Understanding Shojin Cuisine

Once, in the quiet dawn of Japan's ancient temples, a way of eating took shape that turned every meal into a silent prayer. It was the sixth century when Buddhism crossed the sea from China and Korea, carrying with it a gentle vow to refrain from taking life. Monks set aside meat and fish, choosing the humble gifts of the fields and forests instead. Centuries later, in the thirteenth century, a young monk named Eihei Dogen traveled to China, absorbed the teachings, and returned to found the Soto school. He wrote a small but profound guide called Tenzo Kyokun, Instructions for the Zen Cook, declaring that the kitchen was no different from the meditation hall. To prepare food, he said, was to practice enlightenment—handle each ingredient with gratitude, waste nothing, cook with a clear and selfless heart. From that moment, shojin ryori, the cuisine of devotion, found its true form.

In the mountain monasteries of Kyoto and the sacred slopes of Mount Koya, this tradition grew like moss on old stone. It drew from Zen's love of simplicity and Shingon's reverence for ritual, weaving seasonality, balance, and mindfulness into every dish. Over time, its quiet influence reached beyond the temple gates, shaping the refined multi-course meals known as kaiseki and reminding all who tasted it that true elegance arises from restraint.

The rules of shojin ryori are few but absolute. No creature is harmed—no meat, no fish, no poultry, no eggs, and in the strictest temples, no trace of animal products at all. The five pungent roots—garlic, onions, leeks, chives, shallots—are set aside, for their sharp breath and stirring energy are thought to cloud the mind and awaken desires that meditation seeks to still. No strong drink disturbs the calm; the focus remains on clarity and peace. Every meal honors the rule of five: five colors to please the eye—green from fresh greens, yellow from sesame, red from subtle chilies, black from seaweed, white from tofu or rice; five flavors in gentle harmony—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami; five ways of cooking—raw, boiled, steamed, lightly fried, roasted—so the senses awaken together. Nothing is wasted; every peel, stem, and leaf finds its purpose in broth or pickle. Ingredients follow the seasons, connecting the eater to the turning wheel of nature—tender shoots in spring, cooling cucumbers in summer, earthy roots in autumn, warming mushrooms in winter.

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The Day Rhode Island Gasped

Columbus Day 1910, the Fabre Line, and the Italian immigrants who transformed Natick and Pontiac.

If you had stood along the main road through the villages of Natick and Pontiac in the early 1900s, you would have heard a medley of accents and languages. The British, the Irish, the Swedes, and the French-Canadians had all come before, each group finding its place in the textile mills that lined the Pawtuxet River. But by the dawn of the twentieth century, it was the Italians who were arriving in ever-growing numbers, and they were the latecomers. As many historians have pointed out, their experience followed a familiar pattern: they took the lowest-paying jobs, lived in the poorest housing, and clung fiercely to their ethnic identity. In the crowded mill villages of Rhode Island, this was simply what happened to each new wave of strangers. Of course, Italians were no strangers to the New World. Long before the mills of Natick ever hummed with machinery, Italian mariners had charted the very course to the Americas. Think of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John and Sebastian Cabot—whose family name was really Caboto—and Giovanni da Verrazzano. Their ships had opened the Atlantic like a book. Even in the earliest colonial days, Italian families had found their way to what would become the United States. The Tagliaferro family, for instance, settled in Jamestown, Virginia, within just a year of Roger Williams founding Rhode Island. And when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, one of the men who put his name to it was William Paca, a Maryland delegate of Italian heritage. Later, during the Civil War, three Italian Americans rose to the rank of general on the Union side. So the Italian presence in America was nothing new. But the great tide of immigration that would reshape places like Natick and Pontiac was still to come. That tide began to swell in the 1860s, when the demand for labor to build the Transcontinental Railroad drew thousands of workers from southern Italy, Ireland, and China. One of those men was Carmine DiFranco. He came to help lay track, lived for a time in California, and eventually settled in Natick, where he opened a small grocery store that catered to Italian tastes and needs—a quiet sign that a community was taking root.

Yet the major impact of Italian immigration in New England was not truly felt until the early twentieth century. Southern Europe's economy had soured, while Rhode Island's textile mills were desperate for cheap, willing hands. The pull was irresistible. Once the influx began, Italians arrived in numbers no one had quite anticipated. Charles Carroll, in his book Rhode Island: Three Centuries of Democracy, captures the moment of awakening perfectly. He writes that Rhode Island scarcely realized the volume of Italian immigration until the first observance of Columbus Day as a public holiday in 1910. What had been expected to be just another parade—in a city already known as "the paradingest city"—turned into something far larger. For hours, Carroll says, Italian divisions poured through the city streets in rapid succession. And then he delivers the unforgettable image: the whole state gasped at the discovery, rubbed its eyes to test the reality of what seemed plausible only as a dream. In a single day, Rhode Island became aware of its Italian population.

But consciousness, unfortunately, soon curdled into fear. The migration continued at an unrelenting pace until 1921, when prejudice in Washington finally found its voice. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the National Origins Quota Act in 1924. These laws were aimed squarely at Italians, Jews, and Slavs, and they succeeded in slowing the flow from southern Europe. Even so, between 1898 and 1932, nearly fifty-five thousand Italians arrived at the Port of Providence alone.

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How Federal Hill, Providence, Got Its Name.

The Battle Over an Ox Roast

In 1788, a makeshift army of angry farmers stormed into Providence, Rhode Island, and broke up a Fourth of July ox roast at the base of a hill. That hill, thanks to the chaos, would later become known as Federal Hill. But to understand how a celebration turned into a riot—and how a hill got its name—we need to go back long before that skirmish.

In the mid-19th century, long before European settlers arrived, the local Native people called this place Nocabulabet. This name beautifully captured its geography: "land above the river" or "land between the ancient waters." Providence slowly grew up around that hill, and over time, Irish immigrants crowded into the neighborhood, followed by a wave of newcomers from Italy. Today, Federal Hill is the heart of Providence's Little Italy, famous for its lively streets and endless restaurant choices. But in 1788, things were anything but festive.

That June, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, officially creating a framework for the new American government. Virginia followed just days later. The Constitution, as written by the former colonies that had become states, required approval from nine of them to take effect. As news spread that ten states had signed on, Federalists across the country rejoiced. In Rhode Island, the Fourth of July seemed like the perfect moment to celebrate the new Constitution.

There was just one problem: Rhode Island had not ratified it. Along with North Carolina, the state refused to join the new union. Rhode Island would not approve the Constitution until 1790, by which time its adoption was all but inevitable. In the meantime, Anti-Federalists held power through the dominant Country Party. They opposed the Constitution for many reasons, chiefly the loss of state independence to a strong central government. The party's first leader, Jonathan J. Hazard of Charlestown, had even kept Rhode Island from sending delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia back in 1787. Later, Arthur Fenner, another Country Party leader, won the governorship and served from 1790 to 1805.

Rhode Island's economy after the Revolutionary War was in shambles. The state carried enormous war debts, partly because the British had occupied Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island—along with Conanicut Island—from December 1776 to October 1779. Rhode Island had paid for three state regiments to guard against enemy attacks, plus militia regiments called up to dislodge the British from Newport or defend against raids. The tax burden fell mostly on farmers, who had lost their main market for surplus goods: the British Caribbean islands. With that outlet gone, the economy collapsed.

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