Customer Rating:  
Summary: Best Japanese cookbook, but...
Comment: I was looking for a comprehensive Japanese cookbook that uses original ingredients (rather than what happens to be available in the West). This is the best Japanese cookbook from this perspective that I've seen. However, I still only give three stars, because being the best is not good enough.
I have not found a single comprehensive cookbook that fully uses Japanese ingredients. Many ingredients might not have been available in the West when the book was written (like wagyu beef), but they are now so the cookbook should cover them.
I suppose such a cookbook will be written during the coming decade, in the meantime I can strongly recommend this book. I don't think there is any better book when I'm writing this review. If you are aware of a better book, please let me know in the comments section below.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Japanese Cooking Bible
Comment: What Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking was to the cuisine of France, so "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art" is to Japanese food. This is the single-absolute-must-have book for anyone interested in cooking or even simply appreciating and eating the many delights and delicacies that come from this culinary culture.
Author Tsuji Shizuo doesn't simply want to teach you how to cook. He wants you to understand the thought process that goes into Japanese cooking, into the culture of food-lovers that produced one of the world's most delicious and diverse national cuisines. Starting with the ingredients, he walks your through all of the core items you will need, the flavors found within, how they can be combined and how they should be prepared. Everything that is touted in modern cooking: freshness, seasonal ingredients, food prepared to augment its natural flavor; it all comes from Japan.
Along with theory, this is a serious cooking manual as well. Cutting techniques, preparation styles, in-depth recipes for all major traditional Japanese foods; this is a classroom in a book. Along with the ingredient list there is also an explanation of traditional tools, and what can be substituted from what is commonly found in a Western kitchen. Knives get a lot of focus, as the standard Western knife set is designed for French cooking which has different demands than Japanese.
One thing this book is not is "food porn". There are no glorious and mouth-watering color photographs of the various recipes, no clever and cute names for dishes or original variations. The illustrations are all instructional in nature, with step-by-step processes to show you how to cut and stir to get the desired result. "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art" is probably not for the casual fan who just wants something easy and quick. It is much more Anthony Bourdain than Rachael Ray.
But if you really want to master the art of Japanese cooking, then you need this book. It is that simple.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lots of information about the culture of Japanese cooking; not merely a cookbook
Comment: I agree with all of the reviewers who cite the thoroughness and the attention to technique and to information on unfamiliar ingredients. I ordered the 1980 version by mistake, because it was so much cheaper. I really don't know if it is much different than the newer version, but somewhere I read that it hadn't been revised much. If I have any disappointment about the book, it is that there are very few pictures.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Japanese cooking book
Comment: I have to admit that I haven't yet to try one recipe from here. It is so informative. I like to read cook book and learn about the background of each food so this is the book for me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: From Osaka With Love
Comment: This is the only Japanese cookbook you will ever need. As other reviewers have already mentioned, it is indeed "the Bible of Japanese cooking."
A little bit about me, I first feel in love with Japanese cooking at the age of 8, when for my birthday, my parents took me to Joto's Japanese restaurant and I tried Sukiyaki. The sauce was to die for. The sauce won me over more than the ingredients inside the pot.
I just had to know how to cook it so luckily for me there was a Japanese market nearby. I went inside a bought Japanese Cuisine for Everyone by Yukiko Moriyama. It was ok for the time. It does contain actual photographs of all the sauce bottles and packages of dried foods that you need to find. It can be hard to locate items at the market and the pictures helped in the beginning. Then, years later, I bought Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat by Naomi Moriyama. It does have some traditional recipes mixed in with fusion cooking. Recently I bought Japanese Homestyle Cooking by Tokiko Suzuki and Harumi's Japanese Cooking by Harumi Kurihaara. Someone let me borrow an old book from Time Life books in the Foods of the World series called The Cooking of Japan. I have looked through the Nobu cookbook and it is filled with wonderful pictures but the recipes are hard for the average cook. That said, Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art towers above all others in content, detailed descriptions, cutting techniques, meal planning, and how to put together lunches and dinners based on the seasons. Other books have the aboved mentioned information but not on the level of Tsuji. Its like comparing the novels of Jane Austen to those of Danielle Steel. Both are romantic writers but only one is a genuis whose works stand the test of time.
Now in its 25th Anniversary, not much revising was needed, according to the author's son, you can see real Japanese cooking without all the added fusion cooking of today.
I do agree with Tsuji in his introduction where he writes, "With a Japanese recipe, however, unless you have been to this country and eaten the food, you will probably have little idea of what you will be aiming at." Despite the fact that sushi bars are everywhere and numerous Japanese restaurants are popping up, I feel dissatisfied everytime I go to a Japanese restuarant in the Tampa Bay area. Ok the sushi is good for the most part, if you avoid the California and cucumber rolls, but the main dishes are usually sub par. Each time I look at the menu and see Teriyaki Chicken or Steak I cringe. Its just not what I'm looking for. I'm sure America does have real Japanese resturants like Rangetsu in Orlando that cater to Japanese tourists or in other places like LA or NYC. I'm baised because I'm spoiled. I lived in Osaka, Japan for three years and Osaka has to be one of the great food cities, along with Kyoto, in all of Japan. Tokyo does have excellent food and the giant crab in Hokkaido is great but there's something about the food in Kansai that is extraordinary.
I lived with a Japanese host family for 1-year. Often on Saturdays, if I had no other plans, we would go to the supermarket to pick out things for the whole family. I got first hand experience on how to pick what kind of fish and why and how to buy various ingredients.
Then she would cook and I would sneak around the corner and watch. Sometimes I didn't think she wanted me to see how to cook so I was always quiet. Then I would slip back to my room and write it all down.
Also, you could wander around Osaka and just happen to find little soba and udon stands, kaiten 100-yen sushi, ramen restaurants, sukiyaki shops, shabu-shabu, Yakiniku grills, and my own personal favorite, Okonomiyaki (seafood pancake) where your table is a grill and you make and cook Okonomiyaki yourself. Staying 3-years in Osaka, I never had bad food even at the occasional trips to Wendy's or MacDonalds. Ok with that in mind, Japanese Cooking shows most of the stuff I learned from my host mother, plus the Osaka-style of Sukiyaki that I ate at many different restaurants in Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe, and all the foods that I tried in the Kansai area. It goes far beyond all my experiences with my host mother, reading various cookbooks, and learning how to cook simple dishes from different Japanese girlfriends.(When I would visit a Japanese girl at her apartment, I would cook for the most part.) I wish I would have read this book before going to Osaka because all kinds of doors would have opened up that I didn't even see at the time.
Overall the single best Japanese cookbook out there.
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