What Did You Eat Yesterday? Volume 1

Salmon-and-burdock seasoned mixed rice…eggplants and tomatoes with Chinese-style spicy pork…chestnut rice…

Forty-something good-looking lawyer Shiro Kakei loves to cook. The reasons are a little complex: he’s obsessive about keeping within the household budget and he’s equally obsessive about keeping trim and healthy. His boyfriend Kenji Yabuki, a laid-back, easy-going hair stylist (also forty-something) loves to eat – although we see him coming to realize that Shiro’s careful meal-planning is keeping him trim and healthy as well. As each chapter offers glimpses of the day-to-day lives of the two, we get to learn more about them, their friends, co-workers, clients, and Shiro’s awkward relationship with his parents (who are still coming to terms with the fact that their son is gay in their own way). Fumi Yoshinaga also treats her readers (informally) to a recipe in each chapter, by following Shiro around the kitchen as he prepares dinner. Sometimes he prepares a dish that he’s learned from his cooking buddy, housewife Kayoko Tominagi (we also learn about the embarrassing circumstances of their first meeting) and the recipe is printed at the conclusion of the chapter. There’s even a chapter in which Shiro makes his own strawberry jam (the strawberries were on special offer, of course!) but the toasted bread on which they eat it leads to a few misunderstandings between the two, especially as it comes from a local bakery run by the only woman Shiro ever dated…

It’s been a long wait – but it’s been well worth waiting for. Fumi Yoshinaga (mangaka of the prize-winning alternate history series Ooku, and slice-of-life series Antique Bakery and Flower of Life) has – you’ve guessed it – a passion for food. Here she winningly combines her skill at depicting believable characters with her love of cooking (and eating!) Her earlier manga Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy was a brief tour in which ‘the heroine’ (the mangaka) and her friends visited various restaurants and sampled the different dishes on offer: a little love song (in spite of the title) to well-prepared food from all different nationalities.

In this ongoing series, we get the added bonus of an ongoing story depicting the everyday lives of an engaging cast of characters. In some ways it has something of the wit of a US TV series like Frasier or Will and Grace. Fumi Yoshinaga has always had a genuine gift for depicting the interplay between people – and their motivations, which may not always be the most noble or admirable, but are recognizably human and relatable. In some ways, she’s similar to our very own Posy Simmonds (Tamara Drewe; Gemma Bovery) in her skill at depicting contemporary life both through excellent (and sometimes cruelly accurate) social observation and witty drawings. It’s worth mentioning, also, that although the central couple are gay, this is not a Boys’ Love manga, even though some of the difficulties Shiro and Kenji encounter in their daily lives are explored with sensitivity and insight.

Vertical have produced a handsome paperback version with an easy-going, fluent translation by Maya Rosewood.

Warning: don’t read this manga on an empty stomach; it will make you feel an irresistible compulsion to rush out, buy ingredients and start cooking! Highly Recommended – even if you aren’t passionate about Masterchef. And in Volume 2 we are promised (among other delights) miso pork stir fry, wakame soup, egg soup with trefoil… Can’t wait!