50 Shades of Beige

Greasies, fush and chups, shark and tatties, call them what you will, but for decades Aotearoa’s favourite takeaway has kept us from running on empty: every week Kiwis scarf down nearly six million servings of fish and chips – that’s 120,000 tonnes a year you greedy buggers. And with that in mind we thought it high time we delved deeper into this national phenomenon, so here is the result: the definitive guide to fish and chips, which is almost entirely 50% true – give or take.

Some scholars believe that the earliest reference to fish and chips can be found in preliminary sketches of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, which appear to show battered terakihi being served (to everyone except Judas Iscariot – who probably got one of those gnarly deep fried frozen crab sticks instead). Mention is also made of fish and chips in 1517 in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but due to political correctness gone mad this has been removed from the definitive Little Golden Books version of the famous play. Which is stink.

Fast forward to 1839 and British novelist Charles Dickens refers to a ‘fried fish warehouse’ in Oliver Twist, although the first documented reference in Aotearoa of what would become our national takeaway dish of choice is in a journal entry by Governor George Grey in 1864: “The country’s future hangs in the balance,” he wrote as fighting raged throughout the land, “and Mrs Grey’s chips are rubbish - wish we could afford the bought ones.”

The merits of ‘the bought ones’ – whether in regard to biscuits, cake, chips or haircuts – was, sadly, a sentiment that would echo dramatically down throughout the history of this nation. But the issue of the historical lineage of chips pales in comparison next to more important questions, questions that divide families, that define communities in the north and south of this land; tough questions that demand hard answers. The faint of heart may want to look away now.

First up, forget your who-shot-Kennedy-moon-landing-denial-tinfoil-hat-wearing hogwash conspiracy theories, let’s get to the nitty gritty: whatever happened to the crinkle cut chip? Supposedly developed to hold more sauce than the regular straight cut, ‘the crinkle’ saw its heyday in the late 80s together with big hair and the ‘hot chips in a bag’ boom driven by food trucks at sporting events and those vaguely depressing fairs favoured by rural New Zealand. The crinkle, when correctly fried, offered a degree of crunch and fat delivery never before seen in a chip, and in addition they looked really fancy. In short, crinkle cut chips, like Holden Toranas, impressed girls; because – like the Thunderbirds and flying cars – they were the future, they represented utopia and a brave new world. They were the shit.

But then, like ABBA T-shirts and hickeys, they vanished. Their usurpers were the ‘Oh look at me I’m so effin special’ shoestring fry and the ‘I can’t be arsed chopping them up’ wedges favoured by bogans. The insidious return of the bog-standard straight cut, the cut that saw off both the shoestring and the wedge and that now reigns supreme, is not something we should wring our hands over though. There is nobility in its simplicity, a beauty in its utilitarianism. And utilitarianism is the ism that best sums up fish and chips.

The next difficult question, and the one you’ve all been waiting for, is sauce. Now, we like to think we’re non-judgemental, but putting vinegar on your chips is wrong, in so many ways. We’ll leave it there, but if you do the vinegar thing, well, we’re not angry, we’re just disappointed. The New Zealand Fish and Chip Condiment Council lists tartare sauce as an acceptable accompaniment, but let’s face it: if you don’t have a crusty old bottle of tomato sauce in the back of the fridge then you’re probably a communist.

And that in turn brings us to Kumara chips...

Now, while these are a seasonal fave in certain quarters of the Plenty office, the kumara chip remains an enigmatic choice that comes and goes from fashion like flared trousers and Bacardi rum. Are we wrong? Hands up anyone who says we’re wrong. Yeah? Well you’re wrong. But seriously, the kumara chip remains the elusive unicorn of the deep-fried world; so promising, with the heady mix of sweet and salty, carbs and a crunchy skin, and yet so far this potential has yet to be realised. Is it the thickness, the oil used in frying, the variety of kumara? We don’t know, but it just seems that what should be the perfect marriage made in heaven usually comes over a bit stodgy. Like flared trousers and Bacardi, you tend to look back on kumara chips and wonder what you were thinking at the time. And yet we’re confident that within our lifetime the perfect kumara chip will be achieved, and that’s a further reminder of why it’s great to be alive right now.

Because that’s the great thing about fish and chips: they’ve always been there for us, always in the background, always reassuringly hot, salty and filling, forbidden and yet flirtatiously available when most needed; late at night, just like that hottie friend of your old flatmat who . . . yeah, nah you get the picture.

They were there during the dark days of struggle and strike in the 1930s and 40s, often the only treat for a lot of Kiwis doing it hard, surviving through economic downturn and the legacy of English cuisine, looking forward to fish and chips Friday on a winter Wednesday. They were there for Sir Ernest Rutherford – who wrote passionately of the wedges he and his team enjoyed after fathering nuclear physics – and for Kate Sheppard – who famously celebrated winning the vote for women and making us the first real democracy in the world by shouting battered snapper and two scoops for all the suffragettes. And they were there for ‘The Fish and Chip Brigade’ – David Lange, Michael Bassett, Roger Douglas and Mike Moore, four ‘she’ll be right politicians’ who said yeah nah to the Yanks and made us nuclear free – and for Olympic runner John Walker – the Kiwi flyer who broke the 3:50 mile in Gothenburg in 1975 and famously said his training regime was hard yakka and fish and chips for lunch.

The remarkable thing is that all, well most, of this is true. John Walker really did eat fish and chips before wowing the world in ‘75, we really did tell the US Navy to piss off in ’85, and as long as you run a mile in under four minutes after chowing down on greasies and form a super-power defying government you’re good to go too.

Because isn’t that what fish and chips are all about? It’s sticking it to The Man, it’s living dangerously, it’s knowing the risks and doing it anyway. We had chips long before Ronald ‘invented’ fast food, and by god we’ll guard the Pacific’s triple star from strife and war knowing that on every main street of this great nation any proud Kiwi can walk in and order two fish and a scoop. It’s a Kiwi institution, it’s the way of our people, and it’s bloody yum.

Saving the Bay - How the Nazis nearly took Ngongotaha

THE AUTUMN OF 1942 were dark days indeed for New Zealand. Singapore had fallen to the Japanese Imperial Army in February, Rommel’s troops had launched a surprise offensive in North Africa, and in the Atlantic Uboats were sending freighters to the bottom faster than shipyards could send them down the slipways; the northern hemisphere seemed poised to fall under Axis control within months. Then, in March, word reached the New Zealand government that fascism was set to strike even closer to home. Adolf Hitler, brooding in his Berlin bunker, was casting a cruel and covetous eye over yet another jewel in the crown of the stumbling British Empire: Ngongotaha.

It had been late in that month that startling intelligence reports began reaching Wellington: a commando unit of the Wehrmacht had been landed on the Bay of Plenty coast and made their way to Ngongotaha – popularly known to locals as “The Sunny Side of the Mountain” – and established a base from which they planned to let loose hell. First they would assassinate Prime Minister Peter Fraser, then destroy key infrastructure targets and spread mayhem until a garrison force could be dispatched from the Fatherland to occupy and enslave Aotearoa. The country’s future hung in the balance, and just one man – Sydney Gordon Ross – stood in the way of Ngongotaha, the Bay of Plenty, and all of New Zealand falling under the Nazi jackboot. And in March 1942, from Rotorua police constables to the Office of the Prime Minister, the same question was being asked: was Ross the man for the job?

At first glance, many would have thought not. Born the son of a blacksmith in Thames in 1909, he moved to Auckland with his family at an early age. Tall and slim with a long, sharp nose, Ross drifted through a variety of jobs including electrician, baker and labourer, but his real calling seems to have been crime. By the mid-1930s he had convictions for theft, burglary and false pretences, with time spent in a borstal, but he topped this in 1939 by winding up in jail for breaking and entering in Te Puke.

It was while serving this sentence of nearly four years that Ross came under the influence of one Charles Alfred Remmers, an ex-London policeman who had come to New Zealand in 1912. Remmers signed up to the New Zealand police but soon wound up on the other side of the law – and in prison – after it was found that his late night patrol duties offered opportunities for burglary that he was unable to resist. Upon his release in 1915, Remmers went straight for nearly 20 years until he became involved in an ill-advised used car dealership in Wellington that saw him – in a caper straight from a B-movie - impersonating a clergyman and being convicted for forgery. By 1937 he was once again a guest of His Majesty, and it was during this period of incarceration that he met Ross, 20 years his junior, in Waikeria Prison near Te Awamutu.

Fellow inmates remember the two as firm friends who shared a disdain for authority and the love of a good yarn, but they also recalled that there was something more to both men than the average petty crim. Remmers’s dislike for the government seemed more than just bitterness, and in private Ross spoke of friends in high places, foreign connections that went right to the top in Germany, and he appeared to be receiving funds from those connections while incarcerated. One man who served time with Ross says that he made it clear that once released he had plans in store - and places in those plans for a chosen few colleagues from Waikeria. But what those plans were he never fully disclosed.

On 28 March 1942, Ross was finally released from prison. Instead of visiting family or friends however, he went directly and at great haste to Wellington. And well he may have hurried, because what he told Robert Semple, Minister for National Service, whom he met on the following day, was earth-shattering. Ross said he had been in contact with a German agent named Barnett who had asked him to join an established sabotage unit of Nazis and sympathetic Kiwis based in Ngongotaha. They had been landed on the Bay of Plenty coast by a long-range Uboat and were under the command of the disgruntled Remmers, who had been released from prison prior to Ross in 1941, and who had chosen that location for health reasons; it was, after all, The Sunny Side of the Mountain.

Ross said he had been approached because of his contacts and underworld connections, which the infiltrators would find good use for, and had been offered handsome remuneration for joining. He said he told Barnett that he would think it over, but instead he went straight to the authorities; despite his colourful past he was, he said, a loyal Kiwi who could not abide the thought of a Nazi-ruled New Zealand, but was fearful that the police would not believe him, and that was why he had chosen to reach out to higher office.

He had found just the right man at just the right time: in the previous weeks there had been a flurry of intelligence reports across Semple’s desk about a shadowy group across the Tasman called Australia First who planned to form a spy ring and aid invaders. Arrests had already been made and the story was to break in New Zealand in the very next day’s Dominion Post. Bob Semple was a down-to-earth Australian who hated red tape and liked to get things done. When Ross walked into his office it made perfect sense that if there was skullduggery going on across the ditch then why not in New Zealand, and this was Semple’s chance to stamp it out before it took hold and everything was mired in bureaucracy. But there was more: Semple’s name, in addition to that of the Prime Minister’s, was top of the list of targets. Semple’s and Fraser’s lives were in danger.

There was no time to lose, and that same day Ross and Semple met with the Prime Minister. Fraser too was horrified but perhaps not surprised – he had also seen the reports on Australia First – and he took what would be a fateful decision to summon not the New Zealand Police Commissioner, but the head of the Security Intelligence Bureau (SIB), Major Kenneth Folkes, and to place the entire matter in his hands.

Folkes was a very different man to Semple and Fraser. Newly arrived from the UK – he had only recently been promoted from Lieutenant – he came from an unremarkable background in the carpet industry, but despite this he seized the initiative and set about establishing a lavish counter-insurgency scheme that would not only knock the Nazi interlopers for six but establish the newly formed SIB as a force to be reckoned with. He immediately decided Ross would go undercover so that the full extent of the plot could be reeled in, and within days Ross had become Captain Calder of the Merchant Navy, complete with officer’s uniform, almost-new Ford V8 and all the petrol and hotel vouchers he would need to travel about while establishing contact with the Nazis. It was all strictly hush-hush of course, with Ross roving at will, wining and dining, and meeting clandestinely with both his Nazi wranglers while at the same time feeding information back to Folkes.

Ross was a dedicated and adept double agent; huge folders of intelligence were complied by him in just a few short weeks, with Nazi sympathisers being whittled from the woodwork by the wily Ross everywhere from Te Puke to Tauranga to Wellington. SIB agents followed hotly in his tracks, adding and confirming the veracity of his reports, and the dossiers on the Nazi network grew so swiftly that Captain Meikle, SIB head in Auckland, who became Ross’s wrangler, stepped in to silence concerns by Rotorua police about the shifty movements of the known criminal Syd Ross in their city. This was not the game for the Rotorua plod, Meikle said, noting that they were a mob that could not even catch a cold.

Meanwhile, in the capital Folkes, began to prepare for the worst: Article 18(b) of the Defence Act of Great Britain passed wide constitutional powers to the SIB - with Folkes as head - in the event of a direct insurgency threat, and Folkes believed just such a threat existed. As Hugh Price writes in The Plot to Subvert Wartime New Zealand, Folkes “and a handful of senior officers thought it scandalous that the Prime Minister ‘lacked the guts’ to take the step that would smarten up New Zealand’s act . . . but what can you expect from a government that is just a band of bloody wharfies.’” With the government so badly hamstrung and the SIB the sole bastion of professionalism in a sea of bumbling yokels, Folkes, Meikle and the Bureau were flirting with extreme measures indeed, believing that their only option was to invoke Article 18(b) and establish a military government under their leadership.

In June of 1942, the Nazis of Ngongotaha were taking New Zealand as close to a coup d'état as it would ever come.

The Rotorua police may have been unable to catch a cold but they certainly had a better nose for bullshit than their big city colleagues. Because that was precisely what the whole story of Nazis in Ngongotaha was.

Ross was a B-grade criminal but a first class actor; his entire story was a hoax, helped along by a willing audience driven by the anxiety of invasion fever and the fervid desire for certain officials to further themselves and their causes. The flimsy tidbits of intelligence on “Nazis” that Ross fed the SIB were grossly exaggerated purely to serve their own ends, and the SIB agents following in his tracks only saw what they wanted to. Remmers was certainly part of the game, but only as a talented liar and shit-stirrer rather than an actual fascist, and the main reason for his and Ross’s success was the culpability of the SIB, who, to put it kindly, lacked the talent required to see through the fog of war and their own thrusting ambition. Ross and Remmers were larrikins, two men who liked to yank the chain of those who brought them to task for their criminal past, but the real crime was that they were ever taken seriously.

The genuinely serious repercussions of the SIB’s actions were however – luckily for all involved – neatly overshadowed by how the farce that would become known as The Folkes Affair played out.

In July, with things reaching fever pitch, and Folkes rather ostentatiously demanding troops be placed under his command, Fraser finally asked the police to step in; they wasted no time in doing what should have been done weeks earlier and swooped on the Ngongotaha address listed as the Nazis’ HQ.

There they found an elderly ‘Native Department’ clerk, a dry-cleaner and three nurses, none of whom showed the least signs of insurgency. It was, to put it mildly, all a bit awkward for everyone involved. How had the government, and the top intelligence unit in the land, been duped? How had no one bothered to cross-check Ross’s reports and question his motive? And why had no one knocked on that door in Ngongotaha and spoken to the clerk, the dry cleaner or one of the nurses before?

It was so awkward that everyone involved – again in classic B-movie closing-credits style – agreed to smile, shake hands and forget the whole thing. Ross tried a failed closing act by disappearing into the bush and whipping himself with barbed wire to simulate Nazi torture, but by that time the game was well and truly up and no one was buying it. When he next met Meikle, the Captain gave him a wink and left the room; they would never see each other again.

The exposure of the hoax led to an inquiry by the attorney general ,and Folkes bore the brunt of it. In early 1943, in a move of supreme utu, the red-faced SIB was taken over by the Commissioner of Police, and Folkes returned quietly to the UK and the carpet trade, to which he was apparently much better suited.

Ross and Remmers were never charged; they had caused the government enough embarrassment without the media circus that would no doubt have accompanied their court appearances. Charles Remmers, arguably the director of the whole thing, went on to face a higher court in September 1943 when he died of leukaemia in Otaki, aged 55. His leading man, Syd Ross, was soon back on police radar however, being convicted of assuming a name, receiving stolen property and false pretences, and this time he was imprisoned in Paparua prison, near Christchurch.

Ross, being Ross, soon managed to escape, purloining a bicycle along the way, but – perhaps lacking the directorial guidance of the mastermind Remmers – he gave himself up just six hours later. This time there was no grand scheme, no fast cars and flash uniform for Sydney Gordon Ross, and he was charged, somewhat demeaningly, with bicycle theft. He returned to prison and died in 1946, aged just 37, from tuberculosis.

His obituary of 8 November 1946 in the New Zealand Truth lists Ross as “a tall slim crook who tried to bluff his way through life, but never thoroughly succeeded.” In that he may have failed, but perhaps the life of Syd Ross still has something to teach us the dangers conspiracy theorists, no matter how fantastic a picture they paint.

Battle in the Dunes

The drive along the Matatā Straits between Whakatāne and Te Puke is about as Kiwi as it gets. Pōhutukawa and toi toi-clad sandstone cliffs on one side, rolling dunes and the big blue ocean on the other. On a good day it’s a postcard of peace and solitude. 

What many motorists travelling the straights don’t know is that those dunes were the scene of one of the most brutal conflicts to take place in Aotearoa: the 1864 Battle of Kaokaoroa. It was fought between iwi supporting or opposing the British and, because it occurred just a day before the fateful battle at Gate Pā (Pukehinahina), it remains largely forgotten. And yet the bloody battle of the dunes could have changed our history. 

That the battle of Kaokaoroa was overshadowed by Gate Pā in its immediate aftermath is perhaps understandable, given that the latter involved the defeat of colonial troops and was on the doorstep of Tauranga. But why it remains in the shadows today is a mystery. Māori have always remembered the importance of conflicts that, according to historian Vincent O’Malley, have profoundly shaped the course and direction of our history; rather than the battles of the First World War, he notes, the New Zealand Wars are the defining conflict in our history. But for the majority of New Zealanders, most of these defining battles are just place names – or are completely unknown. 

The battle of Kaokaoroa is a perfect example, both of how selective our history is but also of the complexity of the New Zealand Wars as a whole. This was one of the biggest battles fought in the Bay of Plenty, it was quite possibly pivotal in deciding the outcome of the British strategy in the central North Island, and – most surprising of all – the combatants on both sides were almost entirely Māori. 

On the one hand Te Arawa (from the Rotorua Lakes area) supported the colonial forces, while on the other side was an East Coast contingent that numbered some 800 toa (warriors) from Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau ā Apanui, Ngāti Awa and Tūhoe. 

The East Coast contingent’s aim was to assist the Māori King in fighting the colonial forces that were invading the Waikato; to do this they needed to pass through Te Arawa territory and join the Kingite forces assembling in the Waikato. Te Arawa were conflicted in that they knew that if they let this East Coast force through to the Waikato then they could be seen as aiding anti-government forces and have their lands confiscated. The previous year, and ahead of the planned invasion of the Waikato, the Crown had enacted the New Zealand Settlements Act that provided for the confiscation of land from those tribes who were in what it termed “rebellion” against the Crown. More than 1.2 million hectares of land was confiscated throughout the country, most of it in the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki and East Coast/Hawkes Bay. To avoid further confiscation therefore, Te Arawa had good reason to side with the Crown – but it is worth noting that it was also a chance to settle some old scores with neighbouring iwi, particularly Ngāti Awa.

To confuse matters even more, some hapū of Te Arawa chose a different allegiance, siding with the Waikato iwi in their struggle against the Crown. It was, to put it mildly, a very complex situation.

TŪHOE AND NGĀTI WHARE from Te Urewera had already skirted Te Arawa’s rohe and made it through to the Waikato, where they played a significant role at the Battle of Ōrakau. Other iwi had travelled to the Waikato via Tauranga, and this route was the principle reason the colonial forces established a base there – to block any further reinforcements from taking part in the coming battle – but for Tauranga Māori the force represented the clear and present danger of land confiscation. 

The East Coast contingent initially tried to skirt Tauranga by forcing their way through Te Arawa territory via the lakes. On 7 March they met Te Arawa forces at Lake Rotoiti and skirmishes were fought at Tapuaeharuru, at the eastern end of the lake, and on Taurua, the hills above. After three days of fighting, the East Coast contingent fell back towards Matatā, but it had been a close run thing. Both sides had suffered equal losses, but foremost among the fallen was Apanui, a high chief from the East Coast. He fell at Te Tu-arai, the wooded headland just to the eastward of ‘Emery’s house’, the home of an early settler still remembered today by Emery’s Store overlooking the lake. 

It was not long before the East Coasters were once more on the move however. On 21 April they approached Maketū, where government forces had established a redoubt, and fighting soon broke out, with the redoubt making good use of two field guns that had been brought up. After several days a standoff developed, with the attackers dug in about a mile east of Maketū and clearly preparing for an assault on the defenders. But on 26 April the warship HMS Falcon and the gunboat Sandfly arrived and the course of the conflict changed dramatically; the two ships began a bombardment of the East Coast iwi who, lacking artillery, were helpless to respond to. A 300-strong Te Arawa reinforcement group had also arrived and the combined forces were too strong for the East Coasters, who withdrew along the coast under harassing – but at times surprisingly accurate – fire from the Falcon and Sandfly and pursued by the Te Arawa forces and some colonial troops. 

On 28 April they found themselves at the western end of the Matatā straights, at a place called Ōtamarākau; the long sandy beach that stretches back eastwards from there is called Kaokaoroa – ‘the long rib’ – and it was there that the two forces began to play out the final and fateful end game of the conflict.

The Falcon and Sandfly had now withdrawn, so the ensuing battle was to be fought at close range, with muskets, flintlocks and double and single barrelled shotguns, and then in hand to hand conflict. It raged over the sand hills and kūmara plantations between the sea and the sandstone cliffs, and while both sides fought fiercely it soon became clear that the East Coast forces were losing ground. 

They made a stand near the Pikowhai (or Puakowhai) stream just west of Matatā. The principal Arawa chiefs engaging them, beside the energetic Pokiha Taranui, were the old warrior Tohi te Ururangi, Matene te Auheke, Te Waata Taranui, Te Mapu, Rota Rangihoro, Henare te Pukuatua, Te Araki te Pohu, Te Kohai Tarahina, Paora Pahupahu, and Kepa te Rangipuawhe, men who represented all sections of the Arawa people. On the East Coast side an estimated 400 men boldly held their fire and then unleashed a fearsome volley designed to decimate the advancing Te Arawa warriors. Remarkably, it had little effect – the Te Arawa line surged on.

The fighting was furious, with further musket volleys exchanged before the two sides met in vicious close quarters combat. Little quarter was given, and while Te Arawa were triumphant, the fighting didn’t go all their way; they lost one of their most significant rangatira, Tohi Te Ururangi, who was mortally wounded on the battlefield. In revenge his widow shot and killed Te Āporotanga, a Te Whakatōhea rangatira who had been taken prisoner, and it was an act of utu that was bitterly resented and that would have repercussions later in Ōpōtiki. 

The East Coast contingent carried out a gallant fighting retreat to the estuary at Matatā, but the writing was on the wall. They had left waka near there while on the advance, and though some managed to escape in these along the Orini River that ran parallel with the coast and connected the Awa-a-te-Atua with Whakatāne, others were not so lucky; they tried to escape inland, but were pursued and killed as they tried to climb the sandstone cliffs as the retreat became a rout.

The two-day battle had devastated the East Coast contingent and it soon broke up as the various iwi within it drifted homewards. It was a stunning victory for Te Arawa, so much so that even Governor Grey chose to comment, praising Te Arawa and noting that 53 dead from the East Coast contingent had been left on the battlefield, as opposed to just one casualty for Te Arawa. 

An accurate tally of losses will never be known, but Grey’s comment is interesting in that it was perhaps the first admission of the vital role the Crown’s iwi allies would play in the war. 

It was also probably the only recognition the battle at Kaokaoroa ever received. On the following day, 700 Imperial Army troops, with a further 1000 in reserve, attempted to storm Gate Pā – only to be resoundingly defeated by a force of just 225 Tauranga and Kingite Māori. The humbling of Crown troops by such a small force was considered a much more ‘newsworthy’ event at the time, and Gate Pā remains one of the best known – if not fully understood – battles of the New Zealand Wars. 

If the East Coast contingent had broken through instead of perishing in the Kaokaoroa dunes, the resulting battle or battles may have been even more newsworthy. In the days before electronic communications the unexpected arrival of the East Coasters in the Western Bay would have been a very unwelcome development for an Imperial Army licking its wounds in the aftermath of Gate Pā. The panic this would have caused in the Bay community could have greatly influenced the government’s strategy, with troops tasked with defending the population and commercial centre as well as the port instead of pursuing a campaign in the Waikato. Similarly, if that contingent had reached the Waikato, the events that played out in the following months of 1864 could have been very different indeed. 

The dead of Kaokaoroa were buried close to the Awatarariki Stream, near Matatā. It is a watercourse prone to flooding and on several occasions these floods have given up the dead. As recently as 2015 human remains – including two skulls – were discovered following flooding; poignant reminders that Kaokaoroa is not ready to be forgotten completely. 

Turning Japanese

IT SEEMS IT WAS ONLY A FEW YEARS AGO that if you wanted to eat Japanese food you had to pretty much go to Japan. Then Michelin stars rained down on Tokyo and suddenly you couldn’t turn a corner without tripping over some hipster joint with a menu influenced by the Land of the Rising Sun, and every other cooking show on TV was urging us to fill our larders with panko bread crumbs and sake. But we’re here to tell you something sunshine – you don’t have to sell the farm for wagyu beef or pay a fortune for imported wasabi to bring some Japanese flavours to your summer BBQ. Rika Fukushima, Tokyo native and Bay resident, is here to show you that getting Japanesey is actually easy peasy. 

One of the biggest misconceptions about Japanese food is that it is complicated. Yes, some of our dishes require ninja-level cooking skills to master – take fugu, or puffer fish, for example; mess that one up and your dinner guests die in agony from tetrodotoxin poisoning! – but for the most part Japanese cuisine is all about maximising the inherent flavours of seasonal ingredients. No super heavy cream sauces, no hefty seasoning, just good honest flavours making friends with one another and brought to life with a little help from the chef. 

So first up for a summer Japanese BBQ is a super simple entrée that was a favourite of mine back home in Tokyo; it looks fantastic – and we all eat with our eyes as well as our mouths – anyone can make it, and it tastes great. Just cut a ripe avocado in half, remove the stone and fill the cavity with smoked salmon, a splash of soy sauce and garnish with a sprinkle of white sesame seeds. You can easily skip the sesame seeds, and substituting tinned salmon or tuna will make it popular with the kids, but you gotta have the soy sauce – that brings the salty tang to the creamy avo and the omega oil of the seafood. Eat it with a spoon straight from the skin and then you are ready to get down to the main event: yakitori. 

The secret to great traditional yakitori – as opposed to just chicken on a stick! – is the tare sauce, but this is easy to master and in addition to being used on yakitori it does double duty as a teriyaki sauce for chicken, tofu, fish, vegetables, or simply use it as pizza sauce with lots of cheese and left over yakitori. It is essentially sweetened and thickened soy sauce, so the ingredients are simple, though many chefs have their own elaborate variations that they guard fiercely, so don’t be afraid to experiment – though I can assure you that adding some of that six month old tomato sauce in the back of your fridge won’t work! 

And a quick word here about sauce: you don’t have to buy expensive boutique soy sauce, but you do want to buy a good quality Japanese brand because the flavour is deeper and completely different from those made elsewhere. The Kikkoman label offers a good reliable soy sauce and is available in any decent supermarket, and believe me you will taste the difference. 

To make the sauce, pour two cups of cooking sake into a saucepan and boil for a couple of minutes to evaporate off the alcohol, then reduce heat to low and add two cups of sugar and stir till it begins to thicken a little. Once it is slightly syrupy, add two cups of soy sauce and continue to stir from the bottom of the pan till it has thickened nicely. This process is best done on the stovetop where you can control the heat better, and it takes a bit of time so you may want to have some non-cooking, but drinking sake on hand to help control the chief stirrer in the kitchen. 

Now to make the skewers. As mentioned earlier, you can just use chicken pieces and veggies, but here are a couple of classic Japanese yakitori. First, tsukune, or chicken balls: combine the minced chicken with the juice squeezed from grated ginger (or if you like the tangy hotness, peel and use the grated roots), add a few teaspoons each of sake and soy sauce, a pinch of salt and sugar, and if desired, a little miso paste and finely chopped spring onions and then form them into balls about 3cm in diameter. Next, place them in small batches into a pot of boiling water for about 10 seconds till the outside turns white, but don’t leave them boiling too long as all the flavour and juice will get lost. This last step ensures the balls will hold together better and avoid sticking to your cooking surface when you put them on the skewers. 

The next yakitori are even simpler and are the most common variation of the dish called negima: tightly pack skewers starting and ending with chunks of chicken (use thigh not breast) and with spring onions in between. And last but not least, ever-so-lightly blanch some shortly cut asparagus stems, wrap in bacon and mount on the pre-soaked skewers; same drill with cherry tomatoes and bacon, because as an old Japanese proverb says, everything is better wrapped in bacon. Actually I’ve never heard of such a proverb, but everything really is better with bacon. 

Then everything goes on to the – preferably charcoal – BBQ, but you want to get the skewers up off the surface a little so use an oven rack or similar. The bacon-wrapped 

skewers won’t need any seasoning whatsoever, but you want to lightly grill the negima and tsukune to seal in the flavour so keep turning for a few minutes and then start brushing on the tare. Keep brushing and turning till there is plenty of colour, and don’t worry about some of the tare dripping off into the flames – that just adds to the flavour as the smoke seeps into the meat. 

And finally, with sweet corn season on us, here is a great way to jazz up your cobs after you’ve grown tired of the classic Kiwi boiled version with butter. Melt the butter a little and then combine the soy and sugar and mix well, then lightly grill the cobs on the BBQ before brushing on a few coats of the sauce and returning them to the grill. A few minutes of turning and you will see some colour on the cobs and they are ready to eat. 

So there you have it, simple, tasty and also pretty healthy options for a Japanese twist to the Kiwi BBQ. To compliment the food, the avocado entrée and yakitori both go great with a crisp New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc or spicy Pinot Gris, but if you drew the short straw and are working behind the BBQ then you deserve the perfect pairing of an ice cold Japanese lager like Asahi Super Dry, which you can get in most supermarkets here now. 

And yeah, nah I know a lot of you Kiwis aren’t too sure about drinking beer from Japan, but hey – 40 years ago you weren’t too sure about our cars either. 

The Waiting Game

“This was the first pope,” says Tran Van Hoan, pointing to a dog-eared photograph. “He died in 1933. Or 1934.” “And this,” he says, producing another sepia-coloured snapshot, “was the last pope. He was forced away in 1956.”On a feverishly hot September day, Tran is fanning himself with a handful of old photos and explaining why the huge, regal chair in what is surely the kitschiest church in all the world remains empty. It is the pope’s chair; and the pope is gone.

The first pope’s indefinite death sometime in the early 30s caused limited concern in Rome because Le Van Trung was not “The Pope” but the first pope of the Cao Dai Holy See in Tay Ninh, Vietnam; a pope who communicated with spirits of the dead through séance, magic and mysticism.The last pope of the Holy See, Pham Cong Tac, was driven into exile in 1956, and while this was also largely ignored by the Vatican, it is of great concern to Mr. Tran. “There is no new pope. We have been leaderless many years now,” he says. “We can only hope and wait. Wait for something to happen.”

Waiting is a common pastime in Tay Ninh. The Holy See is just 96 kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City but the drive down Highway 22 can take several hours depending on traffic or, more accurately, on how many farmers have spread their harvests onto the road surface to dry in the baking sun. There is a tacit agreement that all traffic must avoid the local produce, and so scooters, cars, cyclos and heavy trucks play a continuous game of chicken along the highway, dodging left and right, swerving into the opposing lane or - only rarely - screeching to a halt to avoid a carpet of corn or a fully loaded Honda. The chaos halts only for the regular funeral processions that wind out of the city towards the war-era cemeteries that appear frequently along the road; when a hearse appears all traffic pulls over and waits in silence until it has passed and the ongoing motorised Russian roulette can continue. The dead, it seems, are due respect; the living, well, they have to take care of themselves. 

Long before reaching the Cao Dai compound smaller temples begin to appear, but none of them prepare you for the spectacle of the Gothic spires of the rainbow-coloured Holy See. It is part Disneyland, part mosque, part gingerbread castle, part cathedral; an intricately detailed confusion of styles, bizarrely impressive and bizarrely out of place in the setting of rural Vietnam. At every corner a peculiarity stands out - here a coiled serpent, there a celestial globe or the face of Christ - but throughout the building and the surrounding grounds one image is paramount: the Divine Eye. It stares out from walls, doors and gateways, reminding us that God sees all.

The origins of Cao Dai, meaning “high palace”, can be confusing but it is generally accepted that the faith was founded largely by Le Van Trung and Ngo Van Chieu. In Vietnam, as in Europe, mysticism and the spirit world were tremendously popular around the turn of the century, and Chieu was much in demand at séances as it was rumoured his presence greatly improved communications with the other side. It was at one of these séances that in 1919 the two founders received the first in a series of revelations that were to provide the founding teachings of the Cao Dai faith.

A cocktail of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Vietnamese folk religion, Hinduism, Catholicism and Islam, the Cao Dai faithful believe in one God who combines both male and female deities. They also believe that in the past there were two distinct periods in which this God revealed certain truths to humanity. During the first period, Lao Tzu, early buddhas, and Confucian and Taoist figures were chosen to spread these truths; in the second period Shakyamuni Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and Moses were given the task, but it is believed that in some way their messages were distorted and thus only relevant to their historical and geographical milieu.

The present age is said to rely on divine truths being communicated by spirits rather than humans, and during the height of the fashion for séance communication earlier this century a veritable who’s who of luminaries were said to have passed on their wisdom to the Cao Dai faithful: deceased Cao Dai clergy, Vietnamese leaders, Shakespeare, Descartes, Joan of Arc, Louis Pasteur and - on a quite regular basis - Victor Hugo, among others.

No simple ouija board sufficed to receive these messages. Instead, a medium held a pen or calligraphy brush - sometimes up to 60 centimetres long - and the spirits wrote via his or her hand. Another popular method was pneumatographie, which involved hanging blank sheets of paper sealed in envelopes behind an altar. After prayer and meditation, the envelopes are opened and - voila! - the pages were covered with the script of a divine hand. Sadly, Shakespeare has not been heard of since 1935, so would-be literary agents hoping to pick up a few lost sonnets need not apply. In fact, most scripture was communicated in the 1920s and “celebrity” séances are virtually unheard of today.

The Cao Dai may no longer talk with the dead but the Holy See has lost none of its other-worldly mystique. Prayer services take place at 6 am, midday, 6 pm and midnight, and are open to the public. Most people attend the midday gathering but the evening service is particularly atmospheric. The sun grows fat and orange on the horizon and bats begin to flit about the trees and spires in the temple grounds as figures in flowing robes materialize from the shadows and assemble before the Holy See.

The twilight drive back into the city is, however, not recommended unless you have a good guide or driver, as it can be somewhat unnerving. Returning from the Holy See at night the protagonist in the film version of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American ends up in a rice paddy with bullets whistling over his head, though these days wandering water buffalo and the Tay Ninh police are the traveller’s main concern. The latter rarely resort to gunfire, but they are adept at trumping up dubious fines, and a travel permit is required if you want to stay overnight in Tay Ninh itself.

Throughout both the Franco-Viet Minh war of 1946-54 and the Vietnam War that followed, the Cao Dai and their territory occupied a curious position. Within a year of its formal founding, the sect had more than 25,000 members and by the end of the Second World War had virtually established itself as an independent province within the state of Vietnam. This did not please the central authorities of course, and the sect’s army - established by the Japanese in 1943 - was disbanded and incorporated into the national militia in 1955. Then, a year later, the pope was driven into exile.

Barely tolerated by the authorities throughout the 1960s, the Cao Dai were openly persecuted by the communist government following reunification, largely due to the sect’s unwillingness to support the Viet Cong in its struggle. Land was confiscated and the leadership was disbanded throughout the 70s, and while there was a thaw in relations during the 80s that saw most land returned, many followers are still wary. The Cao Dai remains reluctant to appoint new leaders and thereby invite renewed persecution, and so for Mr. Tran and the other followers of the Divine Eye, there is nothing to do but wait.

For the foreseeable future, at least, the pope’s chair will remain empty.

Waterworld

 “Venice of the Orient.” Trite though it may be to modern ears, this was how Western commentators described the Japanese capital of Edo, later to become Tokyo, when they arrived in newly opened Japan in the 1850s.

- ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE LANTERN MAGAZINE

Traversing the city’s rivers they saw restaurants, theatres and all manner of businesses jutting out over the water on stilts, and huge markets stretching along open riverbanks and bridges. A network of waterways bustled with traffic of all shapes and sizes: merchants moved produce in flat-bottomed barges; officials hurried to court in elaborate high-prowed boats; nobles dined in lantern-lit pleasure craft; and kimono-clad brides were ferried to their new homes, their dowries in tow.

Such scenes are hard to fathom today. Tokyo’s rivers and remaining canals are hidden by soaring highways and concrete embankments, their waters dark and sluggish, and the waterfronts that were once both the commercial centres and gathering places of the city have long since been obliterated by relentless land reclamation. But in its day, Edo was indeed a world built on water.

Originally a fishing village built on the highlands of a river delta, Edo was defined by the waterways it straddled. To the south, the Edo River flowed along the border of what would become Tokyo and Chiba before emptying into Tokyo Bay, while the Arakawa River snaked down from the Kanto mountains onto the plains and into the heart of the city; its lower reaches became the Sumida River, the city’s main artery.

The Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu made Edo his stronghold at the end of the sixteenth century and ultimately chose it as his seat of government after he unified Japan under his rule. His engineers set about draining and reclaiming the remaining marshes and swamps of the lowlands so that the new capital could expand and prosper, but even so Edo would remain for many years a city on water, standing along the banks of the rivers and canals fashioned from the delta by reclamation.

The feats of these engineers were ambitious for their times—embankments were built, rivers diverted, and canals cut—but not all of them were carried out for the benefit of the humble denizens of the city; in the 1590s, for example, the Onagigawa Canal was constructed to carry salt from Gyotoku in Chiba directly to the Shogun’s table. More importantly, no adequate measures were taken to prevent flooding until after the disastrous Great Meiji Flood of 1919, which submerged half the city and cost an estimated five percent of the gross national product to clean up.

The first and foremost function of Edo’s canals was transportation. The existing road system was built for foot traffic, and transporting goods to the capital was a tiring and time-consuming business. Edo’s marshy coastline lacked a harbour that could receive the coastal trading ships that carried merchandise from throughout Japan, so these ships anchored in deeper water and discharged their cargo onto barges that carried it up the city’s waterways to the markets that lined their banks. Rice from Niigata, soy from Chiba, apples from Aomori, sake from Osaka, lumber from Kofu; the rapidly growing city’s insatiable appetite welcomed it all.

Lumber was a commodity especially important to a booming city built almost entirely of wood. Edo’s Kiba district was a huge floating lumberyard, its waterways constantly choked with workers guiding logs to and fro. These loggers were fiercely proud of their skills and were, by most accounts, a loud and feisty breed; not content to simply escort the logs down the canals they performed all manner of tricks to show off their abilities and show up their co-workers. A favourite kakunori, or log-riding feat, was to balance a child in a basket on a bamboo pole while walking across a rolling log; Edo mothers, it seems, were not overly protective of their offspring. Other industries relied on the canals for more than transportation: the textile industry used shallow, fast-flowing waterways to rinse dyed fabric, and the sight of long bolts of cotton streaming in the canal near Shimo-Ochiai was common until World War II.

But the waterways were not the exclusive preserve of trade and industry. Yoshimune, the eighth shogun, initiated the practice of hosting great banquets on the water aboard a luxurious riverboat popularly known as his “floating castle”. The middle class soon emulated him, holding lavish parties, replete with musicians and seasonal cuisine, aboard yakatabune (party boats) adorned with lanterns and banners. The boating season began in June with a huge fireworks display and lasted all summer, with highlights including rather quaint firefly viewing parties and somewhat less decorous evening cruises on the Sumida River.

The Sumida marked the eastern boundary of the city; kawa no muko—“across the river”—was and remains a euphemism for unfashionable and rural. Within the boundary of the river reigned conservatism enforced by the shogun’s edict, while without thrived a demimonde of exiles, prostitutes and artistes including sumo wrestlers, who did not enjoy the status they command today. Predictably perhaps, the first foreigners to take up residence were confined to the “Low City” on the far side of the river, on land reclaimed at Tsukiji.

Before long however, the waterfront areas along the Sumida River developed into one of Edo’s most popular pleasure quarters, their dubious past adding a heady hint of the risqué for the middle class. At teahouses and restaurants built out over the water, customers enjoyed the views and cool breezes before taking a boat to one of the nearby kabuki theatres that were one of the Low City’s great contributions to popular culture. Shadow plays were performed aboard barges in front of the larger teahouses, and small craft moved along the shoreline selling the latest crazes in foods and drinks. The Yoshiwara, Edo’s notorious red-light district, was situated here too, and nobles, courtesans, and commoners were ferried across the river to reach it.

There was no better way for the inhabitants of Edo to spend their leisure time than walking along the waterfront or gliding along the waterways. The city’s many great bridges functioned as traffic nodes, and woodblock prints show busy rivers or canals against a backdrop of one of those lofty symbols of modernity in much the same way that modern postcards of Tokyo show neon-lined streets beneath towering skyscrapers. The markets surrounding the bridges were both commercial centres and communal areas for shopping, dining, street theatre, public agitation, and official proclamations. They were also the most overwhelming sight that awaited new arrivals to the city, as a popular poke at country bumpkins from the period recounts:

They don’t get seasick

On the boat from Kisarazu

But their eyes start swimming

At the crowds on Edo Bridge

In 1867 Edo became Tokyo following the restoration of the Emperor Meiji, and in the years that followed a second revolution—this one in transportation—changed the face of the capital forever. The canal system remained intact until the turn of the century but lost its role as the principal mode of public conveyance in a remarkably short time as town planning took hold and roads were widened; in short, the wheel replaced the oar and barge pole almost overnight.

Road, river and rail; the Kanda River usurped by road traffic of the Shohei Bridge while the Chuo commuter train line soars above them both

Early foreign visitors had remarked on the seemingly total absence of wheeled vehicles on the city’s streets, but by 1880 there were some 50,000 rickshaws in operation, their clattering wheels and shouting runners shattering the decorum of the city and depriving the boatmen of custom. The upper classes took to moving about in horse-drawn carriages, while minor nobles, who could not afford such luxury but found rickshaws too vulgar, favoured palanquins. Trains arrived in 1872 and the power of steam soon usurped even that of the mighty loggers of Kiba. Early foreign visitors had remarked on the seemingly total absence of wheeled vehicles on the city’s streets, but by 1880 there were some 50,000 rickshaws in operation, their clattering wheels and shouting runners shattering the decorum of the city and depriving the boatmen of custom. The upper classes took to moving about in horse-drawn carriages, while minor nobles, who could not afford such luxury but found rickshaws too vulgar, favoured palanquins. Trains arrived in 1872 and the power of steam soon usurped even that of the mighty loggers of Kiba.

At the same time, the process of land reclamation that had helped create Edo’s water world gradually began to destroy it as islands were absorbed and canals filled in and converted into roads. Speeding up this process were disasters both man-made and natural: many waterways disappeared abruptly in 1923 when rubble from the Great Kanto Earthquake was piled into them; others would suffer a similar fate after the bombing of World War II. More than one modern commentator has wondered where all the rubble will go when the next cataclysm strikes.

While the trendy suburb of Shibuya glows in the distance, the river that bares its name is reduced to a storm water drain and all but forgotten

By the 1960s, when reclamation had reached its peak, the canals were all but gone, and those that remained were hidden behind concrete flood control barriers that further distanced people from the water which had once been the lifeblood of the city. But it was pollution that was to be the last nail in the coffin of the water world. By the 1970s, Japan was feeling the full effect of its rapid economic growth and many of the few waterways left behind were positively unsafe due to contaminants. The public frequently welcomed the filling in of smaller canals- they were often stagnant, repositories for old bicycles and garbage and in summer their stench was overpowering-but the dire state of the rivers began to raise eyebrows. The government somewhat grudgingly responded with antipollution regulations, though momentum was not really achieved until after a series of high-profile contamination cases elsewhere in Japan. Finally, factory outflows were checked, sewer systems overhauled, and canals dredged.

It would take years before real momentum was achieved, and there remains much to be done, but tighter regulations and improved water treatment facilities have certainly paid off. The water quality of most of the broader rivers in the outer suburbs has improved so much that they are now popular weekend walking courses and picnic spots, but it is the renewed interest being shown in the inner city waterways that has been most surprising. Several tours of the waterways have recently appeared, local governments have suddenly opened their purse strings for river-related projects, and even museum exhibitions on the city’s rivers have been organized.

The Consortium of Rediscovery Edo-Tokyo Tourism Walk (CREW) was established in August 2008 to study the development of local revitalization through tourism in the center of Tokyo, namely Chuo-ku, Chiyoda-ku, and Minato-ku. They currently operate a tour exploring Tokyo’s river culture and have seen interest in it grow steadily.“With the filling in of the canals and increasing water pollution, people just lost interest in recreation on the rivers,” says the head of CREW, Tatsushi Kimura. “Now, after much effort has been made on water purification, people are starting to reconsider the rivers, and the river transportation system—especially in regard to tourism—is becoming popular once again.

“CREW’s carbon-friendly electric tour boat offers a leisurely—and wonderfully quiet—hour-long tour of the central waterways accompanied by an historical commentary.  Slipping silently beneath Nihombashi and past the spot where criminals and anyone unlucky enough to fall foul of the Shogun were publicly pilloried, you are soon made aware of just how important a role the river system played in Tokyo’s history, in both good times and bad: in addition to the former sites of markets and palaces, a stone monument marks the spot where Edo families left messages seeking lost children, while on another section of embankment a sinister black smudge reveals what is thought to be the legacy of a WWII incendiary bomb.

Strangely, it is partly due to one of Tokyo’s latest infatuations that people are rediscovering what was Edo’s great love affair. When the Tokyo Sky Tree is completed next year, Sumida Ward plans to organize cruises down the Kitajukkengawa river so that visitors can gaze up at this modern marvel, and in 2009 the ward budgeted 270 million yen to built a pedestrian bridge, riverside terrace and walkway, a pier and water purification facilities; for 2010, the figure is set to leap to 820 million yen. Koto Ward, meanwhile, hopes to steal some of its neighbor’s thunder with water tours of Fukagawa, one of the few parts of Tokyo that still retains a hint of what Edo must have been.Kisarazugashi, once the site of Edo’s busiest seafood market, will also soon have a new quay, and it is hoped that Kisarazu in Chiba Prefecture, the town that originally gave the market its name, will participate in re-enactments of the shipping of fresh seafood to the city as part of the 100th anniversary of Nihombashi.

The once grand Nihombashi, pride of the city and the geographic centre of all Japan, now lies buried beneath a multi-lane expressway

The rehabilitation of Nihombashi itself however, remains a tantalizing, almost pie-in-the-sky dream. The relocation of the metropolitan expressway to a subterranean road network, as championed by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (and opposed by Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara), seems positively utopian, especially to the average Tokyo taxpayer who will be footing what is expected to be a 500 billion yen price tag. The success of Odaiba’s manmade beach and Akarenga Soko in Yokohama have shown that such developments are popular however, and even small, more localized attempts to beautify waterways have paid off; in Nakameguro, the Meguro River, though still sunk well below street level, is lined with cherry trees that are not only popular in sakura season but have helped turn what was once a nondescript suburb into a leafy pedestrian heaven that is rivaling Aoyama for fashionista appeal, replete with a river-based arts festival.

Fish and fishermen have returned to the banks of the Sumida, but it would be a brave or foolhardy angler that eats his catch.

Most of the old water world is gone, but it is still possible to catch glimpses of it here and there throughout the city. In Yokohama there are still some hardy souls living on the water; the city government curtly denies their existence, but the local postmen cannot be bothered with such charades and carry on delivering to mail boxes that hang from the sides of dilapidated houseboats. The little island of Tsukudajima, which seems to float in the middle of the Sumida and was once the home to banished criminals, retains its canals but it is more an upscale residential zone than a den of thieves these days. The timber industry moved to neighbouring Shin-Kiba, where it remains today, though cement and steel have replaced timber as Tokyo’s main ingredient. The kakunori are still performed at certain times of the year, but in deference to modernity-and the Health and Safety Department-a small dog usually replaces the child in the basket-and-bamboo trick. The Onagigawa Canal is still there too, but Tokyo now gets its salt via different means and the canal is little more than an empty stretch of water.