Ryoko Sekiguchi (Tokyo, 1970), translator, food critic and author of various books dedicated to the relationship between literature and cuisine, asks if the heat it has been experiencing these last few days in Barcelona, where she has come to participate in the Literature festival, is normal. .
Long ago, when summer did not last forever, around this time we should be emotionally immersed in the heart of what develops throughout Nagori. Nostalgia for the season that is lost (Periférica), a hybrid of historical-cultural essay, spiritual reflection and ode to the senses, with a pinch of memorial salt, all condensed in just over one hundred beautiful pages: "Nagori" is a term polysemic Japanese, linked to the idea of the end of something and the mark that its memory leaves, whether it is a fruit whose season ends, a season that is abandoned, a loved one who died... and therefore strongly impregnated with nostalgia.
Sekiguchi - all friendliness and with a preference for cheerful colors in clothing, perhaps due in part to the fact that he has lived in France for two decades, where he notes that the spring rebirth is more revered than the autumn melancholy favored by his compatriots - composes an ode to the seasons - "they are the most beautiful thing that exists in this world" - without failing to remind us that they do not respond to the order and limits of our imagination (the traditional Japanese calendar contemplates between twenty-four and seventy-two) nor addressing the deep conflict that faces the human being by living his existence in a single direction while the cycles of nature are renewed without rest.
But haven't we lost perception and sensitivity towards the seasons due to the combined effect of climate change, after the preventive detention that confinement entailed and our submission to screens? "I don't think so, no! Maybe we should pay more attention to them, but we are still very attached to them and they condition us enormously. But we should not think of them in terms of long periods of time, because a single day can contain several seasons and bring us promises of change and renewal".
The author, who grew up in the kitchen of the cooking school that her mother owned in Tokyo, uses the most varied fruits and vegetables to illustrate her arguments, which for once justifies us using the adjective "delicious" for a book full of of quasi-poems ("to want an orange in the middle of summer is to want to live until winter"), which draws our attention to the way in which tastes are a reflection of social trends (today we privilege acidic flavors because we associate them with vitality, while in the past sweet things had a higher status as they represented maturity) and which even included an appendix with a dazzling menu (to say "opinion" would be to reduce it to a mere appetizer) that he offered to the companions of a literary residency in Rome.
It should be noted that we are not dealing with a fundamentalist foodie because in her book she even praises preserves and shows respect for industrial food. "Canning was a wonderful invention, expanding the life and variety of foods," he points out with big hand gestures. "And as for the second, it irritates me to hear those who fill their mouths when advocating exclusive consumption." of local foods or fresh foods, don't they know that there are many people who do not have access to them, either due to physical distance or lack of economic resources?
In his book, Sekiguchi dares to take aim at Japan's quintessential literary institution: haiku. "I know, I know. A complete sacrilege. This is why Nagori is not going to be translated there, they would cut my throat... But it is a problematic genre in that it is insensitive to drama and suffering, it focuses on renewal and excludes the time of the wound that remains. A haiku that would address the recent earthquake in Morocco would speak of the flowers that sprout from between the cracks."
Read Nagori and you will never see a chestnut or a ficus with the same eyes again.
