Devouring Japan : global perspectives on Japanese culinary identity / edited by Nancy K. Stalker.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Stalker, Nancy K., 1962- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food habits--Japan.

Food habits.

Food--Japan.

Food.

Japanese--Food.

Japanese.

Cooking, Japanese.

Japanese--Diet.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 349 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Part I. JAPAN'S CULINARY BRANDS AND IDENTITIES

HISTORICAL CULINARY IDENTITIES

1. Japanese Food in the Early Modern European Imagination / Ken Albala

2. Gifting Melons to the Shining Prince: Food in the Late Heian Court Imagination / Takeshi Watanabe

3. Soba, Edo Style: Food, Aesthetics, and Cultural Identity / Lorie Brau

4. The Three Waves (and Ways) of Sake Appreciation in the West / Dick Stegewerns

CULINARY NATIONALISM AND BRANDING

5. Washoku, Far and Near: UNESCO, Gastrodiplomacy, and the Cultural Politics of Traditional Japanese Cuisine / Theodore C. Bestor

6. "We Can Taste but Others Cannot": Umami as an Exclusively Japanese Concept / Yoshimi Osawa

7. Rosanjin: The Roots of Japanese Gourmet Nationalism / Nancy K. Stalker

REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL VARIATIONS

8. Savoring the Kyoto Brand / Greg de St. Maurice

9. Love! Spam: Food, Military, and Empire in Post-World War II Okinawa / Mire Koikari

10. Nikkei Cuisine: How Japanese Food Travels and Adapts Abroad / Ayumi Takenaka

Part II. JAPAN'S FOOD-RELATED VALUES

FOOD AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY

11. Miso Mama: How Meals Make the Mother in Contemporary Japan / Amanda C. Seaman

12. Better Than Sex? Masaoka Shiki's Poems on Food / J. Keith Vincent

13. The Devouring Empire: Food and Memory in Hayashi Fumiko's Wartime Narratives and Naruse Mikio's Films / Noriko J. Horiguchi

FOOD ANXIETIES

14. Eating amid Affluence: Kaiko Takeshi's Adventures in Food / Bruce Suttmeier

15. An Anorexic in Miyazaki's Land of Cockaigne: Excess and Abnegation in Spirited Away / Susan Napier

16. Discarding Cultures: Social Critiques of Food Waste in an Affluent Japan / Eiko Maruko Siniawer

17. The Unbearable, Endless Anxiety of Eating: Food Consumption in Japan after 3/11 / Faye Yuan Kleeman.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on March 16, 2018).

ISBN:

0-19-024044-X