Topic

In December 2013, washoku was added to the Intangible Cultural Heritage list (UICH) of the United Nations. The UNESCO acknowledged washoku as a social practice that provided the Japanese people with a sense of identity and belonging, promoted healthy eating and expressed respect for nature and the environment.

Dietary patterns, attitudes towards and perceptions of food are central to the experience of everyday life and integral to the formation of local and national cultures. However, what is missing in the appreciation of the UNESCO is an understanding of the historical dimension, of political agendas and discourses of power that shape the notion of a “national cuisine”. Although eating habits and food choices are often considered to be individual decisions, they are deeply social, influenced by geography, culture and time, and therefore subject to cultural politics and power relations.

This conference will analyze food and food cultures in Japan as a collective system of meanings that are shaped, produced and reproduced through cultural practices. We go beyond the traditional paradigm that reduces culture to a set of signs.  By looking at the processes and patterns behind the construction of a timeless Japanese cuisine (and its inherent contradictions), our approach seeks to identify the agents involved in conflicting narratives and their respective aims.

The narrative of a ‘pure’, natural, authentic and timeless cuisine successfully shaped a Japanese national-cultural identity, which centered on the ideas of homogeneity and uniqueness. As food and eating are intertwined with “embodied sensations” (Lupton) that affect our feelings, food helps to emotionally bind the people to the idea of the nation. Consuming and preparing “Japanese food” means to perform, to incorporate an emotional home, be it a hometown, a region or the nation. It also contains a notion of nostalgia. Food is used to articulate identity and identification and is a source of inclusion and exclusion, national pride or xenophobia. In Japan, as Ohnuki-Tierney has shown, food  – in particular, rice- has been a powerful metaphor for the nation, as well as a powerful psychological tool to position the Self in relation to the Other (‘us’ versus ‘them’).  Conformity or unity can only be achieved by contrasting Japanese food with the food of the ‘Other’, which is often perceived as polluted and unhealthy. The UICH list is an example of a political process, as is the fact that the message portrayed on the UNESCO website is suited for the ministries (the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare) that advocate a return to the Japanese culinary habits and the consumption of native foods.

Indeed, while healthy diets and traditional food culture provide reasons for the state’s promotion of washoku, the fact that Japan imports roughly 60% of its food points to other motivations.  Furthermore, the promotion of the narrative of healthy domestic food as part of a broader policy aim has faltered in the aftermath of a recent series of domestic food scandals and the repercussions of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

On a policy level, Japan’s food system displays contrasts and disparities. The globalization of the food supply chain and Japan’s dependency on imports contrast the nostalgic return to the local and a rediscovery of the culinary roots of the nation. These conflicting narratives influence Japan’s domestic policy-making and politics that are based on and tap into pre-existing emotions.

Research on culinary nationalism focuses on cultural and anthropological and on economic-political perspectives. There is much potential for interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary collaboration and research. By bringing together researchers from the fields of history, cultural studies, ecology, food studies and political science, we hope to create a systematic and fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue that will lead to a better understanding of the relevant aspects of culinary nationalism in Japan and to a conceptual understanding of the underlying patterns and processes of conflicting food identities.