Four hundred years ago the first recorded English roast beef dinner served in Japan was prepared for Matsura Hoin, the 26th daimyo of Hirado, in Nagasaki prefecture, by the kitchen of the English traders of the East India Company. This evening is a commemoration of the First British Beef Dinner, with special guest lecture by Japan400 co-chair, Timon Screech
This important culinary milestone was commemorated at the FCCJ on November 5, by the serving of a roast beef dinner. The present direct descendant of the Hirado Matsura daimyo family, Mr. Akira Matsura, who would be the 41st daimyo, attended.
The original meal was made possible by the arrival in Hirado in June 1613 of the East India Company’s first ship to Japan, the ‘Clove’. The ship and its crew had stayed in Hirado for some months to set up a trading post and to cultivate local contacts, while their mission chief visited Edo and the Tokugawa shogun.
price of attendance: Y4200 booking details (if applicable): VIa FCCI website
credited partners: Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Tokyo
‘The role of roast in early trading’. Read the write up in BCCJ’s Acumen Magazine here
and in the Japan Times: http://japan400.org/japan-times-dig-into-400-years-of-local-history-with-a-roast-beef-dinner/