In Upstate New York, Talking Tanka Poetry

Here's some of what I collected at Tanka Sunday in Albany over the weekend.

Tanka, the ancient form of Japanese poetry, is alive and well, I found out. Two lines longer than haiku (formulated in a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern instead of haiku's 5-7-5) it's being given new life every day by by ardent practitioners of the form, not just in Japan, but around the world. Present at the Tanka Society of America's bi-annual meeting were poets from the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan, who shared their poems and discussed why it is they write tanka. 

Pulled into this world of verse by a collection of tanka that my grandparents published in 1960, little did I know that it would lead to such a rich and warm community of like-minded poets. Included in the photo above, center, is The Sky Unchanged: Tears and Smiles, a collection of tanka about the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and nuclear disaster, many of them written by survivors themselves. Amy V. Heinrich, former director of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University, was one of three translators who rendered the poems into English, and also the keynote speaker at Tanka Sunday. 

Here are a few poems from the book:

locally grown

vegetables

hardly sell--

I eat my heart out

this evening

        

        Toko Mihara

        Fukushima, June 2012

unkempt and unshaven

the town mayor

encourages his staff

"we can do it!"

all the while crying

        

        Yoshihiro Yamauchi

        Iwate, May 2011

Michael Dylan Welch, the founder of the Tanka Society of America, also runs a small press for haiku and tanka books called Press Here. On the left in the picture above is his most recent tanka publication, a beautifully designed and produced collection of tanka by the late poet Pat Shelley, titled Turning My Chair. On the right, is the latest edition of The Tanka Journal, from the Nihon Kajin Club (Japanese Tanka Poets' Society). At 5,000 members strong it's the largest organization of tanka poets in Japan. Editor-in-Chief Aya Yuhki, who studied English literature in university, traveled from Tokyo to attend Tanka Sunday.

My friend and translator Kyoko Miyabe and I each gave presentations on our forthcoming English-language translation of my grandparents' book, By the Shore of Lake Michigan. Yet for sure, it was we who learned more about tanka from the assembled poets, not the other way around. 

Elizabeth Andoh Pays Culinary Tribute to the People of Tohoku

The esteemed Japanese cookbook author Elizabeth Andoh made an appearance tonight at The International Culinary Center in Soho to talk about her new e-book, Kibo, a culinary tribute to the people and foodways of Tohoku, Japan.

The area is still reeling from the quake-tsunami-nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011, and Andoh will be donating half of the proceeds from the book to relief and recovery efforts. "Food and culture disappear under stress," she told the audience, and so she wanted to capture the food culture of the region "before it morphed into something unrecognizable."

I had never met Andoh before, even though I was a religious reader of her Japan Times column when I lived in Tokyo. I vaguely recall someone telling me that although she is a Caucasian American, forty-plus years in Japan have given her a somewhat Japanese appearance. She did indeed seem Japanese, not just in manner and clothing, but physically as well, perhaps because of the way she pulled her hair back in a bun, or her extreme graciousness.

Some of the truly distinctive Tohoku dishes Andoh introduced were a shiso maki, thin, cylindrical shiso leaf packets stuffed with a walnut-miso paste; a salad made of dried yellow chrysanthemum petals and enoki mushroom; a sweet shira-ae, of fresh apple and dried apricots and cranberries dressed with a pine nut-and-tofu mixture, and what she described as a "funky, funky"  ika ninjin, or squid jerky and julienned carrot strips simmered in vinegar, brown sugar, and hot pepper. All of them were delicious, and completely different from versions of these dishes that I grew up with.

To pair with these tantalizing morsels were three impressive saké samplings that Timothy Sullivan of UrbanSaké.com (he was a great source for my Edible Manhattan saké story) introduced: Nanbu Bijin Tokubetsu Junmai, Daishichi Kimoto Junmai and Urakasumi Zen from the disaster-affected prefectures of Iwate, Fukushima and Miyagi.

Andoh noted that her Japanese cookbook colleagues were puzzled by her desire to talk to the devastated people of Tohoku about their food traditions, and later told me that their incomprehension "made me realize how American I am." It's also in her nature to want to study these things; she was trained as an anthropologist at the University of Michigan before, on a lark, applying for a scholarship to study in Japan, a country she knew nothing about.


Thanks to Yukari Sakamoto, author of the wonderful Food, Sake Tokyo for alerting me to tonight's event!

Chef Bill Telepan and Friends Cook for Tohoku

Telepan, center, and event volunteers.
Photos courtesy of  Bill Telepan

I happened to speak with Chef Bill Telepan yesterday, who was full of news about his recent trip to Japan. He was one of eight New York chefs who traveled to Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, one of the areas most devastated by the March 11 Greater Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The team's mission was to cook a heartwarming Fourth of July weekend lunch for an estimated 1,000 people in this city.

“It was an amazing event, and it went perfectly,” said the chef, whose eponymous Upper West Side restaurant is known for its artful presentation of seasonal and local ingredients. “The day before, we were told that only 400 people might show up, and we felt really bad for the people who had organized the event,” he said. In fact, the visiting chef delegation, which cooked their version of Japanese and Western comfort foods, ended up serving between 2,000 and 2,500 guests.

The plan for the dinner was first hatched in May, when two businessmen, one from XCoal Energy & Resources and one from Nippon Steel, were dining at restaurant Daniel. XCoal, explains Telepan, provides coal to Nippon Steel, which has longstanding ties in Kamaishi. When chef Daniel Boulud stopped by to chat, the men discussed the trials residents of the quake- and tsunami-wasted area were still facing and decided that this goodwill gesture would not only lift the spirits of a community that has suffered much, but also show off the safety and quality of Japanese ingredients.

The all-star chef team

Boulud rounded up his all-star team of chefs, which, besides himself and Telepan, included David Bouley, Floyd Cardoz, Craig Koketsu, Tadashi Ono, François Payard, and Michael Romano. Telepan recalled one woman at the event who came up to him and told him that she had not been able to afford a cake for her daughter’s birthday; this lunch was their celebratory meal. Another guest told Telepan that the event provided the first reason for her to put on make-up since the disaster. About 20 percent of community residents are still homeless, the group, which also toured the area to witness the damage first-hand, learned.

The chefs sourced their ingredients with the help of chef Patrice Martineau, a Boulud alumnus who now cooks at the Peter restaurant at Tokyo’s Peninsula Hotel. “I made miso stir-fried vegetables and a miso- and kasu (lees that result from the production of sake)-marinated hamachi and tuna that we seared,” reported Telepan. “It was fun, because I haven’t cooked Japanese food since I was at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America).” Telepan, who graduated from the CIA in 1987, figured out the recipe beforehand, tested it in New York, and also consulted with another chef on the trip, restaurant Matsuri’s Ono.

Patiently waiting in line.

“The truth was, we weren't going to serve a high-end dish, we wanted comfort food with a twist,” Telepan explained. Pastry chef Payard brought 3,000 macarons with him (a favorite of Japanese diners), sourced some “incredible peaches,” for a peach tart, and baked an equally awe-inducing chocolate roulade made with tofu. Another dish that Telepan liked was one made by Chef Craig Koketsu of The Hurricane Club, a fresh summer salad of tomatoes cucumbers and corn. Except for the macarons, the food was all from Japan, Telepan added; “Part of the deal is that we were there to let people know that Japanese ingredients are still good.” For local residents, still reeling from the loss of family, friends and property, the meal must have been a soothing balm to their psychic wounds.

The t-shirt to prove it really happened.

Telepan was amazed by the Japanese guests’ famously rule-abiding natures. The community facility where the event was held was the size of a football field, he says, “where I was about midfield, and the line went around the track. It stayed that way for about half an hour, and at one point people thought there was not going to be enough food. So they told everyone they were only allowed one dish. It was insane,” (here he let out a bemused laugh) “because they listened, and nobody complained. I had a lot [of food] so I kept telling them, it’s okay, you can have whatever you want from me. But they were reluctant.”