旨味

choi

Flavour science  | The Tastemakers; Researchers are still chasing the nature, and the number, of basic tastes. Economist, Jan 31, 2015.
www.economist.com/news/science-a ... number-basic-tastes

My comment:
(a) "Umami 旨味 * * * was identified in 1908 by Kikunae IKEDA, a chemist at what was then Tokyo Imperial University 東京帝国大学 (now called the University of Tokyo). Ikeda wanted to pin down an ineffable taste he identified in dashi, a soup stock made from tuna and seaweed. When he found glutamates were the cause, he gave their effect a name compounded from the characters for 'delicious' and 'taste/'”
(i) Kikunae Ikeda  池田 菊苗
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kikunae_Ikeda
(1864-1936)
(A) The "kiku" is the (only) Chinese pronunciation of kanji 菊. There is no Japanese pronunciation, because chrysanthemum came to Japan from China.
(B) Chrysanthemum
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysanthemum
(the center of diversity is in China [in biology it means the origin of location for subsequent disseminatuion]; section 1 Etymology; Chrysanthemums were first cultivated in China as a flowering herb as far back as the 15th century BC)

Wikipedia uses the capital C, as it is the genus name (in biology). In everyday English, the word starts with a lower-case c.
(C) Japanese English dictionary

na-e  苗 【なえ】 (n): "seedling"
(ii) ineffable (adj; etymology)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ineffable
(iii) "dashi, a soup stock made from tuna and seaweed"  Actually, not any kind of tuna or seaweed.
(A) dashi  出汁
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashi
("kombu 昆布 (edible kelp) and kezurikatsuo (shavings of katsuobushi 鰹節- preserved, fermented skipjack tuna)")
(B) Why 出汁?  Japanese Wikipedia says, “「出汁」の語源は「煮出」.”
(C) skipjack. Online Etymology Dictionary, undated.
www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=skipjack

(b) Japanese English dictionary
* na-e  苗 【なえ】 (n): "seedling"
* kezuri  削り 【けずり】 (n): "shavings; flakes"
* katsu-o 鰹 【かつお】 (n): “skipjack tuna; bonito (Katsuwonus pelamis)”

bonito
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonito
(a tribe of fish; section 1 Etymology)
* fushi 節 【ふし】 (n): "(1) joint; knuckle * * * (3) knot (in wood); node in a bamboo stem"  
(The “f” is softened to “b” because the former is not at the beginning of a multi-syllable word, but in the middle syllable.)  
* ko-i 濃い 【こい】 (adj): "(1) deep (colour); dark; (2) strong (flavour, smell, etc)"
(The “ko-ku” is 濃い 形容詞の名詞化.)

(c) “Kokumi 濃く味, similarly compounded from ‘rich’ and ‘taste’”

There is no need to read about it (kokumi) unless and until it is confirmed.

(d) “Ikeda’s ideas were also disputed by sceptical scientists, until the discovery of glutamate receptors both on the tongue and in the gut. Such scepticism did not stop umami being commercially successful, though. Ajinomoto, a firm founded in 1909 to make and sell MSG, is now a huge flavourings business.
(i) Disputed?  This is untrue. English-language textbooks on physiology all mentioned it, associated it with MSG. From there, scientists relentlessly pursued the cloning of the receptors--and succeeded.
(ii) Ajinomoto Co, Inc 味の素株式会社 (based in Tokyo): "Its yearly revenue in the fiscal year of 2013 stands at around US$12 billion." Wikipedia