tongue of mine is a cloudless locking-glass you cannot deceive.”
Although such words as the above were written, of course, by the author to laugh over a hankatsu or a fellow half-leamed, they cast a light on the time when cooking was studied, like flower-arrangement or tea-drinking, even by the populace; it was the civilization of the Tokugawa feudalism that found first the development of house-building as it was natural for the saurais, those uncultured builders of the city, to think of the house to satisfy their wild vanity; and when the time was on the speedy way to advancement, we saw, as a natural development, the sudden demonstration of dresses with new designs and colour schemes. It was at the Bunkwa and Bunsei (1804–1830) that the art or, let me say, poetry of cooking had been creating its own cult, and as a matter natural, the establishment of the famous restaurants or so-called tea-houses, for instance, Hirasei, Kasai Taro, Momokawa, the most famous of all, Yaozen under the patronage of Hoitsu and other known artists and poets, originated in those days; it is not too much to
