“Chinese” Recipes

I am partial to delicious food and often make simple dishes at home. Historical research is not unlike cooking. You carefully select the ingredients, look up the established ways to prepare the dish, picture it in your head, and then make your own version. Just as with cooking, you eagerly await people’s opinions, which can be harsh regardless of your efforts.
Incidentally, education in Japan is now expected to foster a critical and analytical attitude towards history. Students of history are
supposed to not only gobble up knowledge through blind memorization but try ‘cooking,’ that is, interpreting the facts.
It thus becomes crucial to master the right ways to prepare your ingredients: historical sources. A dish improperly cooked or made from poorly selected or suspicious ingredients tastes bad; even worse, it can be harmful. And it goes without saying that a person who has never grabbed a kitchen knife can hardly pass any culinary skills to their students.
I study the history of ancient China. More specifically, I investigate bamboo and wooden slips to learn more about the formation of the ancient Chinese world. It is a narrow research field, but I always spend exhilarating, enjoyable time engaging and arguing with those
materials. I am determined to further polish my ‘cooking’ skills.