Nabemono has been central to Japanese communal eating since at least the Heian period. It developed as a practical solution to the Japanese home's absence of an oven — the single pot on a charcoal brazier at the centre of a low table could cook everything, warm everyone, and invite communal participation in the cooking. In the contemporary restaurant context, shabu-shabu and sukiyaki are the most internationally known expressions.
Nabemono — pot things — covers the range of Japanese table-cooked hot pot preparations: shabu-shabu (paper-thin beef swished in kombu broth), sukiyaki (beef simmered in sweet soy with vegetables), yudofu (silken tofu simmered in kombu broth), and chanko nabe (the sumo wrestler's sustenance broth). Each shares a communal cooking vessel and a broth — but the technique, timing, and purpose of each is specific. Nabemono is the most social form of Japanese cooking and, perhaps, the most technically forgiving — which makes it also the most revealing of how well ingredients and broths have been prepared.
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