Spanish 'between' French & Italian? Sorry, that doesn't work at all (for a start, there's Spain's Muslim culinary heritage, but I could go on. And on, and on).
Oh, no intention to diminish Spanish culinary achivements. Would be very hard to do so with all the acclaim.
But the Japanese/Italian and Chinese/French comparison I still find rather fitting.
As far as I understood, the origins of dashi are humble, merely dried bonito shavings steeped in water. The addition of kombu, and, one presumes, miso came later.
Very interesting to read, cheers. Korean simple soups are not entirely dissimilar.
I certainly don't belittle the enormous influence China has had on the foods of the countries that surround it (Italy certainly owes a string of debts to this great nation) but when it comes to dashi and miso soups you might as well say:
"Bah, something got lost on the way from India via China and, perhaps, Korea."
The popularity of grain and bean misos in Japan being more of a lifestyle decision based on the popularity/influential power of Buddhism than a preference for the actual food.
This is also very interesting. I try to dig up something on this as well.
My own analogy would be different - it's like you've compared breakfasts, miso soup being
this (developed to suit diets of abstinence), the Chinese soups you're comparing dashi based broths to being
this.
Well, Chinese home cooking has a variety of "balance" and "digestif" function soups. Like the omnipresent tomato and egg soup, noodles with seaweed but also Sichuanese very mild broths to offset all the fiery other dishes.
Dashi reminds me of a Zen stone garden. The genius of this broth isn't what's in it, it's what isn't.
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The Sichuanese fish soup I had yesterday was not minimalist for sure. Mmm, moght actually go for seaweed and miso afterwards...