Grodinsky “The Joy of Soy” chapter 3 from 
A Taste of Health

Miso and soy sauce, both soy products, are used in one way or another in just about every dish in Japanese cuisine.

Soy Sauce:

• first known reference to “soy sauce” is from 1597 in the Ekirinbon Setsuyoshu as “tamari shoyu”
  
• soy sauce came later due to the machinery needed to create it (squeezing liquid from the beans)
  
• not easily done at home like miso
  
• Noda is where commercial production became and it still remains prominent 
  
• 50 yrs or so passed and they had arranged the flavor with half roasted wheat and half soy beans and created their pure product of “shoyu”
  

consumption: 

• In the 18th century 14.5 liters per year per person of soy sauce were being consumed. 
  
• Nowadays it’s down to about 9 liters per year per person.
  

Popularity:

• 17th century, Japan began exporting soy sauce (now it exports to 100 countries)
  
• Soy sauce grew in popularity during WWII because of American Soldiers returning home after time in Japan
  
• 1957, in the USA soy sauce sales were growing at about 15% a year
  
• 1973, Kikkoman opened factory in Wisconsin (otherwise soybeans woudl always be exported to Japan, then imported BACK in as soy sauce - a waste of everything!) 
  

MISO:

• “In many ways, miso is to Japanese cooking what butter is to French cooking and olive oil to the Italian way.” - Shizuo Tsuji, Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art
  


• 8th century there was miso but it wasn’t shared by everyone until about 12 century (mostly likely due to Buddhism encouraging simple diets) which helped define a “simple” meal of rice, miso soup and pickles. 
  
• There is a huge variety of miso (similar to that of the variety of cheese in France).
  
• Also a huge variety of HOW it is made (some made with rice, barley, dark, light, sweet, salty etc...)
  
• Until about 1960s miso was made at home. 
  

Consumption:

• A Japanese eats a few tablespoons of miso per day (according to stats)
  
• It can be used in soup, as a marinade, sauce, pickling, dishes like dengaku, nabe...
  

Fermented Soybean Products and Japanese Standard Taste by Erino Ozeki
Standard Taste As a Cultural Model

• we recognize a repeated flavor/taste eventually as a cuisine
  
• instances where people return to their childhood flavors include: shocked by exotic flavor/living for a long period of time in foreign place
  
• our original childhood flavor preference is what we judge all other flavors by
  
• Standard taste is often misunderstood and takes the form of a stereo typed food item in a culture
  
• this this usually the product of ingredients/seasonings etc... simply being uncommon
  
• In history availability of foods and “suitable processing and cooking methods” guided taste
  
• in ca be influenced by introduction of foreign products (such as red hot pepper in Korea)
  
• discovery of using ingredients differently etc... (soy over fish in modern Japan)
  
• “Standard tastes are deeply associated with particular ingredients and specialized preparation techniques” 
  

Standard Taste: The Japanese Case

• Two Major Elements: dashi and fermented soy bean products
  
• these tow could have been pivotal due to “Umami cultural area”
  

Origins of the Components
Dashi components:1.) kombu

• first mentioned in Shokunihongi AD 797
  
• first used for dashi in Genroku Period (1688-1704)

2.) katsuo bushi with mold appeared in Edo Period (1603 - 1868) 

• Dried fish (particularly katsuo-bushi)
• eaten as early first century BC (Yayoi Era)
  
• eighth century AD (Nara Era) references to it as dried fish and boiling it became common
  
• the name didn’t appear till Muromachi Period (1333 - 1573)
  

Hishio - salt fermented food such as grains, fish, meat, or vegetables. 

• 1.) salted soy and grain varieties  2.) salted fish and meats  3.) pickled vegetables
  

Misoshiro - Muromachi Era, when mortar and pestles became more popular

• By the end of the Edo Period skills and procedure had improved miso
  

The Persistent Nature of the Standard Taste

• About a thousand years passed between the introduction of jiang/miso and katsuobushi and it as a standard taste
  
• It was early 19th century when miso, shoyu, kombu, katsubushi became affordable
  
• then it developed as a steady and “persistent” standard taste 
  

The strength of the Standard Taste (people are returning to it, even though so many exotic/foreign options are available).

• Slow food movement has been spurred by mass media showing homecooking as “traditional” and “authentic” - anti-fast food movements
  
• However fast food still is moving along, through other ways such as convenience stores
  
• now customers want high quality and fast at the same time
  
• Both Fast food and Slow food are moving towards more traditional ways
  

Ongoing and Prospective Changes

• Changes that have occurred:
  
• ready made instant dashi (loss of patience for slow home cooked dashi)
  
• miso/shoyu/fermented soy products have become lighter in flavor (no longer needed for preservation and health awareness)
  

Japanese Mothers and Obentos

Anne Allison




Obentos

• packed lunches for children
  
• decorative, nutritious
  
• help define a good mother
  
• outlet of pleasure and creativity for both mother and child
  

“Both the child and the mother are being watched, judged and, constructed; and it is only though their joint effort that the goal can be accomplished.”

Two structures of Power:

1. Repressive State Apparatus (SA) - power through force
   
2. Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) - intention other than political power (health or media etc...) accepted and practiced and therefore enforced
   

Obentos can be a cause of stress in mother and child. Why perhaps?

1.) there is a standard for obento making
2.) the preparer has the responsibility to meet those standards


Education:

• Example of social order and gender roles in Japan
  
• Education is what initiates ideological state apparatus in Japan (beginning in nursery school)
  
• knowledge and ideology become one 
  
• education defines a student as they become adults in society 
  
• divide between soto and uchi - traumatic to attend nursey school (eased in with obento)
  
• also obento is a model for the child (good mother, therefore good child)
  
• child’s success is sometimes judged more one routine (social order is taught in nursery school)
  
• obento is “instutionalized” because of schools, enforcing housewife role

Obento Standards:

• variety, beauty, healthy, easy to eat, “disguising food”/food transformation, capturing/containing nature
  
• it is hard work because you are a committed good mother willing to do that/only way of expression
  

Gender:
Men are restricted to working outside of the home
Women are restricted to the labors of the house (or low paying jobs)

“Motherhood is state ideology, working through children at home and at school as obento.” 

Example of "breaking free":
As a product of being raised on simple bentos (one that was not caught up in the ideology) Sawa has been able to break free and become independent. 

Made Better in Japan 
by Tom Downey 

“For decades, Japan simply imported the wares of foreign cultures, but recessions has led to invention. The country has begun creating the finest American denim, French cuisine and Italian espresso in the world. Now is the time to visit.”


Japanese people tend to be perfectionists in some areas such as cuisine

• obsessive
  
• "insane” 
  

Imported goods become “Japanese” (bread, pasta...)
During the 80s Japan had chefs come from the world - creating “haute bourgeoisie heaven”

• lots of imports then
  

Now Japan is creating for themselves, decreasing imports
In cooking new goal is not a “cuisine” but “how to make the whole dining experience better”
Tokyo has 247 stars in “the Red Guide” for restaurants (more than a lot of other famous cities) 

• previously mostly kaiseki and sushi
• now more other cuisines as well
  

Tiny restaurants, personal interaction = “firmly rooted in Japanese tradition”
Japanese chefs are “the most highly trained and technically adept in the word”
Other chefs think quantity/expand while Japanese chefs think connections/quality
Hotels are usually more international but others with majority Japanese guests adopt “native customs” (perfectionist hospitality)
“devotion to craft”


RE-MADE in JAPAN Introduction 
by Joseph J. Tobin

“Everyday life and consumer taste in changing society”  

Domestication
Though Japanese are very productive, they are also very consumeristic (particularly in Western things)
Japanese are not just Masters of imitation/adaptation, they are engaged and creative, inventing

• DOMESTICATION (not westernization, imitation, etc...)
  
• domestication is a more active role
  
• imply Japanized (because westerner’s are not necessarily familiar with the “westernized” Japan, this idea is apparent in Language as well)
  

Puzzling issue: “How could Japan have become the preeminent  postindustrial society without going through the stages of preindustrial development in an orderly way?”

Now Japan is “prototypical late-capitalist, post-modern, mass culture, information-based consumer society”, “First truly postmodern land”

“...Japanese domesticate the West by consuming Iowa beef and Maine lobsters at a French Restaurant in Hawaii, by bring home high-status souvenirs from trips abroad, by incorporating romantic English lyrics into their popular songs, and by spending a day in the Old West of Tokyo Disneyland.” (9)

Gender roles: where in the past men were considered the producers and women the consumers now it is balanced where both consume and produce. 

• Also in the past the West was masculine (colonial) while the East was feminine (symbolized in Madam Butterfly)
  

(odd fact...) “Christmas Cake” - a woman over 25 “losing appeal” like a cake on december 25th.


How the West has made it into Japan:

• Missionaries 
• omiyage 
  

• trips to the West 
  

• foreigners in Japan
• during the Occupation
• American TV and movies/music (later on with the Nostalgia Boom)
• now it is Japanese advertising industry
• through cities

Rural vs. Urban 
Tokyo = Japan’s West and the countryside = Japan’s Japan

• despite the shift of generations into the city, they still carry with them values of the country and sometimes even dream to return

Middle class and consumerism 
There are many different levels of middle class within the “middle class” of Japan

• nyu ritchi (nouveau rich)
  
• danchi (apartments)
  

• kikkai binbo (machine poor)
• nyu binbo (new poor)

The classes are defined by taste and though for a long time better taste meant more western, it seems to be returning to the roots (but in a modern sense). 

Carnivalesque: Japanese culture does not attach guilt to high consumerism (they spend a lot and for numerous reasons including repayment, power, “investments in future favors” etc...)

Individuality in Japan

Contact with the West = “awakening of individuality”= “spiritual breakdown of the soul” = “the modernization of the soul” 

• privatization of urbanized intellectuals, their taste became more western
• now it has gone from individuality to alienated (obsessed with pleasure, elders call Shinjinrui”, the young are like another species)

“One purchases things in themselves but a lifestyle defined by things”

Boundaries have changed as well:

• no tatami mats in modern buildings (no clear distinction of inside and outside)
• boundary shifts on an individual level as well 
• family level (the new lifestyle does not always include older generations or children)
• foreign or  Japanese (though this boundary is constantly shifting)

Japanese people have adopted/domesticated even things like McDonalds so much that on trips one might go there for a taste of “home”

Modern Japanese are torn between “modernity and nostalgia”

Country bumpkins are proud to be a part of a  “traditional” Japanese lifestyle

• this pre-modern image of Japan has been fetishized 
• besides agricultural income, farmers can also use their lifestyle/home as a tourist attraction for nostalgic city folk (authenticity is consumed!)

1.) Self-exoticization  : making themselves as Western as possible (eyelid operations)

• make up for the inferiority/self consciousness  (introduced by contact with the west)

2.) Self - orientalizing : making oneself into an object of Western desire (Asian on Western terms)

Before the West, Japan had been “borrowing” from China, Ainu and, Korea

Japan-China relationship is complicated. China’s influence/relations with Japan are undeniable 

• constant struggle of identity and “authenticity”
  

Returning from Westernization

• jikkan (“retrospection through actual sensation” - the senses trigger connection to “authentic” Japanese culture)
• however the younger generation cannot find the connection/sentimentality in this sensation (they are, rather, very materialistic and focussed on the new almost to a point where it is parodic, but is the joke on the west or on Japan?) 
  

BESTOR   Tsukiji  Chapter 4
The Raw and the Cooked

• Seafood is next in line after rice as a dependent in food culture of Japan
  
• things as simple as it’s colors/shapes/myths around prepping 
  
• Tsukiji traders have come about as experts due to the changes of seafood in Japanese cuisine 
  
• Seafood has so many details and attachments (quality, region, holidays, identity etc...)
  
• Tsukiji Market is a reflection of the broader view of distribution/consumption that happens in Japan
  
• Tsukiji Market is controlled by “social institutions and values of capitalism as a cultural system” (effects of cultural, social, political, technological, environmental influence)
  
• Two sides of commidification (economic and cultural)
  
• material circumstances/food are part of  the flow in changing social, political, economic situations (they control production and consumption)
  
• cuisine is tsukiji’s product
  

In Media

• mass media helps pull the development of cuisine along
  
• Japanese consider food origin/agriculture a topic of great interest
  
• as entertainment as well as the political and economic aspects
  
• Travel shows (cuisine shows with celebrities) exposing thin lines between
  
• different cuisines by geography 
  
• culinary nationalism
  

Identity:

• food symbolism have connections to cultural history of Japan 
  
• therefore “defined by what they eat”
  

Authentic:

• “raw seafoods” while that really is just normal food (natural)
  
• as “Japanese” has moved further, increase in imports
  
• govt has to blend imported/domestic rice
  
• food dependency, inferior items (kata)
  
• mass imports: questioning cleanliness in rawness
  
• Aquaculture is increasing because it is stable and more uniform
  
• Japanese agriculture/fisheries are tied to identity in order to protect economic importance
  
• Japan’s demand of seafood and “methods of catching it” are major
  
• environmental criticism (whales) is attacking Japan as a whole 
  
• insecurity of dependence on other countries
  
• Technological advancements ( Industrialization) : “homogenized national fare has gradually replaced regional varied ones” that were only based on whatever was available in that region/and with certain preparation = “westernization”
  
• Freshness still trumps brand name though in other areas supers are taking over
  

Gourmet Boom: 

• “industrial food” is a part of class structure (shifting away from local) 
  
• Edo-mae - nigiri sushi from seafood from Tokyo Bay (“authentic”)
  
• Shift to more seasonal, natural etc... “authentic”
  

Domesticity and Cuisine:

• even “American” chains are so grounded in Japan, it has become a part of the “mass-market taste”
  
• many new appliances - drastic difference between now and 1950s
  
• family culture has shifted as well -
  
• which then shifts the food consumption practices of the “nuclear family”
  
• gender role change 
  
• 7/11 and dept. offer osechi as well house cleaning 
  
• this change separates people from Tsukiji where kata and other knowledge is so key

The impersonal touch:

• relationship between home and food is changing
  
• more “car culture” (eating out)
  
• “eating out boom”
  
• kaitenzushi - tasteless, impersonal, easy (parallel to consumer spending habits)
  
•        now they have better ones
  
• mom and pop shops are disappearing - only single category (fish/sake)
  
• conbinis- has become “local food store” for some
  
• generation/age - has a lot to do with where you will shop, probably depend on your values
  

Time to Eat

• “time defines buyers’ tastes and preferences”
  
• weekends=better food, different hosting situations are a guide to where to eat
  
• seasons and rituals conduct food consumption (rokuyo, calendrical cycle for lucky/unlucky days)
  
• Advertising over actual cultural tradition is what has propelled the ritual food culture
  

Fish Fight Back

•  “ritual memorials” for lives taken for food (even fish)
  
• cruel cuisine” zankoku ryori (serving still living fish)
  
• “horyu” releasing animals back into the wild
  
• “kuyo” apologizing and thanks to fish (memorials appear)
  

The Day of the Flying Fish (chapter 1) The Sushi Economy by Sasha Issenberg









Akira Okazaki (1970s) - Okazaki started the worldwide cargo business (had worked for global expansion of JAL and then the sales office which led to his success). 

The success of Japanese airlines has helped to provide business opportunities in Japan through airplane cargo

fruits, meats and, vegetables did not seem as practical to fly

seafood due to its narrow fresh time, seemed possible

tuna seemed to be the most wanted but the least had besides from local providers

preservation issues led to refrigerated containers for planes

In canada tuna was considered a nuisance, didn’t think anyone would want it but they found someone who was willing to work with them and adhere to guidelines of packing and neatness in Japanese fish business

there were a lot of tests in proper packing for ultimate freshness

in Aug 1972 Okazaki was selling the first five Canadian bluefin tuna and it was a great success

This led to JAL being a part of a very successful seafood cargo business 

This transformed ideas of fresh food, old sushi (pickle-like sushi for preservation) to new sushi (fresh is the best), “worldwide struggle of value against time” in the business world as helped Japan’s economy flourish