惣菜 (sōzai): Side Dish vs. Main Dish vs. Japanese Dishes

When translating Japanese into English, sometimes you run into some real puzzles, concepts that just don't map.

One of those is 惣菜、 or sōzai. (Also called おかず, or okazu, especially when you cook them at home.)

Conceptually, it's not hard. In traditional Japanese cuisine, the staple mainstay (主食のご飯 -- shushoku no gohan) of a meal is the grain -- usually rice, but possibly noodles or even bread in present Japan. Sōzai are the dishes that support the mainstay staple, so they should be called "side dishes", right?

That is generally what you'll see sōzai translated as.

Meat is the mainstay of western cuisine, so the parallels are there. It's one of those cultural differences. Problem solved, back to work.

Except, what should we call the shops, and the sections of the local supermarkets, where they specialize in sōzai?

And what if there are nothing but side dishes on the table for a meal?

Way too much is lost in translation.

Western style main course (courtesy of Wikimedia):

Would you call this the main dish? Or is the main dish the meat, and are the potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and spring peas or whatever the collective side dishes? Perhaps I'd call it the main meat item with sides of potatoes and vegetables.

You could buy every item in there at a sōzai specialty shop.

(Ahem. Okay. That steak is about twice the size, minimum, of what you'd find in a sōzaiyasan, and it would likely be minced, breaded, and contain soy filler. Soy filler is not evil, by the way, if you aren't allergic to soy. Soy is good protein, and both the meat and the soy improve in nutrition value because of the mix.)

Gohan Shushoku (courtesy of Wikimedia):

If you heard someone say "main dish", would you expect this?

(If you look closely, you will see there is barley cooked into the rice. It's not uncommon in modern households. My wife does it too, and I appreciate it. It doesn't really change anything I'm talking about.)

Western style side dish (courtesy of Wikimedia):

That looks like some good side items, side servings of side dishes collected in a single dish. Not much disagreement whether you are doing Japanese or western cuisine.

Okazu no Sōzai (courtesy of Wikimedia):

Would you call that a box full of side dishes? How about delicacies? What if, as is not unusual, there were a hamburg steak in that box? How about if there were a side of rice in there, as well?

What if you selected (separately, not collected in a box as above) items like these including croquettes, spaghetti and meatballs, squid, steak, chicken, or pork cutlets, etc., at the supermarket, or at a sōzai specialty shop, to take home and serve for dinner? Does the size of the serving matter? And why does a sōzai shop usually sell servings of rice, as well?

Lately, many supermarkets will label the section where they sell sōzai "delicatessen" or 「デリカテッセン」。 That sort-of almost fits in with current western supermarket practices, really. It seems quite a long time ago that delicatessens specialized in foreign delicacies, if they ever did.

And not a few American or European family meal organizers will sometimes collect the elements of a meal, pre-cooked, at a delicatessen to take it home and serve pretty much as-is.

But it doesn't answer the question of what a Japanese shop should call the items themselves as a group if they want to translate their ads to English and attract English-speaking customers.

I think, although for business reasons I haven't actually done this in my translation work, that, for myself, I would call them meal items or pre-cooked dishes.

Or, hey -- This is Japan. Latinize/Romanize it and call them "sōzai (pre-cooked meal items)" at the top of the page and just "sōzai" everywhere else.

Then the person who sets the table can decide whether they are side attractions or main.