[KS] Re: A chopsticks question

Brother Anthony anthony at ccs.sogang.ac.kr
Thu Feb 20 20:02:04 EST 2003


Someone working in a museum of popular culture should be consulted. It is clear from any visit
to Korean antique shops that chopsticks made of metal were widespread (standard? universal?) in
pre-modern Korea and I would imagine that one reason would have been their durability at a time
when an awful lot of people had virtually no money with which to keep buying new ones. But I
think they might have been favored even among the richer classes in the context of the
Confucian aesthetics of frugal simplicity that underlie the use of undecorated white pottery
etc. Lacquered wood or ivory chopsticks (Japan and China) were presumably not designed
originally for the use of the laboring classes. I have a feeling that metal chopsticks are used
in the royal memorial rituals at Chongmyo. On the other hand, monks today often eat out of
lacquered wood bowls using lacquered wood chopsticks / spoons but I do not know how ancient
that is (obviously metal chopsticks would not be good for lacquered wood).

The discussion ought perhaps to include the question of when and why Koreans started to use
spoons? They are not found at all in Japanese tradition, I think, and the Chinese ladle-like
porcelain (plastic) spoon is quite a different kind of object. 

An Sonjae / Br Anthony
Sogang University, Seoul




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