The Big Sort: 13 - Nancy
Saitama
2015.07ish
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We didn’t exactly hit it off at first.
She seemed tense when we finally met in person — understandably so.
On the 2.5 hour drive to her house from Tokyo, we got stuck in heavy summer holiday traffic. I’d sent her profuse apologies and live updates on our whereabouts and ETA. There had been no response.
We’d come to interview Nancy about her cookbooks on Japanese comfort food and preservation techniques, but the task of breaking the ice now felt more like scaling a glacier. I needed to figure out how bad the damage was, so I could strategise how long to keep up the moushiwakenai act, which for me involved: referring back to our late arrival on multiple occasions, sprinkling in little head bows throughout the day, and apologising with varying degrees of tonal emphasis.
(We later found out that she hadn’t seen any of my messages because they were going to her iPad and not her phone.)
But even though I was the one asking her for the massive favour of her time, the initial hesitation wasn’t just on her side. While I was fascinated with her work, back then I also had doubts. I was a Nalgene-carrying liberal arts student who'd trained like an Olympian to critique and poke holes at anything without offering any solutions.
At the time, I was thinking about the broad question of ownership and originality in food, particularly around staple dishes or food that's part of generational knowledge. Of course testing and developing recipes takes a huge amount of time and there’s tons of creativity and originality during that process, but what happens with recipes that have been passed down or adapted from someone else? How many tweaks do you need to add to be able to claim something as your own? Does the act of recording, translating and publishing alone make you entitled to ownership?
I was hoping she’d be some sort of case study.
Despite the awkward beginning, she warmed up to us quickly. And with each bite of shiokoji grilled pork and onigiri, I also loosened my agenda. We found common ground — our shared desire to bridge California and Japan, her involvement in Slow Food movements, the random revelation that I had met her son at a summer school when I was 15. She showed us around the garden and kid's immersion program that she runs. She had us taste her fish sauces and miso. She even brought out ice cream that she’d made from the Chez Panisse cookbook that melted my heart. We ended up staying in her home for hours.
As we parted, she said she didn’t mind if we created something out of our time together or not. I decided to abandon the piece, though not for lack of inspiration. I left with utter respect.
2 years later, I resolved some of my questions unexpectedly in California. A close friend was coordinating native medicinal herb and cooking workshops with a Tongva Elder called Barbara Drake, who taught us about chamomile, sage, stinging nettle, mugwort. When I asked Barbara for her permission to share what I’d learned, she looked puzzled. Her emphasis was on sharing. She asked not, “Who owns ideas and knowledge?”, but “Why should ownership exist in the first place?”