"There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort." — W. Somerset Maugham

‘Picnic didn’t appear in the English lexicon until 1748, but before the word was the deed — committed for millennia, as it happens. The Greeks and the Romans feasted in sacred groves after rituals and hunts and hosted lavish banquets on the beach. For them even modestly provisioned picnics had their charms. The Roman philosopher Seneca often picnicked on bread and figs alone. That, he said, was like having a “New Year feast every day.”

In Japan, the aristocracy similarly made an art of eating en plein air. In 1594, feudal lord and Imperial Minister Toyotomi Hideyoshi invited 5,000 people to a lavish picnic in honor of the famed cherry blossoms that adorned his city of Yoshino. The grounds he had enclosed with screens of gold leaf and curtains decorated by noted artists. Between the cherry trees were strung ropes so guests could hang their kimonos for all to see and to judge the most beautiful. And near the Buddhist temples he stationed watchmen called yama doshin to make sure no one desecrated the temple grounds by eating fish or fowl or playing raucous music. Hideyoshi’s picnic was a success, and he hosted many more like it, each more lavish than the one before.