KAKI 柿
Kaki or persimmon is a favourite fruit in Japan.
It is rich in nutrition being high in vitamin C and A and dietary fibre.
It has a luscious orange hue and I found the taste somewhat similar to cheeku or sapodilla or mudapple, but less sweet. Also cheeku is soft and mushy while the deliciousness of kaki lies in its crunchy texture.
While studying at Doshisha University, Kyoto, as a Japan Foundation Fellow, I lived in the student housing for foreigners called "Hawaii House"on Imadegawa dori and next to the Gardens of the Gosho or The Imperial Palace. From my room I could see this tree which was ok looking, but in September it shed its leaves and turned resplendent with orange fruit - it was Kaki, the Japanese Persimmon!
I discovered this fruit in New Delhi a few years back, in Hindi it's called ram-phal.
Locally grown in India, ram-phal lacks the crunchy texture that Japanese kaki has which I especially enjoy. I bought these from Sarojini Nagar Market in New Delhi.
The fruit bearing season is approaching – september onwards.
The humble fruit assumes an esoteric identity in the famous ink painting
“Six Persimmons” by Chinese painter Muqi, in the collection of the Daitokuji Ryokoin Zen temple in Kyoto, Japan.
Displayed in 2023 at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, below is a description by the Museum:
“Attributed to the 13th-century monk Muqi, Six Persimmons and Chestnuts are exquisitely subtle compositions painted in Song-dynasty China. At some point in the 15th or 16th century, they crossed the ocean to the hands of Japanese collectors who displayed them at tea gatherings, before being donated in the early 1600s to Daitokuji Ryokoin Zen temple in Kyoto, where they have been revered ever since. Apart from a brief exhibition at the Miho Museum outside Kyoto in 2019, both Six Persimmons and Chestnuts typically remain out of sight for those who are not members of their home temple community.”
https://about.asianart.org/press/the-heart-of-zen-international-debut-of-revered-masterpieces-six-persimmons-and-chestnuts-exclusively-at-asian-art-museum/
Japanese artists too have found the subject of the persimmon fascinating.
An example is “Persimmon Tree” by Sakai Hōitsu, dated 1816 in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/45392
Many haiku have been written on persimmon:
“Poet Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), who loved to eat and was quite partial to the persimmon, penned this famous haiku:"Kaki kueba/ Kane ga naru nari/ Horyuji." (Eating persimmons/ The bell of Horyuji temple tolling.)
Shiki explained in his essay that he heard the tolling of a temple bell when he was tucking into a bowlful of persimmons at an inn in Nara.” Source: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13059844
Some interesting info on persimmons in this blog, plus some recipes using persimmons
https://en.shokunin.com/archives/50450022.html
