week 3

9/29/2012

4 Comments

 
How has the geography and climate allowed Kyushu to flourish agriculturally and how has that affected food cultures in the region?

 There are certain aspects that I’d like to go into with with this topic...
 I think focussing in on changes in more recent times, snapshots of 300, 200, 100 years ago and now might be an efficient way. I think also seeing the specific crops that have developed in certain areas in those times (like areas with volcanoes vs. areas by the sea) and how that has affected the food culture there, in Kyushu and, possibly all of Japan. With that, I think seeing how agricultural processes has developed and affected food cultures and how that might be at a risk with 
 the lack of interest in the young generation. 
For resources and backgrounds materials I’d like to find information on early agriculture in Kyushu and the regional specialities and how they came about. If it is at all possible maybe personal accounts. I was thinking of contacting some people I met in Japan and seeing if it is possible to get more of their family history in the area of agriculture. Despite some of the things we have read, I still believe that Japan is very agriculturally based and even partly preserved in those lifestyles - though not necessarily just around one crop (rice). 







4 Comments
Zoë
10/1/2012 05:53:24 am

Jason said cheerleading time, so imagine chibi-Zoë waving pom-poms. Farming culture and how that's affected food culture as a whole sounds terribly intriguing, especially given our generation's general lack of interest in farming! In America, the slow food movement has given rise to farmer's markets and younger people going to work on small farms -- has that happened in Japan?

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Katelyn
10/1/2012 06:28:30 am

I like the issue you brought up about the younger generation losing interest in agriculture! This could be a great lead-in to contemporary vs. traditional food culture. While I was in Japan I didn't see a lot of interest among college students in regional cuisines. Maybe I wasn't asking the right people? Or maybe they've lost interest in that kind of stuff.

Anyway I like how your topic is developing. My one concern would be that maybe taking snapshots of food culture development over time would not provide quite an accurate picture of it overall, as opposed to a summary of the important developments along that timeline.

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jason
10/1/2012 06:37:54 am

While this is an interesting and specific research project, it does not yet have much of a theoretical imprimatur on it. For example, you could look at regional Kyushu specialties and consider their relationship to place in contrast with their identity as a Japanese food or part of a Japanese sub-national/regional cuisine. You could think about how Kyushu folks use discourse about climate and geography to distinguish themselves from other parts of Japan, with food as the medium. (Shôchû is a possible product you could work with, or sweet potatoes, or other things…) Or, alternately, since modern Japan was led by many elite samurai from Kyushu, you could do some historical legwork to figure out how items that were once Kyushu regional specialties have made their way into mainstream “Japanese” cuisine (in discourse, at least, if not in reality). Are there discourses of being a small(er) island that change the way Kyushu folks see their foodways? How about the gateway to Okinawa and the rest of Asia? The Nagasaki/Dejima link to the Dutch in premodern times? The presence of Christians? Lots of areas to explore! Yay!

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Dylan
10/17/2012 03:51:59 am

I think narrowing down the food culture like you've done is a good idea. Choosing the culture of the youth in comparison to their parents might help you define their lack of interest better. I really like where this is headed. Also interviewing people in/from Japan that you know could really help paint a clearer picture, just make sure you don't generalize too quickly

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