Korean and Japanese Cooking — Zainichi Food Culture

The history of Korean food in Japan rests on the colonial period (1910–1945), when Korean labourers and migrants moved to the Japanese archipelago in large numbers, and on the decades after 1945, when those who remained, the Zainichi Koreans, built food businesses in Osaka and Tokyo that lasted through the 1970s. The Korean origin of much of what is now eaten as Japanese yakiniku and kimchi has been acknowledged more openly in food writing since the 2000s.

The culinary relationship between Korea and Japan has been shaped by colonial history (1910–1945), by the migrations that accompanied it, and by the decades after 1945 in which the Zainichi Korean community, those who remained in Japan, ran food businesses in Osaka and Tokyo. Yakiniku (焼き肉) as eaten in Japan descends from Korean barbecue, adapted by Zainichi Korean restaurateurs, and its tabletop grill, its marinated cuts and its vocabulary all draw on Korean household and restaurant practice. The preference for kalbi, the short rib, and for horumon, the offal that the Zainichi restaurants made their own, belongs to this inheritance. Kimchi in Japan became one of the most widely eaten pickles in the country, and Zainichi Korean food businesses were among its early makers before mainstream Japanese manufacturers took it up. The product sold under that name in Japan is commonly sweeter and fermented for a shorter time than traditional ogi kimchi made from napa cabbage (Brassica rapa subsp. pekinensis), and it is a different pickle in taste and in method. These transfers have often passed unremarked in Japanese food culture, and the Korean origin of yakiniku in particular was slow to receive open acknowledgement. Food writing since the 2000s has treated these lineages more openly, and the Zainichi contribution is now set down with more care than it was for most of the postwar period.

Yakiniku rests on sesame oil, soy and garlic marinades, and the smoke of charcoal at the tabletop grill. Horumon, the offal that the Zainichi restaurants made their own, is rich and is eaten with a tare, a dipping or basting sauce, that carries the soy and garlic. Japanese kimchi is sweeter and fermented for a shorter time than the Korean original, so it tastes fresher and less sharp than ogi kimchi.