We Japanese treat all things about rice very seriously. For example, the variety of rice one eats has a vital social value. If you were seen eating junk rice, I mean, long grain cheapies like Basmati or Thai, neighbors would think you had committed social suicide.

Cooking rice in the most tasty way can also become a casus belli in Japan. In the past, a sect insisted to soak the rice grain overnight before cooking it the next morning. Another party believed in soaking it only for a few hours before boiling. A bloody war broke out between them. The battle is somehow still lingering even till today.

Some diehard open-fire partisans have gone underground and practice anachronism with much smoke. Left: Extinct traditional rice cauldron with hefty wooden top. Right: Stack of steamers.

So far, the fierciest battle in the history of Japanese rice wars was fought between traditional firewood/charcoal fraction and newly introduced gas fire supporters. The all-destructive civil war was narrowly averted by the timely start of WWII.

When Toshiba introduced electric rice cooker 51 years ago, the ensuing violence was near-thermo nuclear war level. Progressive cooker adapters and conservative open-fire partisans used to massacre each other mercilessly. Conservatives eventually lost miserably, and were totally wiped out. Dictatorship of electric rice cooking was firmly established.

This notoriety of Japanese imperialism immediately invaded and conquered almost all the Asian kitchens. It seemed extremely strange that otherwise fussy Chinese or Koreans kept their mouths tightly shut and refused to raise the voice of patriotic and heroic resistance.

Next phase. Presently in Japan, the supporters of IH (induction heating) movement are prosecuting conservative nickel-chrome heating elements vehemently. This tendency, I'm afraid, will lead Japan to a full-scale sectarian violence, no less vicious than the Iraqi war. IH-cooked rice or NiCr-boiled rice, this issue could decide the future of Japan, and subsequently, of Asian rice-eating countries. You have to watch with awe.

The most expensive rice cooker in history. Mitsubishi NJ-WS10.

Let's look into the powerful IH camp. The flagship is, without a single doubt, Mitsubishi IH rice cooker, Wclass NJ-WS10.

NJ-WS10's solid black skin hides a solid black inner pot, too. This pot, with its average thickness of 7.5mm, is a real sight because it was shaved from a solid carbon ingot. The ingot is sent to China, and there, skilled lathe turners shape the pot one by one, with its serial number proudly embossed.

IH (induction heating) heats up the pot directly by electromagnetic induction, without a medium of heat conduction. To receive the induction heating, the pot has to be made of ferromagnetic material or, at least, be coated with it. But the solid carbon! Mitsubishi has manufactured a lot of IH rice cookers with ferromagnetic inner pot coated by a carbon layer. On this process, it must have found that the solid carbon pot worked beautifully with IH induction coils.

Processing of NJ-WS10 inner pot. 1. Carbon ingot 2. Rough shaving 3. Final shaving 4. Completed inner pot with serial number stamped

Why carbon pot? Of course, Mitsubishi printed War-and-Peace-sized brochure praising the mystic relation between carbon/charcoal and art of rice cooking. I refused to read further than the first paragraph.

Anyway, one thing is sure. This carbon pot has made the Wclass NJ-WS10 incredibly expensive. 115,000 yen (amazing US$1,000). No sane person will spit out this monstrous amount, even if NJ-WS10 produced the most tastily cooked rice in this universe. So, I thought.

Obviously, Japan is not a land of sane people. I was totally wrong.

 

cheewee
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kaisei1
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