Kitaōji Rosanjin | Translation Archive 00002 | Cooking | Shard 00005

On French Cuisine, 1954 | Excerpt

Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Southward, Summer 2026

Riding its undeserved reputation as the world’s premier cooking tradition, French cuisine has captivated Japanese minds for over half a century: a situation caused by the dissemination of the opinions of short-term Japanese workers in France. With a closer look, we find that the majority of these workers are inexperienced youth who neither know nor wish to learn anything about the long historical development of Japanese cuisine, and this is a truly regrettable situation.

It’s clear that no one among all the ambassadors, attachés, and bohemian youth artists living in France today deems it their duty to learn all they can about Japanese cooking. Then again, maybe they take our traditions for granted, never asking wherein lies the true value of Japanese cuisine. In that case, we can’t expect any of our compatriots to have given it much thought, but it’s almost certain that, aided by youthful excess, this indifference allows for the indiscriminate and deceptive marketing of French cuisine to the Japanese people.