In a downtown Tokyo basement, a sushi chef sharpens his yanagiba knife with long, deliberate strokes, the blade singing softly against the whetstone. His movements are silent and precise—wrists angled just so, fingers curled with practiced tension. He wipes the blade clean, lines up fresh fillets of fish, and begins to slice, each cut as smooth and effortless as a breath. Just a few blocks away, in a cramped jazz bar, a saxophonist adjusts his reed, breathes through the mouthpiece, and plays a scale so familiar it barely registers. His fingers move from one note to the next as if drawn by memory more than intent. Each man prepares his instrument with quiet focus, readying himself for what comes next.
Cooking, like music, lives in repetition, rhythm, and the readiness to respond. It’s not about doing something different every time; it’s about knowing when to shift, to hold, to push forward. I began to understand this not in a fine dining kitchen, but while living in rural Japan. I spent months in towns where culinary traditions endure despite depopulation and economic shifts. I learned to cook its regional food in the kitchens of grandmothers, at a local culinary school, and alongside noodle makers and fishermen. Through this, and plenty of slicing, boiling, burning, and correcting, I began to grasp what it meant to cook from the body, not just the head.
Kitchen Flow
When timing a dish perfectly without checking the clock, an experienced chef does not think. The body simply knows when to lift the lid, when to flip the fish, when to take the pan off the heat. That kind of timing doesn’t come from guessing. It comes from repetition. In restaurant kitchens that depth of embodied knowledge is everywhere. Evening restaurant rushes are anything but unstructured. The clatter of knives, the hiss of water, the scent of straw-smoked skipjack tuna formed a shared rhythm. Cooks adjusted their pace and position almost instinctively, responding to one another without needing to speak. What appears as chaos is choreography.
Like jazz musicians playing a set, the cooks are not following a script. They are following a feel. They have practiced these movements hundreds of times—how to cut a fillet without tearing it, how to season bamboo shoots for just the right sourness—and when the moment calls for it, they know what to do.
Repetition as Rhythm
In Japanese cooking school, I learned that mastering a dish is not about memorizing a list of steps. It is about repeating those steps until they became part of your being you. Just as a musician plays scales until the fingers move on their own, a cook learns to roll sushi, portion miso, or layer flavors through bodily repetition. Knife work, seasoning, plating—these skills become intuitive only after a long period of getting them wrong and trying again. Even seasoned chefs returned to the basics. One instructor had me cut daikon radish into exact matchsticks for what felt like hours. He didn’t explain why. But later I realized it wasn’t about the daikon. It was about learning through the body not the mind.
Improvisation Within Structure
Cooking, like jazz, depends on structure. There are foundational rules about ingredients, techniques, and flavors that create a framework. But every dish is a little different. Tuna is fattier this season, the soy sauce brewed slightly darker, the heat of the burner inconsistent. No matter how practiced you are, you have to adjust. That kind of adjustment is best described as skilled improvisation. During one festival prep, I watched a group of cooks transform leftover mochi into a savory soup. It wasn’t planned. But because they had mastered the core elements—timing, texture, seasoning—they could respond to the moment. Their choices weren’t guesses. They were informed riffs. Improvisation doesn’t mean ignoring the rules. It means working with them in real time.
The Kitchen Ensemble
In professional kitchens, space is limited, the pace is fast, and everyone must move in tempo. It is like a tightly rehearsed performance. A cook pivots just as another moves to plate, and a hand reaches over to stir a pot as someone else wipes down the board. When it works, the performance is a thing of beauty. When it doesn’t, there is a lot of cursing and yelling. This is also Jazz. Multiple players respond to one another, listening as much as leading. You learn to anticipate others’ timing, adjust your actions to fit the ensemble, and recognize when to take the lead or step back.
Whether in a basement kitchen or a jazz bar, mastery emerges through rhythm, repetition, and responsiveness. In both cooking and music, innovation grows not from abandoning structure, but from inhabiting it so fully that new possibilities arise from within. Through embodied practice, the endless repetition of forms anchored into the body, we don’t just follow tradition; we carry it forward, reshaping it in each gesture. That is the quiet power of craft: the ability to improvise with intention, rooted in deep, practiced knowing.
