Purple Magazine
— Purple #43 S/S 2025
The Tokyo Diary Issue

the japanese lessons we refuse to learn

food

by FRANÇOIS SIMON

The French traveler, food critic, and author François Simon has been writing about every aspect of food for decades. His instagram account is a reference for any foodie.

It’s worth pausing to reflect on our relationship with Japan. If ever there were shifting sands, these are they. Anyone who approaches Japan and attempts to describe it often ends up buried under a layer of ash and criticism. Even Roland Barthes, in his remarkable Empire of Signs (1970), drew disdain from certain specialists in Japanese culture. The brilliant Nicolas Bouvier, with his empathetic, almost dolorous lens (The Japanese Chronicles, 1967, initially titled Japan), faced similar reproach. It seems that Westerners, perhaps wisely, prefer to confine Japan within a sublime no comprendo, perpetuating misunderstandings and half-truths with tireless enthusiasm. After all, the idea of never fully grasping the “real” Japan is oddly reassuring, allowing us to remain in a romanticized periphery. “French people,” observes Chihiro Masui, writer and culinary author, “are fascinated by what they don’t understand. They deliberately maintain distance to construct their admiration — or their incomprehension. Take haikus, for example. In translation, we appreciate their compact and profoundly poetic form. Yet, we avoid engaging with the Japanese version. What we love about haikus in Japan is their musicality, the play of phonemes, the 5/7/5 rhythm…”

What about Japanese cuisine? The omakase menu has become a bane of French restaurants. Broadly speaking, omakase means “I leave it to you” or “I trust you.” In Japan, this grants the chef the freedom to craft a bespoke menu. The problem in France, however, is that the chef often takes this as a license to retreat into a narcissistic bubble. Safely ensconced in the kitchen, away from the diners’ gaze, the chef plows ahead, cleaning out the fridge with furrowed brows, having all but forgotten the customer.

In Japan, the customer is in front of the chef. Right away, the chef can gauge the diner’s nature and expectations. Each person has a different appetite, with a unique rhythm to their meal. In France, when the chef takes charge, they let go of your hand entirely, asserting control over you with their own pace and ceremonial style — often a glacial, regal one, as though embodying their undeniable talent and near-divine inspiration. And then, like a tropical downpour, a flurry of tiny dishes might suddenly rain down upon you.

The same goes for the approach to raw fish. Often, in France, we don’t want to step outside our own language and certainties: fish are thought to have little flavor; they are considered “bland” unless paired with béarnaise sauce, gravlax, white butter, tarragon, olive oil, or lemon. And yet, raw fish with its subtle murmurs should carry us on an astonishing journey — one of nuance and delicacy, where we learn to discern the differences between a sole and a dab (so slight), a scallop and a squid, a sea bass and a loup (there is none!), and so on. We enter a delightful world full of marvels. Escaping the notion of blandness pulls us out of our natural laziness and refusal to understand. It broadens our palette of flavors, just as Japanese music does. When blandness becomes a new companion, as it does in Japan, we’ve crossed a frontier.

Another universe is the world of sound in Japan. Western restaurants have a vehement relationship with sound. Speech is thrown about loudly, as though to establish territory, with its encroachments and reclaiming. It feels like a kind of existential jolt, something vital. Talking a lot and talking loudly, as though taking revenge for the days where one must stay silent, hold one’s tongue, obey. Restaurants then become this recess, joined even by servers, who overplay their haste with hurried movements and shouted orders. It creates the din we love so much, that massages our backs even as it knots them. Noise becomes an accelerator, inviting wine, a slap on the shoulder. Voices overlap, feeding on their own amplitude.

Japanese restaurants offer a different experience. Some may smile, recalling epic late-night escapades over there where distortion and abandon sweep away the senses. But let us, if you will, return to the early hours of the evening. Already, the street, the door, the brush of the noren at the entrance — these are signals of calm, of deceleration. You’ll notice that the ear finally awakens. It unfurls its antennae. Having been prudently folded away throughout the day, only to stretch out by nightfall, it now blooms. The gliding footsteps on wood, the sliding partitions, the whispered conversations. It is a moment of clarity and purity. The body feels in communion; touch becomes its faith. The softness of the wood, the chopsticks, the lighting. The precision of materials. Without realizing it, we enter the cosmic dimension of sustenance. For a moment, one might even sense the gentle friction of the Earth moving through the Milky Way.

When the dishes arrive and are set down, there emerges a strong perception, one that converses with emotion. The softened gaze, the civilized fluttering of eyelashes. Hands rediscovering their shyness, their tentative suspension. And the ear, too, begins seeking its nourishment, its sustenance. It might even catch the murmur of the rice, the final song of the fish, the glissando of the sake. Some Buddhist cuisine restaurants, like Daiko, near the legendary Okura Tokyo hotel, serve dishes that not only are visually stunning — such as sesame tofu, a pea consommé with lily root, or a mountain mushroom porridge — but also adhere to the canons of the genre: grace and softness, specifically to avoid making noise. During their stays at the Okura, Yoko Ono and John Lennon adored this restaurant.

The “verbal spinning top” stops, as Roland Barthes once put it: “Japan is not so much a mysterious country as a mystifying one. The imagination unfolds in circles, through detours, and returns along an empty subject. It’s not about crushing language under the mystical silence of the ineffable, but about measuring it, about halting this verbal spinning top, which, in its whirl, pulls along the obsessive play of symbolic substitutions.”

This “fascination with strangeness” (Henri Michaux, A Barbarian in Asia, 1933) that we feel for Japan seems like a journey within a journey. We travel to this country to find within ourselves a kind of autofiction, to discover unknown lands within. In a place that lets us glide across its surface, we find ourselves in a temple with one of the keys to inner exploration, standing before Buddha. Nicolas Bouvier describes it as a “face glowing with mischief and radiating compassion.” In Japan, one must relinquish everything, rediscover a childlike innocence, forget one’s tastes and bearings, and embark weightlessly. It becomes an opportunity to reconnect with oneself.

But what, then, of Japan — of the real Japan? “I wonder if this narrative constructed by the West isn’t counterproductive,” Chihiro Masui reflects. “We often attribute profound depth to the Japanese, which isn’t entirely wrong, but their lives are much more grounded. People in the West admire their sense of cleanliness with boundless reverence. Certainly, that exists — but visit certain subway stations in Shinjuku, step into certain diners,
or simply enter some private homes, and you’ll be surprised. In summer, Japan is hot and humid, and people sweat — far from the pristine image we like to maintain here in Europe.”

END

[Table of contents]

editor’s letter
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empire of signs
by Roland Barthes
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cover #1 takashi murakami
interview by Jérôme Sans
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takashi murakami
interview by Jérôme Sans
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ryoko sekiguchi
interview by Mark Alizart and Olivier Zahm
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cover #2 motoko ishibashi
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motoko ishibashi
interview by Aleph Molinari
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atsuko tanaka
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sexual assault breaking the silence
by Karyn Nishimura-Poupée
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juergen teller and nobuyoshi araki
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chiho aoshima
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hajime sawatari
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suwa nagano
by Stéphane Sednaoui
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fetish magazines
by Katerina Jebb
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tadanoori yokoo
text by André Michel
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kazumi asamura hayashi
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keiichi tanaami
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fumihiro hayashi
text by Olivier Zahm
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nobuyoshi araki
portrait by Chikashi Suzuki
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tomoo gokita
interview by Olivier Zahm
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cover #4 tomoo gokita
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loewe s/s 2025
photography by Suffo Moncloa
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hajime sorayama
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my father
by Rick Owens
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announcement to humanity
by Ryoko Sekiguchi
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cover #3 katerina jebb
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cover #5 loewe s/s 2025
photography by Suffo Moncloa
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masahisa fukase
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hajime kinoko
interview by Olivier Zahm
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raiki yamamoto
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cover #6 masahisa fukase
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kunichi nomura
text by Aaron Rose
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aya takano
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tomoyo kawari
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masaru hatanaka
interview by Aleph Molinari
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why japan?
by Urs Fischer, Ramdane Touhami, Stéphane Sednaoui
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cover #8 esther rose-mcgregor in valentino s/s 2025
photography by Hart Lëshkina
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why japan?
by Helmut Lang
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minoru nomata
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in praise of shadows
by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
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best of the season s/s 2025
photography by Takashi Homma
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purple beauty nails
by Mei Kawajiri
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ryūichi sakamoto
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valentino s/s 2025
photography by Hart Lëshkina
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nobuyoshi araki
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cover #10 bottega veneta
photography by Nikolai von Bismarck
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balenciaga s/s 2025
photography by Juergen Teller
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kazuo ohno
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cover #7 prada s/s 2025
photography by Takashi Homma
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butoh the dance of darkness
photography by Nikolai von Bismarck
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cover #9 balenciaga s/s 2025
photography by Juergen Teller
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tomihiro kono
photography by Joe Lai
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cover #12 comme des garçons s/s 2025
photography by Ola Rindal
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comme des garçons s/s 2025
photography by Ola Rindal
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cover #11 nobuyoshi araki
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chanel s/s 2025
photography by Chikashi Suzuki
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the japanese lessons we refuse to learn
by Daido Moriyama
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dualité by brioni and lalique
photography by Olivier Zahm
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pink eiga
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cover #18 sakura andō in chanel s/s 2025
photography by Chikashi Suzuki
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noritoshi hirakawa
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tomo koizumi
photography by Chikashi Suzuki
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trails
by Takashi Homma
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koji kimura
by André Michel
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cover #13 dualité by brioni and lalique
photography by Olivier Zahm
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daido moriyama
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erotica
by Olivier Zahm
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purple story
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takuro kuwata
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cover #16 saint laurent by anthony vaccarello s/s 2025
photography by Takashi Homma
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setsuko klossowska de rola
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cover #15 paul & joe
photography by Olivier Zahm
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why japan?
by Coco Capitán
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alejandro garcia contreras
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casablanca s/s 2025
photography by Keizo Motoda
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why japan?
by Stefano Pilati
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saint laurent by anthony vaccarello s/s 2025
photography by Takashi Homma
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why japan?
by André
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best of men s/s 2025
Photography by Kejichi Nitta
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kei ninomiya
interview by Olivier Zahm
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anders edström
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zen gardens
by Takashi Homma
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wabi-sabi spiritual values
by Leonard Koren
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wim wenders
interview by Olivier Zahm and Aleph Molinari
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miu miu s/s 2025
photography by Coco Capitán
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ruth asawa
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kazuyo sejima
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waves
by Takashi Homma
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jun takahashi
interview by Aleph Molinari
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cover #14 casablanca s/s 2025
photography by Keizo Motoda
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kumiko
by Anna Dubosc
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yōko yamanaka
interview by Olivier Zahm
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mariko mori
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cover #17 miu miu s/s 2025
photography by Coco Capitán
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the tokyo toilet
by Koji Yanai
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ann lee in anzen zone
by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
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young designers s/s 2025
Photography by Dasom Han
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kenshu shintsubo
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why japan?
by Setsuko
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the original hotel okura
by Valerie Sadoun
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kyoto international conference center
by Sachio Otani
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tadashi kawamata
interview by Aleph Molinari
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purple beauty make-up
photography by Eamonn Zeel Freel
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self-portrait
Takashi Homma
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kids
by Takashi Homma
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hideaki kawashima
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yoshitomo nara
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yasujirō ozu
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the isamu noguchi garden museum
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yoko and john in karuizawa
by François Simon
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