A singular ensemble: Indian food, science and Fukushima

Japan Times

6 days ago

When I first visited Japan in 2014, raw fish over vinegared rice wasn't as much of a culinary shock as the sheer size of naan here. The bread, paired with an almost neon-red butter chicken curry, struck me as a strange take on my homeland's cuisine.
The following year, I moved here to enroll in an undergraduate program and found my astonishment growing into disappointment.
Indian food, to me, was unrecognizable in the ensemble most commonly seen in Japan. At home, it was Ma's weekday dinner where rice would be eaten in three parts: first with ghee and salt or stir-fried gourd skins (a vestige of British-manufactured famines in India during World War II); second with dal simmered with fish head alongside fried vegetables; third alongside a fish curry with rohu or catla, sweetened tomato chutney and finally a dessert.
Growing up in suburban Mumbai, I also have fond memories of Goan pork sausages for breakfast or Anglo-Indian mutton curry (marinated in whiskey for a week) for dinner.
Understanding Ma's attention to the individual elements of every meal wasn't just an exercise in gastronomy — it also formed the basis of my own journey in science.
After receiving my bachelor's, I went on to pursue my PhD in chemistry, studying protein molecules bound to DNA. In this field of research, there are two major types of experiments: ensemble and single-molecule. The former involves collecting measurements from a large number of molecules, which means producing an average that erases individual nuance. The latter, which my lab focused on, scrutinizes single molecules, one at a time, allowing for a layered understanding of biological mechanisms.
Although rewarding, the work itself is difficult. I spent the entire first year of my PhD in a dark room, observing molecules for hours without successful data. When my experiments did work, though, the joy was unmatched.
Medium and message
Even while working with molecules in lab environments, I always felt a need to connect with human society beyond campus enclosures. When I arrived in Sendai in 2015, there were several volunteer organizations working along the Pacific coast in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.
My understanding of the 2011 disaster was limited — mostly shaped by Indian media coverage when I was still in middle school. During my first years in Japan, as tourism around the Tohoku region was in decline, I participated in early projects that involved traveling all around to advise local governments on how to better attract and serve international visitors.
A few years later, I met Tatsuhiro Yamane, a Tokyo native who had relocated with his family to Futaba, home to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. I eventually joined his company, the Futaba Area Tourism Research Association (F-ATRAs), and helped develop walking tours that highlighted the town's history and culture — stories of the everyday that often get buried under the disaster narrative.
In 2023, Japan's decision to release treated water into the Pacific drew widespread backlash — not because of flawed data but due to broken trust. Coastal Fukushima is still viewed by some as a zone of fear, its agricultural and fishing industries tainted by the aura of the nuclear disaster.
That is why I believe community-building and wresting control of the narrative — the work I'm still involved with through F-ATRAs — are so critical. Communication must adapt to its audience, especially when that audience is skeptical. I took this thought quite literally into my own kitchen in Sendai.
In the spring of 2024, I had the opportunity to host a celebratory dinner at home for leaders from my academic institution. I decided to serve my version of Indian cuisine in a multicourse format. One of the dishes I prepared was chicken shahi korma, a white curry said to have been served at the inauguration of the Taj Mahal.
Traditionally, curries are garnished with fresh cilantro. But knowing many in Japan are averse to its distinctive flavor, I opted for a local substitution: dried habanori seaweed. With its earthy flavor, habanori preserved the dish's subtlety and blended into the velvety almond-yogurt curry base. It was, in a sense, the same message — just spoken in a different tongue.
The molecules of a nation
My experience in single-molecule research taught me the value of examining systems at the microscopic level while keeping the broader picture in mind. This shaped how I saw the role of both Indian food and a town like Futaba within Japan.
The country, as a unit, is similar to what one would describe as the conditions of an ensemble experiment. Democracy, without proper institutions, can represent only the average opinion of the millions of people within it.
However, the framework of the nation-state is rather new. Land and its people existed long before the first nation-state was formed. Coming to Japan as a teenager — and indeed, that first encounter with Indian food in a vastly different cultural context — piqued my interest in the communities that constituted my immediate surroundings, the molecules that build toward the ensemble called 'nation.'
Given that science is a product of the human hunger for meaning, Fukushima helped me realize the many ways I could connect science back to the philosophy that birthed it. The scientific method — problem, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion — has broader applications than we credit it for.
When I moved from the prefectural capital of Sendai to the small town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, in the autumn of 2024, I decided to reorient myself through food. I spent New Year's eve making a box of osechi ryōri (traditional New Year's food), which included the simmered kuwai (arrowroot) of Sendai osechi and the hizunamasu (salmon head cartilage) with daikon radish of Namie osechi — a nod to the places that have come to define my journey in Japan.
Mindful of local contexts and the emotional power of food, Banerjee puts his own flourishes on the cuisine he makes at home, whether Indian or Japanese. |
Ari Hatsuzawa
I also had the chance to revisit the sweetened tomato chutney from my childhood days, where I replaced lemon juice in the traditional recipe with yuzu zest. This spring, I finally created my own fermentation chamber to create my first batch of kōji, Japan's national mold used in everything from sake brewing to miso production.
Love is a kind of fermentation. It demands time, and one clings to the sincere hope that something meaningful will come of it.
Thousands of people remain displaced from their homes in Tohoku since the 2011 triple disaster. To me, the long-held love of these residents for their hometowns demonstrates a patience akin to making a bowl of miso or soy sauce. I believe the story of Fukushima cannot be told through statistics but rather through a bowl of rice topped with something made slowly, purposefully and with care.
Science, food and society all weave a similar tale, suggesting the average can only ever tell part of the story. To truly understand, we must zoom in — to the single molecule, the tomato chutney, the individual citizen. We must stop flattening things into categories and start seeing them as they are: layered, storied and alive.