Translator: Keisuke Yamashita Reviewer: Hiroko Kawano
(English) My name is YAMASHITA Haruyuki.
I'm a Japanese cuisine chef.
It's a great honour to give a talk here.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Hello, my name is Yamashita.
I'm honoured to stand on this stage.
I'm a chef, as you see my clothes.
I first thought of cooking here, but that doesn't make
any good presentation of TEDx event.
Though everyone calls me 'a chef',
I cook Japanese cuisine 'washoku'.
I should be called 'itacho', a Japanese cuisine chef.
Fortunately
I had opportunities to cook abroad.
When I went abroad I wondered:
What on earth am I?
How shoud I think to create my dishes?
What on earth the Japanese are?
I bumped into such difficulties.
Food materials perplexed me too.
In Abu Dhabi the air tempreture was 40℃.
I couldn't bring materials from Japan.
I had to procure them in local markets.
In such conditions I had to cook from scratch.
'How could I figure it out?'
I asked myself a lot.
Today I would like to talk about it.
The World Gourmet Summit 2010, Singapore, was a turning point in my life.
There gathered the top chefs from across the world.
The most skillful chefs in each country
was summoned to Singapore.
To be honest, while I am speaking here like now,
I am very nervous.
In fact I am shy.
Don't you think I tell a lie? (laugh)
If you do, would you try to come here?
Anyone?
See, this is exactly Japanese reaction.
The Japanese would never come out.
In US, go to a theme park,
and ask 'come on to the stage',
the Japanese will look down.
In a theme park abroad,
people will rush
and scramble for the stage.
That's what happens in US or aboroad.
Communication is totally different.
When I was in an event abroad,
Japanese are too polite,
bowing her and bowing there in the movie.
I thought we are too much used to doing so.
We aren't good at communication,
in a positive word, 'modesty',
I guess...
but I definitely bump into a wall in the beginning.
In such situations, I have to create something new
arranging a new thing from scratch.
I say I'm a washoku chef but I cook new washoku.
Somehow people call me a pioneer,
but I must confess a pioneer is the name
that I am eventually called.
Shin-Washoku is receiving attention from across the world.
Now Washoku is registered as intangible heritage,
which doesn't mean washoku itself is registered,
but Japanese culture and customs were registered.
Why we eat cram soup on girls' day?
Why we cook chirashizushi?
The answers are in the culture around Japanese cuisine.
Knowing such custome exactly
I cook at 40℃ room temperature.
Actually it is quite a tough job.
Today I'd like to talk about creative thinking,
which is characteristic as a Japanese.
Let me show you how we think:
What colour do you think is it in the middle?
You don't have to answer
as you are shy Japanese. (Laughter)
Right.
How about left-side, and right-side?
The middle is 'AKA',
which means "RED" in English
Wy we call it AKA ?
Have you ever wonder why?
We know it is AKA
because we are told that it is AKA at school or by parents.
That is why we believe it is AKA.
Then about KURO, black, we know it is KURO as we've learned so.
But once we step into a creative world,
where we think about things freely,
there is no regulation there.
Then you wonder: if it is okay to call AKA AKA;
or if it is okay to see things just from the front direction?
How about seeing things from the opposite direction?
If you see a column from the top, you only see a circle.
Unless you change the way you think,
you are not able to succeed
in the cuisine or business world, where you are creating things.
I always have to think this way.
On the contrary, we have been through education,
where we had to call red "AKA".
That's where we are from.
But when we are grown up to be an adult citizen,
we may be a musician or performer,
or someone who shows their creativity;
then we have to have options, calling it yellow, or blue.
You just have to have a reason why you call it that way.
Here is a simple picture of a carrot.
Let me talk about carrots.
I once had an opportunity to cook at a Zen temple.
The kitchen was called "HANBOU", or rice method,
which was the most sacred space.
That means food should be cooked in such a holy place.
And I cooked in a serene, tidy atmosphere.
Although I am not a priest, living in a secular world
One day I was cutting carrots to cook,
when a priest came and asked me,
"Mr.Yamashita, what are you doing now?"
I answered, "I'm cutting carrots for cooking."
Looking into the dust bin, the priest said:
"Can you make carrots?"
I said, "Of course, it's a easy job.
"Getting the ground, planting seeds, with water and a little help of the sun,
I can make carrots in two weeks."
But he said, "That's not what I mean.
Are you able to create a carrot itself?
I was blown away.
To create a carrot itself.
He asked me
if I could create a carrot itself.
How about a radish?
This is exactly what only God can do.
We can plant seeds,
but we are not able to create the seeds from scratch.
Now what the priests really meant is:
We should eat them all, never waste leaves or pearls of carrot;
Thank gods for food.
It is all about mindfulness.
This is what the discipline of Zen means.
Since then on, my mindset for cooking has totally changed.
Later I went abroad and learned a lot.
I learned more that I am a Japanese.
Then I hit upon Bushido,
the moral spirit of sumurai.
Loyalty to master, devotion to parents.
Mortify yourself,
be generous to your followers.
Value righteousness, show mercy towards your opponents.
Keep away from your self-greed.
Prefer honour to wealth.
These are what the good, old Japanese samurai kept in their mind.
We are now living in the different ages.
However these spirits still fit for today.
Loyalty to master:
though we have no master any more,
we have companies to show royalty today, right?
Do not late for work ;
Keep yourself well-dressed as a business person;
Do your best for the company.
Nowadays there are some who play hooky from work.
Devotion to parents:
People say "I took my parents to trip"
when I ask them if they are devoted to their parents;
It's not I what I mean.
I ask them if they make their parents feel comfortable about your demeanour;
if they feel gratitude for people of their parents' age;
or if they pay respect for the elder.
Mortify yourself:
that's what is written.
If I managed to do that I could loose my weight much easier.
It's difficult for us to keep strict against what we want to do.
It is super hard for everyone to keep themselves disciplined.
I am no exception.
I am as weak as anyone else.
So I always think myself, talking to myself;
Waters naturally go down to lower place, but I wish to be a water that go upwards.
I wish to be always nice to people at the bottom.
I do not mean I am superior to anyone though --
I wish to be nice to my colleague,
or learners I teach cooking in school,
or various people relating to various cooking.
I mean everyone is equal; there is no tops and bottoms among people.
I wish to be warm, kind person.
But I'm sorry to say this, but in Japan,
it is a virtue to keep your head down.
I wish to change this country where it is a virtue to keep your head up.
Be righteous:
We must be able to say it's right when it's right.
Sympathy against enemy.
In the Sesngoku, the age of provincial wars in Japan,
there were a bunch of heroic saga,
but in fact it is said that
our heroes hated to fight the more than anyone else.
They knew that war is the last thing they would do.
Those who wants to stop fighting were fighting in the front line.
Keep away from your self-greed:
Disdain your self-greed, not just hate it.
Disdain means look something down as profanity to gods.
Which means 'Contain yourself'.
Prefer honour to wealth:
Wealth is equivalent to money.
Value honour more than money.
Consider honour most valuable.
With these virtues and goals,
I as one of those vulnerable cook abroad.
We have to have true insight for things.
We have to see what is needed now,
to figure out what is important in this situation.
We have this spirit, so when you go abroad,
we do not have to be shy Japanese.
We just have this culture.
We just have this spirit.
We unconsciously put our hands together to the sunrise,
but it is nothing to do with religion.
We just want to wear good clothes in the New Year for no reason.
We just have such culture and custom.
Now we have to recognise these spirit
when we go get to the top stage of global world.
Or we will end up with as minority, or outsider.
We Japanese are not in the mainstream.
We have to figure out how we could thrive in the world.
We have to figure out how we should think about things.
In the fields of design, politics,
social matters, and our cuisine,
We have various cultures in various fields.
We should rethink about our culture
enhance it, right?
Actually, I feel difficult to learn much.
When I go to kitchen
I am just busy cooking.
I just have little time to learn.
So I try to remember Bushido.
It is true that recent youngsters always using smartphone,
and stay away from real life communication.
But they just have to take a few steps,
to go into the bright side.
I saw a young guy who feels blue.
He says 'I'm depressed because this and that'.
I say, 'you look great'.
You have everything hands, legs.
You should use your brain,
you should think.
If you don't think, anyone can fix it.
Only you can fix it, right?
You have to think how you would like to live;
how you would like to think;
how you would like to see things.
Then you can change the way you see.
This is a piano.
I guess this is exactly what differs the East from the West.
When a Westerner knows how to play the piano,
they would play it on the stage.
Then what about in Japan, or Asia?
When we know how to play music instruments,
we would like to play them
to keep our home peaceful.
We play them to welcome visitors.
We hardly play instruments outside.
This much Japanese think differently from those who are in other countries.
But as I have told before,
There is a dilemma:
We have to go outside the world;
but we are shy Japanese.
We have to choose go out from being shy.
I am struggling to do so.
Oops, sorry...
We are supposed to have another, last slide, but...
As I am a chef as you know,
I am surrounded by a lot of food everyday.
This time, when I decided to speak on TEDx stage in Kobe,
I thought of earthquake disasters.
Now I am based on Tokyo,
I was in Tokyo when the Great East Japan Earthquake hit.
I fest a huge shake.
I wasn't injured at all but
then I thought what we should do.
Especially as a man wearing white chef coat,
what I must do.
I thought and thought.
I had experience before Tohoku support.
When I was visited by a disaster in Kobe,
Some volunteer handed me a dish of eel,
When I found myself in the shelter at Kobe city hall.
It was a chilly eel without any dish,
but I has so happy to eat it that I almost cry.
The volunteer person said, 'Please bring it up'.
Then
I recognised it as a Japanese spirit.
During such a hard time after earthquake,
people keep lines politely in Kobe.
I saw samurai spirit in there.
Therefore when I was heading for the world stage,
I made it my mind
to keep doing charity activities.
When Tohoku was hit by the earthquake,
I had a lot of comrades who want to go there to support them.
I said 'Wait, not now'.
We would need water or gasoline, which are precious for the people there.
Instead I figure out what we could do.
And we decided to gather water from people in Kobe to support Tohoku.
People might ask
'Why don't you go right now?'
I said no, because I think of
more essential things for us to do,
and I know what to do right now.
The other day, we sent relief supply to the Philippine from Tokyo.
On 11th of March
We'll soon have a charity concert in Tokyo.
As we are Japanese,
who have been through earthquakes,
all our chef coats are embroidered
as 'Kobe'.
We keep this sprit in our mind
with a pride as Japanese,
we go out into the world stage bearing our heart and spirit.
With this Japanese spriti,
it is okay if we cannot raise our hands in the public places,
we have our own place
to show our talents.
That is what I felt through my cooking life.
So I would be happy if you like even a small portion of my talk.
about your work, school, everyday life.
If you just enjoy
my out-of-my-cooking-life-story,
I am happy enough.
I hope now you feel something different from my story.
When I work as a volunteer, people says only I can do it.
But that's not true.
Just change your mind.
Just change your viewpoint.
Then you can see differently.
That's how I find the way
to express myself in cuisine.
Then I bumped into Bushido, the samurai spirit,
with Japanese spirit,
I for the first time felt proud of myself
being a Japanese,
be proud of my self cooking.
And that is my story.
From today, from here, from this opportunity
if my story could inspire you to think a bit different,
it would be meaningful that I spoke to you today.
I thank for this opportunity to speak here.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)