Dairy has never been central to the Japanese diet: Buddhism discourages meat eating, which meant that, for most of the nation’s history, cows were rare. But while dairy isn’t inherently Japanese, creaminess — something that feels soft and jiggly on the tongue and slips down the throat — is, as embodied by foods such as tofu, rice porridge and chawanmushi (savory egg custard).
Though milk wasn’t entirely new to Japan, the arrival of American dairy products during the postwar occupation years redefined how the Japanese conceived of creaminess. In the 1950s, one of the most popular treats was Milky, a soft candy whose mascot, Peko-chan, was a little girl in pigtails licking her lips (its slogan: “Milky tastes like mother”).
The Japanese language has many terms to describe food’s texture or mouthfeel, and onomatopoeic words are routinely used to explain gradations of creaminess. “Fuwa fuwa” expresses the cloudlike lightness of milk bread, for example, while “toro toro” refers to the smooth, evanescent quality of a thin slice of Kobe beef melting on your tongue. And though Japanese people had little reference for bovine products, classic dishes (made with Asian staples like egg, rice and soy) offered a familiar sensory ground from which to introduce Western concepts to local palates: The addition of milk transformed matcha, for example, from a bitter ceremonial drink to a frothy, sweet latte — the tastes of the West grafted onto much older ones.
This process of adaptation represents what’s called wafu (meaning “Japanese in style”), a term used across food, architecture, fashion and literature to denote and celebrate East-West collisions. Today, the Japanese idea of milkiness has been brought back to where it came from: overseas. And some of the country’s enduring culinary exports are distinguished by their creaminess, from soufflé cheesecakes to egg sandos to mochi ice cream, unions of both here and there. It’s the ultimate example of wafu — what makes it new isn’t the ingredients but the perfection of their pairings.
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