Issue #8

Words by Cory Ohlendorf | Photography courtesy of Tokyo Good Museum

It’s one of the things you can rely on—like the punctuality of the train system—before you eat in Japan, you will receive an oshibori. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Michelin-starred sushi restaurant, a high-end steakhouse, a mom-and-pop udon restaurant or a fast-food gyudon chain. They’re found in bars and hotels, even on Japanese airlines. You will be given a damp towelette (of varying thickness and quality, but we’ll get into that later) for you to wipe your hands and refresh yourself before eating.

Japan is revered for its cleanliness and order and the oshibori culture is clearly an integral part of this. The word comes from the Japanese word shiboru (絞る), meaning “to wring”. The o is the honorific prefix placed before nouns to show respect in the Japanese language.

The current tradition of oshibori in Japan dates back to at least the Edo Period (1603 – 1868). But scholars say the practice originated even further back, when innkeepers would offer weary travelers a wet cloth from a bucket as a show of hospitality (and as a way to get patrons to wipe off the dirt from traveling before they came inside). The warmth and cleanliness the cloth provided was a heartwarming gesture to welcome someone. It began in temples and inns, then at Japanese tea houses, which led to them being adopted by the elite class of samurais and eventually the general public. Soon, the ritual became an important component of customer service in modern Japan.

Nowadays, an oshibori will usually be offered chilled in the summer months and warm throughout the fall and winter. In sit-down establishments, the small terrycloth towel will be dampened with water, wrung out, neatly rolled up, then placed on a small tray. In more casual settings, a disposable oshibori could come folded in a plastic wrapper. However you receive it, the proper way to use one is to open it and wipe your hands, then fold the towel with the dirty surface on the inside and place it back on the provided tray or rested on the table. In casual settings, like an izakaya (the local, Japanese-style bar), some people can be seen wiping their faces or neck with their oshibori, especially when it’s hot outside. But this is seen as bad manners and even if you notice locals doing it, I’d advise against it.

And while the custom of these delightfully moist towels are rooted firmly in the Japanese experience, the use of standard napkins is not. Like paper towels in restrooms, they’re practically nonexistent. That’s simply because the Japanese just don’t use napkins, generally. The purpose of the oshibori is to cleanse the hands at the start or possibly wipe at the end, but it is not intended to be used as a napkin. If you’re lucky, you may find a chain restaurant that has a napkin dispenser with small, waxy-textured cocktail-sized napkins.

I’ve also come to learn from my Japanese friends that napkins are not used in most typical Japanese homes either. People will sometimes use a tissue if the need arises, but napkins just never took off. Asked if they’ve ever had disposable napkins in their house, my friends just laughed and said the same thing: “Never”. There are likely several reasons for this. The standard Japanese meal isn’t messy, or made up of finger foods. Most dishes are prepared to be bite-sized and eaten with chopsticks, so there is no need for a knife or fingers. And as a result there isn’t very much contact between food and fingers or food with the sides of the mouth. So wiping your hands at the beginning—and perhaps at the end—of a meal with your oshibori suffices.

Hasami, Nagasaki is one of the foremost pottery districts in Japan. Porcelain was first made in the area almost 400 years ago, during the Edo Period. It's also the namesake for a line of modern porcelain tableware made there, but designed in California by Takuhiro Shinomoto, a designer now living in Los Angeles (who’s also the owner of Tortoise General Store in Venice Beach). His line of minimalist plates and cups have a rough-hewn quality to them that juxtaposes against the clean lines and simple styling. If you were to start with one piece, my suggestion would be the standard mug. Crafted by hand from a mixture of clay and porcelain and fired in a traditional, mountainside kiln, it's got a wide, comfortable handle and a sleek, stackable design. Because they’re entirely handmade, no two pieces are exactly alike and there are slight color variations between pieces, which only adds to the charm.

Natsubate (夏バテ) is the ideal word for the first week of September, when the world is anticipating fall but Japan still has at least eight weeks of warm weather ahead. To break down the word, natsu means “summer” in Japanese, while bate refers to the Japanese verb bateru, which means to be exhausted. So literally, the word translates to “summer exhaustion.” And there’s a real science behind this seasonal fatigue when the conditions take their toll on the body. You see, when it’s hot, the density of oxygen in the air decreases, which means that the body has to work harder than normal to take in as much oxygen as is required. The body sweats during the heat as well, which leads to a loss of water and salt. Put another way, summer can really take its toll on a body.