About us
Foodion ～食のプロフェッショナル論～
https://foodion.net/interview/masato-nishihara?lang=ja
関西食文化研究会 ～味・技・人 激白ストーリー～
http://www.food-culture.jp/waza/story70.html
※ご予約について
ランチ、ディナー共に予約は電話にて、2か月先の同日まで（4月27日の電話で6月27日まで）承っております。
メールでのご予約は受け付けておりません。
尚、ディナーの当日予約は16時までの電話で、席がご用意できましたら可能でございます。
予約受付時間は10:00から21:00です。
営業時間中は状況により電話に出られない場合がございます。
ご理解の程よろしくお願い致します。
※ご来店について
中学生（13歳）未満のお子様のご来店をお断りさせていただいております。
（大人と同じおまかせコースをお召し上がりいただけるお子様の同伴とさせて頂きます。）
皆様のご理解、ご協力誠にありがとうございます。
We accept reservations up to two months in advance.
(If you wish to make a reservation for December 17th, we take it from October 17th.)
To make a reservation, please call us at +81 742 22 9707, not by email.
Our reservation line is open from 10am to 9pm but we might not be able to answer the phone when we have guests already in the restaurant.
Thank you for your understanding.
Business hours:
Lunch 12:00 – 13:00 (L.O.) Wed－Sun
Dinner 17:30－20:00 (L.O.) Tue – Sun
We are closed on Monday and the last day of the month.
Children under 12 years old are not allowed in the restaurant.
「白」と書いて「つくも」と読みます。この店名には様々な想いが込められ、そして結び付いて生まれたものです。
我々の国には、九十九年目の生誕の日を祝う習わしに「白寿」があります。 百から一を、取り除いた字が「白」そして引いた数が九十九(つくも)です。
限りなく完璧に近いが僅かに足らず。しかし九十九と百の間には永遠が存在します。
また、古くは先人の方々から受け継がれてきた感性に、完璧を良しとせず敢えて未完成に仕上げる 「未完の美」 という美意識が存在します。
そこには遊び心があり、そしてその先に未来を感じる事ができます。
更に「白」一語には色彩を始めとして、多くの意味が存在します。
物事の始まり、純粋、神聖、誠実、美しさ、儚さ
・・・そして、無の境地です。
Our restaurant is called Tsukumo.
The Chinese character (‘kanji’) adopted is 白, which primarily means ‘white’. But to a Japanese ear ‘tsukumo’ means ‘ninety-nine’. How can this be?
We have chosen a simple kanji but infused it with both an unusual reading (‘tsukumo’) and with more complex meanings than everyday usage would allow. Let us try to explain.
Kanji are an essential part of the Japanese language. They are difficult to learn because they often have several readings and several meanings. Furthermore there is great poetic licence to be had with endowing one kanji with the reading and meaning of another.
To reiterate, 白means ‘white’ and is usually read as ‘shiro’ in Japanese, not ‘tsukumo’. But this kanji also has other related meanings, including ‘pure’, ‘clear’, ‘holy’ and ‘a spiritual state of nothingness’. Therefore the meaning of the kanji chosen for our restaurant invokes an image of simplicity and purity.
But there is more to it than that, because the unusual reading of ‘tsukumo’ – ninety-nine – remains unexplained. We wanted to appeal to a widespread esteemed essence of Japanese culture, that of the beauty of incompleteness. And for this, we have to turn to numbers.
‘One hundred’ has a sense of completion; of perfection. ‘Ninety-nine’, on the other hand, is very close to completion and perfection, but not quite. In our restaurant, we strive for these qualities every day, but there is always room for improvement and we never fully achieve a perfect hundred. This is a cherished notion in Japanese culture, one that values a modicum of modesty in our daily efforts. So ‘tsukumo’ means ‘ninety-nine’; ‘incompleteness’. The final step in the puzzle is to explain how ‘tsukumo’ can be transplanted onto a kanji which we know represents ‘whiteness’, ‘simplicity’ and ‘purity’.
The answer lies in playing with the shape or form of kanji. ‘One hundred’ is written as百; (number) ‘one’ is written as 一. The latter looks like a dash, or an extended index finger. Notice the pictorial similarity between our chosen kanji – 白 and 百. The difference in form is just the presence or absence of the top line – the dash symbolising ‘one’.
Removing the top line of 百, is, in effect, to be playing with numbers while simultaneously arriving at a different kanji – 白 – with a completely different meaning. It is in effect suggesting the basic calculation of 100 minus 1 equalling 99. ‘Tsukumo’ is 99. And here lie the complex fusion of meanings with the unusual reading of the name of our restaurant: the whiteness and purity combined with the beauty of incompleteness; the Japanese essence of ninety-nine. spiritual state of nothingness.