as a piano teacher, to practise making pork chops. Perhaps she thought that if she could make this pork chop, her husband would be close.
I cannot help but wonder, that when grief strikes, what is my exit strategy? What is my farewell ritual in the face of loss? Was I too sad or too busy to even think about those?
At Kamogawa Restaurant, the flavours lead us to solve life's puzzles.
The meaning of many notions in life only becomes apparent after the years have passed. To intervene in memory is to cleanse oneself. When it is revealed, we might be surprised, and then our eyes will fill with tears. Life might be full of regret and shining with the light of dignity, which brings us back again from reincarnation.
In one of the stories, the writer writes, "the amount of love that one’s heart can bear, can also bear that same amount of pain.” A subtle sensitivity and respect for emotions have always been one of the features of Japanese literature. It is the respect and remembrance of love that makes emotions warm and long-lasting
Ending
In the book, Nagare says, "young people will always unconditionally fall for delicious food. But people like us, who are older, will always be led by the spice called memories."
What does the spice of memories smell or taste like? I do know what it could be for me, or I am sensitive enough to notice it. The smell of good miso soup with desired tofu in it brings me back to my old house in Nara and the back of Hanako Bachan; the flavour of saba sushi brings me back to the river bank in Kyoto on a sticky summer; the cumin on lamb kababs takes me back to having a bubbly drink on a wooden bench in a hutong in Beijing.
Reference
Book on Amazon Japan page: link
TV Show website in Japanese: link
