Yōshoku
In Japanese cuisine, yōshoku (洋食 western food?) refers to a style of Western-influenced cooking which originated during the Meiji Restoration. These are primarily Japanized forms of European dishes, often featuring Western names, and usually written in katakana.
At the beginning of the Meiji Restoration (1868 to 1912), national seclusion was eliminated, and the Meiji Emperor declared Western ideas helpful for Japan's future progress. As part of the reforms, the Emperor lifted the ban on red meat and promoted Western cuisine, which was viewed as the cause of the Westerners' greater physical size. Yōshoku thus relies on meat as an ingredient, unlike the typical Japanese cuisine at the time. In the past, the term "yōshoku" was for Western cuisine, regardless of the country of origin (as opposed to French, English, Italian, etc.), but people became aware of differences between European cuisines and yōshoku due to the opening of many European restaurants serving more authentically European (non-Japanized) food in the 1980s.
Earlier dishes of European origin – notably those imported from Portugal in the 16th century such as tempura, are not, strictly speaking, part of yoshoku, which refers only to Meiji-era food. However, some yōshoku restaurants serve tempura.
Yōshoku varies in how Japanized it is: while yōshoku may be eaten with a spoon (as in カレー, karē, curry), paired with bread or a plate of rice (called ライス, raisu), and written in katakana to reflect that they are foreign words, some have become sufficiently Japanized that they are often treated as normal Japanese food (washoku): served alongside rice and miso soup, and eaten with chopsticks. An example of the latter is katsu, which is eaten with chopsticks and a bowl of rice (ご飯, gohan), and may even be served with traditional Japanese sauces such as ponzu or grated daikon, rather than katsu sauce. Reflecting this, katsu is often written in hiragana as かつ, as a native Japanese word, rather than as カツ (from カツレツ, katsuretsu, "cutlet").
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