Tampa ¨C Journalist and translator Winifred Bird, 41, lived nearly a decade in the countryside of Mie and Nagano prefectures, growing organic rice and vegetables while learning the traditions of Japanese foraging. Her new book, ¡°Eating Wild Japan,¡± out March 30 from Stone Bridge Press, is a botanist¡¯s guide to edible plants, a cookbook, a collection of insightful essays about Japanese food culture, and a memoir about life in rural Japan.
Any reader with an interest in finding edible plants in the wild can use Bird¡¯s work as a practical guide to foraging across Japan, with an assortment of recipes and a comprehensive glossary providing harvest details and specific geographical availability for various plants. Informative line-drawings by Paul Poynter, an illustrator based in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, complement Bird¡¯s text, giving the book a field guild quality. But even if you¡¯re not quite ready to trade in your shopping cart for hiking boots, Bird prods the reader to consider the philosophical underpinnings of foraging as a comprehensive way of relating to the world.
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