Fumihiro Konta
National Museum of Nature and Science, Japan
Flower-Eating Culture is a field of Ethnobotany. The aim of this study is to recognize the cultural implications in the flower eating customs in traditional societies in Asia.
Flowers of Malay bushbeech are boiled with sticky rice to make special cakes which are eaten on New Year’s Day by people of the Dai Tribe in Yunnan, China. People are very delighted and happy to add one age in their life by eating such cakes. This custom has important cultural implications.
Rice crackers decorated with flowers of the Korean azalea were eaten by empresses and court ladies as pleasure food at the spring celebration in the palace of Korea in the past. Yellow-colored cakes made with the pollen of red pine have been used for celebration of marriage in South Korea from the past to present. These two examples also have cultural implications.
Two kinds of edible chrysanthemum flowers have been used in Japan. One is a true edible flower of which the petals are detached from the head (involucre) and boiled before being eaten. Flower cooking is done on New Year’s Day and festival days. The cultural implications are recognized in these examples. Another is a false edible flower of small size. In the past, this flower has been eaten to avoid food poisoning by sashimi (raw fish). However, at present, these false edible flowers are used as symbolic decoration served with sashimi. This symbolic meaning recognized in Japanese society is interesting from the viewpoint of Flower-Eating Culture.
(Presented in the 2014 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum: Flower Culture in Asia, 8-9 July 2014, Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, and Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University)