Масахико Симада - Death by Choice

“You’re pretty weird yourself, but so was your teacher, eh?”

“Let me just finish. Patients generally come to hospital wanting to regain their health, right? But there’s no need for the doctors to be healthy. He was out to commit slow suicide, that’s my view. People who eat things they’re not supposed to eat, they’re shortening their life through a crime of conscience. That’s right, you can die by eating, you know.”

All along the doctor had acted like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but suddenly all that changed and he now spoke in deadly earnest.

“He had an eating disorder, that’s what it comes down to. He recognized it himself, and he once told me it was related to his experience as an infant during the war. That fear of starvation never left him even in adulthood. He felt anxious and restless unless there was food nearby. As a result, there was always food in the refrigerator and cupboard. But once or twice a year, it would happen that stocks ran out. When he discovered this, he’d immediately go out and fill his belly somewhere or buy stuff in, no matter if it was past midnight, or in the middle of a typhoon. These days, of course, you’ve got twenty-four-hour convenience stores to take care of the anxiety of such people, but back then there were no convenient local food outlets. He’d have to get a taxi into the city centre to find one of those late-night shops.

“He used to play the gourmet and pretend it was an epicurean affectation that made him walk the streets in search of food. He defended a huge territory, and he was au fait with all manner of international foods and cuisine. When he travelled to conferences he’d make a point of hunting out the specialties and delicacies of the region, and astonish everyone with his appetite. He’d eat at least two dozen raw crabs, then demolish enough bouillabaisse for three. He could consume a two-pound T-bone steak, rare. He’d spend a long time at a sushi counter, ordering two rounds of everything they had on the menu.

“But all this is no more than you’d expect of your average glutton. He passed himself off as a suave, big-eating gastronome in company, but in fact he was the worst type of food eccentric. There’s nothing esoteric about being a food eccentric, no arcane knowledge or anything like that. He’d eat whatever he could get his hands on. Weird eating was his greatest pleasure in life. And one aspect of this discipline of his was food perversion.

“My teacher adored pigs’ ears. Now pigs’ ears are a staple item in Okinawa and Taiwan, where they eat them vinegared or jellied. Their gelatinous marrow and skin gives the dish a fabulous texture to the bite. You can turn a woman on by licking her ears, of course, but it’s not on to actually eat them. So you ease your frustration by eating pigs’ ears. My teacher never ate a single woman’s ear till the day he died, but he chewed up and digested the ears of no less than three hundred pigs to make up for it.

“He also had a passion for internal organs, brain and liver and kidneys, and so on, and he was a constant customer at the street stalls that specialized in offal dishes.

“Now freshness is everything when it comes to offal. He’d go to these places in Shinjuku in search of the organs of cattle killed that same day, and order up dishes of raw liver, heart, brains, and what have you. Raw brains have a richer taste than cod’s roe but they’re not as strong, and you can get quite addicted to the particular crisp texture of pink brainstem. Cattle have small brains relative to their overall bulk, so raw beef brain is quite costly. But that didn’t stop him. He’d order up three plates of it, until I found myself wishing I had four stomachs like a cow to hold it all. But this was just the hors d’oeuvres. The main course was beef offal stew. This went well with a heavy Bordeaux red, so he’d take a case along when he went. Offal may be a stamina food, the guy behind the counter would warn him, but it’s packed full of cholesterol remember. I’m a doctor, he’d say with a shrug, I know what I’m doing, and he’d order a second helping of stew.

“He was also a sucker for animal fat. Take thick noodles in a soup of back fat of pork, for instance. Or Chinese dumplings with a creamy stuffing made with heapings of that lard you use for heavy fry-ups. We’re still in the realm of fat that might be enjoyed by many people on a regular basis here, of course. But my teacher had what you might call a literal weakness for the stuff.

“Now we Japanese as a rule don’t go for fat, with the result that we have excellent longevity. You don’t die young just from eating the kind of fat you get in noodle soup or Chinese dumplings, for one thing. Let me just mention here that lard is a healthier kind of fat than butter or beef fat. Okinawans are long-lived, and Okinawa’s a lard paradise. Mind you, their impressive average life span is actually thanks to other causes. They have a balanced diet, and the climate and air are conducive to a long life. They’re not addicted to fat like some races.

“But as for my teacher, well he was on familiar terms with butter, beef fat, lard, you name it. Seal fat, duck fat, sheep’s fat, camel fat… The Provence region of France prides itself on a dish called cassoulet. You cook fatty duck in an earthenware casserole dish with white beans and sausage, so the beans absorb the duck fat, and the soup’s heavy with it. Apparently even the French have heartburn the day after they eat this dish. My teacher ate it three days running. He didn’t just eat it, he soaked up every last bit of fat at the bottom of the casserole dish with bread. I’d guess he shortened his life by about a week at each meal.

“Whenever he ate fat, he knew one thing for sure. Whether it was salted pork sirloin or chunks of beef fat in sukiyaki or stewed camel’s hump, or goose fat foie gras, he knew it was going to put pressure on his circulatory system, increase the adipose tissue around his liver, add wear and tear to his heart, diminish his vigour, and as a result take him one step closer to death.

“He would go into raptures over spicy and salty things. Now fat, of course, disguises much of the taste of hot or salty food. If you put salt on your tongue, you register the salty taste, and if you bite a chilli your tongue burns, but fat not only lessens the heat and the saltiness, it tames it right down. So of course his fat-soaked tongue craved food that was hotter and hotter, saltier and saltier.

“He kept the refrigerator permanently stocked with a number of salted and fermented foods. Sweet miso with fermentation starter, high-grade stuff with lime added, fermented cuttlefish blackened with its ink, he had the lot. He’d put salted fish innards and roe or salted sea-cucumber entrails in sake and drink it, he’d soak octopus or blowfish stomach or salt pickled sea squirt in green tea, or put salt-pickled baby rabbitfish on tofu, and he’d eat anchovies neat. He was a great fan of salt itself in all its guises. He’d of course use rock salt on meat dishes, and natural sea salt with fish, but he’d also blend different regional salts to create compounds for his personal delectation. This became a passion in his final years, the reason being that his body couldn’t cope with anything more than salt and water by this stage.

“Well if you’re a connoisseur of salt, you’ll also be a connoisseur of miso, soy sauce, and fish sauce. This man would serve himself dollops of finest Hatcho and Nishikyo miso washed down with sake, and slake the resultant thirst with drafts of Calpis. His pursuit of saltiness led him to start gulping down pure mineral spring water. His daily consumption of salts and sugars leapt, while his taste buds dulled. He craved ever stronger taste sensations. He took to having chilli, Tabasco sauce, or Chinese chilli paste with everything, which of course ate its way through not only his tongue and stomach but also his intestines.”