Devouring Japan: Global Perspectives on Japanese Culinary Identity

Description

In recent years Japan's cuisine, or washoku, has been eclipsing that of France as the world's most desirable food. UNESCO recognized washoku as an intangible cultural treasure in 2013 and Tokyo boasts more Michelin-starred restaurants than Paris and New York combined. International enthusiasm for Japanese food is not limited to haute cuisine; it also encompasses comfort foods like ramen, which has reached cult status in the U.S. and many world capitals. Together with anime, pop music, fashion, and cute goods, cuisine is part of the "Cool Japan" brand that promotes the country as a new kind of cultural superpower.This collection of essays offers original insights into many different aspects of Japanese culinary history and practice, from the evolution and characteristics of particular foodstuffs to their representation in literature and film, to the role of foods in individual, regional, and national identity. It features contributions by both noted Japan specialists and experts in food history.The authors collectively pose the question "what is washoku?" What culinary values are imposed or implied by this term? Which elements of Japanese cuisine are most visible in the global gourmet landscape and why? Essays from a variety of disciplinary perspectives interrogate how foodways have come to represent aspects of a "unique" Japanese identity and are infused with official and unofficial ideologies. They reveal how Japanese culinary values and choices, past and present, reflect beliefs about gender, class, and race; how they are represented in mass media; and how they are interpreted by state and non-state actors, at home and abroad. They examine the thoughts, actions, and motives of those who produce, consume, promote, and represent Japanese foods. Cover Half title Devouring Japan Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Contributors Chronology: Japan’s Historical Eras Introduction: Japanese Culinary Capital Part I. Japan’s Culinary Brands and Identities Historical Culinary Identities 1. Japanese Food in the Early Modern European Imagination 2. Gifting Melons to the Shining Prince: Food in the Late Heian Court Imagination 3. Soba, Edo Style: Food, Aesthetics, and Cultural Identity 4. The Three Waves (and Ways) of Sake Appreciation in the West Culinary Nationalism and Branding 5. Washoku, Far and Near: UNESCO, Gastrodiplomacy, and the Cultural Politics of Traditional Japanese Cuisine 6. “We Can Taste but Others Cannot”: Umami as an Exclusively Japanese Concept 7. Rosanjin: The Roots of Japanese Gourmet Nationalism Regional and International Variations 8. Savoring the Kyoto Brand 9. Love! Spam: Food, Military, and Empire in Post–​World War II Okinawa 10. Nikkei Cuisine: How Japanese Food Travels and Adapts Abroad Part II. Japan’s Food-​Related Values Food and Individual Identity 11. Miso Mama: How Meals Make the Mother in Contemporary Japan 12. Better Than Sex? Masaoka Shiki’s Poems on Food 13. The Devouring Empire: Food and Memory in Hayashi Fumiko’s Wartime Narratives and Naruse Mikio’s Films Food Anxieties 14. Eating amid Affluence: Kaikō Takeshi’s Adventures in Food 15. An Anorexic in Miyazaki’s Land of Cockaigne: Excess and Abnegation in Spirited Away 16. Discarding Cultures: Social Critiques of Food Waste in an Affluent Japan 17. The Unbearable, Endless Anxiety of Eating: Food Consumption in Japan after 3/​11 Afterword: Foods of Japan, Not Japanese Food Glossary Index