Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature

by Tomoko Aoyama

Literature, like food, is, in Terry Eagleton’s words, "endlessly interpretable," and food, like literature, "looks like an object but is actually a relationship." So how much do we, and should we, read into the way food is represented in literature? Reading Food explores this and other questions in an unusual and fascinating tour of twentieth-century Japanese literature. Tomoko Aoyama analyzes a wide range of diverse writings that focus on food, eating, and cooking and considers how factors such as industrialization, urbanization, nationalism, and gender construction have affected people’s relationships to food, nature, and culture, and to each other. The examples she offers are taken from novels (shosetsu) and other literary texts and include well known writers (such as Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Hayashi Fumiko, Okamoto Kanoko, Kaiko Takeshi, and Yoshimoto Banana) as well as those who are less widely known (Murai Gensai, Nagatsuka Takashi, Sumii Sue, and Numa Shozo).

Food is everywhere in Japanese literature, and early chapters illustrate historical changes and variations in the treatment of food and eating. Examples are drawn from Meiji literary diaries, children’s stories, peasant and proletarian literature, and women’s writing before and after World War II. The author then turns to the theme of cannibalism in serious and popular novels. Key issues include ethical questions about survival, colonization, and cultural identity. The quest for gastronomic gratification is a dominant theme in "gourmet novels." Like cannibalism, the gastronomic journey as a literary theme is deeply implicated with cultural identity. The final chapter deals specifically with contemporary novels by women, some of which celebrate the inclusiveness of eating (and writing), while others grapple with the fear of eating. Such dread or disgust can be seen as a warning against what the complacent "gourmet boom" of the 1980s and 1990s the dangers of a market economy, environmental destruction, and continuing gender biases.

Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature will tempt any reader with an interest in food, literature, and culture. Moreover, it provides appetizing hints for further savoring, digesting, and incorporating textual food.

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction, Japanese Literature

288 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2008

Reviews

[Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5'00
Pues slay. Pensaba que al ser libro para TFG sería un terrible tostón pero solo lo ha sido a veces. A win is a win.
Lo que defo no me ha gustado es que se centra mucho en las obras y poco en la parte de explicar simbolismo y tal. I mean, en vez de que la base fuesen ejemplos y a traves de cada paso vaya explicando cosas, me hubiese molado que propusiese una parte más teórica al principio de cada capítulo/ tema y luego lo ejemplificase con obras y eso. Also, he echado de menos mas simbología de comida específica. Pero oye la tía es genial, sabe un montón y se nota, y no espero que en apenas 250 páginas meta todo lo que a mi me gustaría aprender sobre el tema (ni en 100 cabría lol).
Por último, s/o a mi perfectísima profesora Mina por iluminarme sobre este libro (mina teamo ojalá café y charla contigo).

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inoue Hisashi, Tokyo Seven Roses
Nagatsuka Takashi, The Soil
Hiyashi Fumiko postwar novels
Nasuji Ibuse, Black Rain
Sumii Sue, The River with No Bridge
Ariyoshi Sawako
Gong Yue, The Mouth that Begs
Okamoto Kanoko, The Gourmand and Sushi
Aoki Masaru, The Entrancing House
Hisao Juran, Flower Matching
Dan Kazuo (?)
Kanai Meiko
Yasunari Kawabata, The Sound of the Mountain