The Well-Tempura'd
Nation:
1
Japan, television food shows, and cultural
nationalism
2
By
Todd
Todd
Joseph MilesJoseph Miles
Holden Holden
Graduate
GraduateSchool
SchoolofofInternational
InternationalCultural
CulturalStudies
Studies
(GSICS)
(GSICS)
Tohoku University
Department of Multi-Cultural Societies
Sendai, Japan
Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan
3
Prepared for
The 10th International
Conference of EAJS
Warsaw, Poland
August 27-30, 2003
4
RESEARCH PANEL 4:
Food and Drink in
Contemporary Japan
5
I. Introduction
In contemporary Japan, “Food Talk” is a
unitary, organized, continuous, redundant
stream of discourse
• Filtered through and delivered by the most
widely-consumed medium of
communication in Japan
6
Research Premise
Food is not a trifling matter on Japanese
television
• Aired year-round
• Positioned on every channel
• In every time period
• Throughout the broadcast day
7
Methods
In this paper I demonstrate this by reporting
the results of a systematically-collected,
qualitatively-analyzed sample of TV food
programming.
• regularly scheduled TV shows
• news segments
• commercials
8
Overview of Results:
At their simplest, food shows work (both in
isolation and as a unity) to:
• reproduce traditional Japanese cuisine and
cultural mores
• educating viewers about regional customs
and history
9
Overview
Unlike a country like America, which has
no “national food”, Japan’s culinary
culture is presented in an unending
stream of television segments as one
cloth.
• Ethnic and regional foods do not
balkanize identity
• The ingredients, utensils, vernacular,
and approaches are similar enough
to create a collective cuisine
Overview
In this way, and perhaps most saliently, food-talk engages
nihonjinron -- the theory of the uniqueness of Japanese
culture.
Food talk is shown to be:
• insular,
• exclusionary,
• reproductive, and, therefore
• serves as a powerful pull toward cultural nationalism.
Overview
Finally, despite its interior focus
-- whether inadvertent or not -food shows also serve as globalizers
 They are a geo-cultural screen
 working to differentiate indigenous from
exogenous
Overview:
They teach viewers about the “peculiar”
practices of far-away places
and
expose viewers to ideas, words, people
and ways of life beyond borders….
13
Overview:
Even if sometimes those “far-away” people are
only Japanese in another city or prefecture in
Japan
14
Overview:
In this way, then, food shows can assist
in integrating outside influences and
lifestyles into Japan
15
Conclusions
Taken together, food shows serve:
 not only as a medium for
reproducing Japanese society,
 but as tool for decoding its deepermost structure, as well.
16
Conclusions
As such, they can serve as a means for
greater theorization about Japan
In this talk I wish to focus specifically on
the relationship between food talk,
nationalism and identity.
17
II. Theoretical Dimensions:
5 Threads
1. Japanese Identity
2. Sociology of Culture
3. Representation/Signification
4. Social Reproduction
5. Mediated Identity
1. Japanese Identity
At the risk of oversimplification,
contemporary Japanese identity can
be seen said to have been
problematized in terms of the
following dialectic:
Group model
versus
Myth of collectivism
19
Debunking Groupishness
“The Japanese have rather developed,
though different, concepts of privacy
and the self… a close look at Japanese
society will reveal healthy expressions
of self-interest, non-conformity and the
differentiation of one individual from
another.”
-- Moeur and Sugimoto 1986: 210
20
Past Examples
Holden (1994): accessories such as buttons, pins,
shoelaces and bows serve as “discreet
statements of difference for those wishing to be
considered as discrete statements.”
McVeigh (2003): cell phone use reveals
extensive “interiority” and “personalized
individualization”
SMAP (2003): sekai ni hitotsu dake no hana
 humans ought to be more like flowers;
 recognize that there is no “number one”;
 the most we should claim is that we are “only one”
(of a kind).
TV Food Talk
The major – if not the baseline – discourse
in televised food talk is that of national
group, of collective Japanese identity

With liberal amounts of individualregarding discourse
 especially in advertising.
22
2. Sociology of Culture
Raymond Williams (1981:33-5):
“Any adequate sociology of culture must…
be an historical sociology…
Directed at the content of this paper, the
claim goes that food culture must be seen
within the larger socio-political, economic
and ideational context, one spanning
centuries.
23
Sociology of Culture
Raymond Williams (1981:33-5):
Viewed in a macro-context, we must
recognize “on the one hand, the variable
relations between ‘cultural producers’…
and recognizable social institutions; on
the other hand, the variable relations in
which ‘cultural producers’ have been
organized or have organized themselves,
their formations.
24
Sociology of Culture
Where the institutional formation is television
And TV programming is the “art” that its
institutional components produce.
The actors, hosts, guests, directors, camera
men,
creative
consultants,
market
researchers, advertisers and a whole host of
commodity producers (components) are the
formation’s “artists”.
25
3. Representation/Signification
Hall (1992): “(Cultural Studies) has to
analyze… the constitutive and political
nature of representation, itself.”
26
Thus… in Media-Centered Studies of
Culture
 One must focus on how the visual and verbal
representations construct their object
 One must ask: What is the image purporting to
represent? How does the image construct the thing it
is purporting to represent? (From Hall, ibid.)
27
Representation/Signification
As the content of food discourse makes clear,
visual and verbal representations can often
be read as references to:
 Nation
 Group (such such as gender, age cohort, region
or locality)
 Self
In short, the signs used and representations
made in food programming often serves to
further identity discourse.
28
4. Social Reproduction
“Studies in all… audience research traditions make
one key point: the media are powerful agencies of
reinforcement.”
-- Curran (1996:149)
The “Agenda Setting Function” of media:
Holden (1995):
 media images are “directive”: they promote particular
lifestyles and images while suppressing others
 they are “selective”: they choose to depict particular
attitudes rather than others, presenting them as all that
29
viewers should value
Construction / Reproduction
In short, media’s “selectivity” is a
form of social construction.
And media’s “directivity” operates as
a motor for cultural reproduction.
30
Socialization, Social Construction, Cultural
Reproduction
Berger and Luckmann (1967):
 An institutional world tends to present
society members with an objectified
external reality.
 This “objectivated social reality” is
internalized in the course of socialization;
 It is then used to produce the conditions
which will, in turn, reproduce that very
same social reality.
TV’s Social Reproduction Function
Television is one such institution;
 a central reproducer,
 it nurtures and replenishes a societal member’s
“cultural stock of knowledge”
 it keeps particular images and ideas circulating
throughout society
32
Media and Identity
As Gauntlett (2002) says: “The media
disseminates a huge number of
messages about identity and
acceptable forms of selfexpression, gender, sexuality,
and lifestyle.”
 To this we could include nation
and nationalism
 (as we will see in the data to come)
5. Mediated Identity
It is out of the interaction between message distribution and
audience processing that identity results
I wish to speak here of a particular kind of identity formation,
associated with media (in this case television).
34
Woodward: On Identity
“the interface between
subjective positions and
social and cultural situations
(that) gives us an idea of who
we are and of how we relate to
others and to the world in
which we live.”
Hall: On Identity
Identity is “produced within
specific historical and
institutional sites within
specific discursive
formations and practices, by
specific enunciative
strategies.” (1996:4)
The Nexus Between
Television and Identity
Historically situated: its content treats
activities past, and is sustained by practices
present;
An institutional site: communications are one
of the major institutions tied to politics and
economy (specifically) and society (more
generally);
Specific discursive formations : thematic
concerns about nation, state, gender,
development, class, capitalism, consumption,
and the like.
37
The Nexus Between
Television and Identity
Disseminating statements of affiliation (to
“classes” such as nation, sub-group, and
self);
Marked by clear practices (genres of TV
viewing, packaged using tropes of
communication within the particular
medium);
Involving specific strategies (ways of
communication that are unique not only to
the medium but also to each identity-context
or identification-group depicted and/or
38
appealed to).
The Compound Nature of
Mediated Identity
A construct that is both interactive (a la
Woodward) and institutional (a la Hall)
39
Space and Time
Utilizing Williams and Hall, we can
perceive identity discourse as
transpiring both in space and time,
where:
 (in terms of space) identity is framed in
terms of “levels” or zones by which people
arrange themselves in “social space”
 (in terms of time) there are historical
stages which I call a country (and its
people’s) “globalization career”
40
Space = Levels
We can distinguish between four
zones toward which identity
messages refer and at which
they strike:




trans-national
national
group
individual
41
Time = “Globalization Career”
Such careers, though unique to every
national/cultural context, share the
characteristic of having stages of cultural,
political, economic, social and ideational
inflow and outflow.
examples include: the current flow of athletes
from Japan to soccer and baseball leagues in
Europe and America
Globalization Career: Food
As for food stages of import and export have helped
mark certain stages in Japan’s globalization
career.
 Import: the introduction of Chinese culinary ideas –
from noodles to dumplings during diplomatic and
cultural exchange nearly a millennium ago -- and more
recently the “ethnic boom” that attended the so-called
“era of internationalization” in the 1980s.
 Export: of sushi and the influence of Japanese
aesthetics and ingredients such as shitake, tofu, miso,
soy sauce and sake in western cooking during the epoch
of “minimal cuisine”
Modeling Mediated Identity
(1) significations
(2) conveyed through representations of:
 sameness
 difference
(3) brought into relief by references to:
 self and/or
 individual circumstance
(4) and/or depictions of relationship(s)
between:
 individuals and/or groups
(5) references to (socially constructed)
group-based traits
Mediated Identity:
Institutional Site
From this we can infer that
institutions (such as
commercial, information or
entertainment media such as TV)
play a prominent role in the
construction and communication
of identifications
 In short, the mediations are
ensconced in and disseminated via
TV
45
III. Food and Television
Media
In past work I have shown food appears
in songs, TV dramas, ads, even
sporting events like the World Cup
46
Deeper Socio-cultural Themes
historical
practices
intelligence
professionalism
preparedness
organization
cultural literacy
westernization
aesthetics
glo-calization
consumption
pleasure
competition
star culture
Japanese
uniqueness
gender
sexuality
capitalism
Health/body
47
A Sample Week of Food Discourse
Day
日
月
火
水
木
Douchi
no ryori
shiou
金
土
Show
Riori
Banzai
SMAP x
SMAP
Ninki
mono
de
ikou
Tonnerus
no nama
de
daradara
ikasette
Time
6 p.m.
10 p.m.
8 p.m.
9 p.m.
9 p.m.
11 p.m.
11 p.m.
Theme
Come to
know stars
through the
foods they
like
Competition,
Sexuality,
Image mgt.,
Commercialization
Leveling
(of taste,
ideas,
and
status)
Emphasis on
technique,
craft,
preparation,
“ki”
Competition,
Information,
Cultural
nationalism
Competition,
Ingenuity,
Skill,
some
nationalism
Intimate
glimpses
of stars
abetted by
food
preparation
Ryori
Chyuno
bo-desu
tetsujin
yo
48
Food Out of Context
To consider the social and cultural
discourse that flows through food
Example: London Hearts
In this show various segments appear in which dating
activities occur. And invariably, such activities transpire
in restaurants, pubs or coffee shops.
50
Regular Programming
Food Shows amount to 5% of the programming
between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. on any given day.
“Food with Guests” and “Cooking as Part of the
Show” average 2 hours each per day.
By Comparison: News accounts for 15% of the
broadcast day for all stations from 5 a.m. to
Midnight
These figures do not include the minutes in which
food is introduced as a minor or inadvertent part
of the show.
51
Food as a Recognized
Viewing Category
In TV Guide food is one of the handful of genres
singled out for attention outside the simple daily
timetable.
categories include: “Cinema”, “Music”,
“Sports”,
“Cooking”
and
“Animation”
(respectively).
 prima facie evidence that food holds a special
prominence in the consciousness of Japanese TV
viewers.
 All five major networks (four private, one public)
have at least one show listed; including dates, air
times, as well as foods prepared
 genre
Coded
1. Instruction
2. Shared with guests
3. Food as entertainment
4. Introduced during a non-cooking show
5. As an element of travel or discovery
6. Advertising.
53
1. Instruction: Kaminuma Emiko
no oshaberi kûking (Daily 1:05 – 1:15)
54
Instruction: Kaminuma Emiko
no oshaberi kûking (Daily 1:05 –
1:15)
Teaches viewers how to cook a particular
ingredient, in three styles: Japanese,
Chinese and French/Italian.
Imparts the idea that there are proper
methods and forms to follow in cooking.
2. Shared With Guests:
Tunnerusu no minasan no okage deshita. ("Tunnels' because
of everyone") [Thursdays 9:00]
In this show, cooking is a regular “corner”.
Two guests – usually one male and one
female – seek to guess which of 4
prepared dishes includes one item that
the other guest absolutely detests.
Tunnerusu no minasan no okage deshita
There is more than a bit of sadism in this
show as the guest is forced to continually
eat something that turns his or her
stomach--all the while smiling and
pretending s/he loves it.
 In many ways this suits the Japanese cultural
value of gaman, of bearing up under intolerable
conditions.
3. Entertainment:
Gotchi Batoru (Banquet Battle /
[ I will] Treat [you] Battle)
[Friday 7:00 p.m]
Action:
1. a narrator describes the ingredients of
the dish;
2. the audience views the chef preparing the
dish;
3. the “patrons” (guests) discuss the food as
they taste it and guess its price;
4. Advisories flash on the screen informing
the audience whether a guess is close or
far off;
5. The farthest off treats everyone else. 58
4. During a Non-Cooking Show
Merenge no kimochi (Feelings Like Meringue) [Saturday
12:00 p.m.]
59
Saturday 12:00 p.m. Merenge no kimochi
(Feelings Like Meringue)
Like many food shows, Meringue uses food
as a vehicle for understanding another
human being.
 a star (author, comedian, singer, actor)
The person (generally male) will be
“interviewed” by 3 female hosts and then
introduce the hosts and audience to a food
that s/he likes to cook.
5. During Travel/Discovery:
Tabi no kaori toki no asobi (“The Fragrance of Travel, Time
of Playing”) [Tuesdays 8:00 p.m.]
2 female and one male star take
viewers on a tour of different
places and show what can be
eaten (and done) in those places.
During Travel/Discovery: Tabi no kaori toki no asobi
(“The Fragrance of Travel, Time of Playing”) [Tuesdays 8:00
p.m.]
 Food is
recognized as
an integral part
of place;
 It also serves to
introduce
people and
practices of an
area.
6. Advertising
(continuity Editing)
Advertising plays an enormous role
in placing food at the center of
Japanese society
Function of Ads
 Used as a device to heighten tension or
underscore the show’s major themes
 Ads interrupt:
 just before a judge’s decision (SMAPxSMAP,
Douchi, Tetsujin)
 when it is revealed whether the host can follow
the correct procedure (Tonnerus)
 before the delivery of the punchline to a story a
guest is telling (Merengue)
 prior to announcing which star correctly
evaluated an item (Ninki mono).
64
Ad Function
 But ads are not departures from the world of food,
as a large proportion of them are devoted to
edible items.
 In this way, they underscore food's intimate
relationship to economy--a point that
SMAPxSMAP and Meringue make with their tie-in
goods and yearly recipe books offered for sale. A
point underscored by shows which provide maps
to and menus of the restaurants where the weekly
chefs operate.
65
Food Ads on TV: some
numerical data
Food Compared to Other Products:
Raw Numbers (March 2001)
Total Ads, March 2001 (3656)
# of Food Ads, March 2001 (681)
Most Frequent Ad Categories
(Collapsed)
Electrical
Food
Events
Cars
Sundries
Top Categories of Ads (Itemized)
Events
Food
April
2000
Telecom
Sales
Sundries
Health
Station Info
April
2001
0%
50%
100%
Cars
Drinks
Sw eets
Alcohol
Electrical
Top Categories of Ads (Itemized)
25
20
15
10
5
April
2001
April
2000
0
Events
Food
Telecom
Sales
Sundries
Health
Station Info
Cars
Drinks
Sweets
Alcohol
Qualitative as well as Quantitative
Just in terms of numbers, then, advertising
serves to reproduce food-culture in Japan
However, qualitatively, as well, the content
of food-ads works to emphasize themes
that are most central to social structure
and in social consciousness
70
Emphasis on secondary sociocultural discourse.
Embedded in this commercial discourse one finds
deeper social themes such as health, diet, gender
roles, sexuality, race, globalization, even death.
Predominant themes
include:
* Gender Roles
* Health
* Sexuality
* Diet
* Sexism
* Fitness
* Body
* Star-cult
* Consumption
* Identity
* Nationalism
72
Gender Roles
Food ads reinforce
the message that
women stay inside
and cook while
men go out and
play
Gender Roles
Or else that
women wait at
home for their
husbands, who
they happily
greet at the end
of the day with
a warm meal
Gender Roles
Ads reinforce
the idea that
women are
food shoppers
And that that they
set high standards
for freshness which
must be met in
their kitchen
75
Gender Roles
Ads continually send
us the message that
women keep their
families nourished,
healthy and happy—
even when they have
moved away to college
or work in another city.
76
Sexuality
Through food comes
discourse about
heterosexual intimacy
77
Sexuality
And
women
as the
objects
of
lesbian
fantasy
Sexuality
So, too, physical
contact and the
expression of emotion
are present in ad text
79
Sexuality
Food also is the
occasion to
present men as
desired subjects
Sexism
And food
ads are a
medium
through
which
women are
continually
partialized
Sexism
In food ads,
women are:
ever
objectified,
taken
advantage of,
and put on
display
Body
Part and
parcel of
this trend
is the
emphasis
on bodies
83
Body
Both for
women
And
men
Health
Ads for energy drinks and antacids
often focus on the difficult life of
the salary-man
Which, of course, also
reproduces notions of
gender roles
85
IV. Analysis
Food, Forms of Discourse,
and Identity
86
Ubiquity / Invisibility
Well beyond the formal data
 identified by coding TV Guides
 content analyzing TV shows whose primary theme is “food”…
Is the informal, invisible data that floods TV
programming about food
 food is present in an overwhelming number of shows—even
those which have nothing to do with food.
 Quiz shows
 Sports
 News
 Travel
 Late night talk shows
87
3 Forms of Discourse
1. Dedicated
2. Inadvertent
3. Secondary
88
Dedicated
A form of discourse devoted exclusively – or
at least primarily – to food.
Food talk is foremost and overt
89
Dedicated Discourse: Example
Douchi no ryori shiou: (Which one? Cooking
Show)
90
Douchi!? (Which one!?)
Situation
Food’s Position
Food’s Function
Effect
Competition between rival foods to
win the hearts of a panel of seven
singers, actors, writers and athletes.
Two hosts seek to sway the panel
during the on-going in-studio food
preparation.
Center Stage
Opens doors to world history and
Japanese culture. Also serves as
entertainment and competition,
creates tension and teaches.
Educates about Japanese culture.
However, one clear message is that
Japanese food is distinct, special,
irreplaceable, and generally
unbeatable.
91
Douchi!? (Which one!?)
During these segments,
the localities, regions
or countries in which
these key ingredients
are grown, harvested
or treated are detailed,
along with the ways of
life, histories and
values of the residents.
In this way, Dochi
serves as medium for
discourse about
globalization
92
Inadvertent and
Secondary Discourse
These two forms are less food-oriented
and, in fact, are more often not primarily
focused on food.
 They can arise in relation to any number
of television genres
 from news to sports to travel to quiz shows
to wide shows to advertising
 As well as contents
 health, diet, fitness, body, sexuality, sexism,
gender
roles,
consumption,
race,
globalization, identity, nationalism, and even
life and death
Inadvertent Discourse
Involves discourse about things (such as
hometown, traditions, gender, nation)
that arise in clear connection to or as a
result of the presence of food


However, food is not the primary
focus of the program.
Most often the discourse about
things is overt and, in all cases,
their overt nature arises due to the
appearance of food.
94
Inadvertent Discourse:
Example: "Sekai Fushigi Hakken (Discovering the Wonders
of the World [Saturday, 9 p.m.]
Food is among the “wonders” used
to mediate globality:
the cultural tastes and practices of other
countries or regions are presented to
people “at home” as distinct from
(and often peculiar in comparison to)
their own.
95
Typical Examples of Inadvertent or
Peripheral food-discourse
 May 9, 2001 (late evening):
 Binbaba: An entertainment show with singing
and light talk contained a segment in which
guests and staff tasted (and endured) exotic
foods, such as toasted scorpions.
 Tonight 2: An adult (generally sexually-
tinged) infotainment show featured two
reporters trekking to Nagoya to sample
parfaits, fried rice and Italian food. They
introduced a dessert shop, a bistro and a small
kitchen and brought ice cream back to the
studio for on-air sampling.
Typical Examples of Inadvertent or
Peripheral food-discourse
May 25, 2002:
 NHK News: A visit to an elementary school in
a small city hosting the Slovenian soccer team.
The children at the school were sampling the
food of Slovenia for an entire week during
their lunch period.
 Commercial News: Sports reporters were
invited to a pre-World Cup event in which they
were treated to an eleven course meal that
would be offered to VIP ticket holders at the
up-coming world cup event.
Typical Examples of Inadvertent or
Peripheral food-discourse
• Daily: Mezamashi Telebi (‘Alarm Clock Television’)
• Short, five minute segments highlight:
•Rural activities or urban trends
•Edible items invariably appear
Viewed day after day, the cumulative effect of
consuming these morning segments is a bipolar
“global” discourse –
• local paired with national;
• rural with urban;
• domestic with foreign
Letsu! Okusama Hiken
SCENARIO: a reporter strolls through a
neighborhood, knocks on a door, invites
him/herself in and shows the TV
audience what is being prepared for
dinner or else what has already been
consumed by the family inside.
“Okusama, konya no okazu wa?”
99
Letsu! Okusama Hiken
Like Mezamashi Telebi’s “Trends” these
“peeks inside” enable Japanese from
around the country to observe how
others live.
Subtext: Discourse about local and
national identity.
Effect: Food serves the meditative
function; effectually, it is a socializer,
educator, means of comparison.
100
Reverse Process:
Peeks “Outside”
Reports about Japanese food in the world or world food,
itself, serve to:
1. clarify local identity
2. render the “global” less foreign
Example: Saturday 6 p.m.: Japanese lives around the world.
(February 2003): A sushi chef operating a restaurant in
Los Angeles:
Shown training his American staff, shopping in
the wholesale market, interacting with his
American customers, and going through the
daily paces with his wife and Americanized
children.
Reverse Process:
Peeks “Outside”
A Second Example:
A December, 2002 10 p.m. sportscast featured an
extended segment on the “World's Toughest
Firefighter Competition” in New Zealand.
Included footage of firefighters dragging a 90 kilogram
dummy 100 meters and ascending seven stories in full
gear
In addition, attention was accorded to a cooking competition
between chefs from fire departments around the world.
The report detailed how the chefs prepared the food, the
menu prepared, what the food tasted like, and who won
first prize
Secondary Discourse
Topics or themes that are embedded
within food discourse, yet which may
neither appear as a primary objective
of that discourse, nor even emerge
during or after the conclusion of food
talk in a patent or “publicly”recognizable way.
Secondary Discourse
These terms refer to the level of sociocultural discourse that exists beneath the
first, or denotative, level of representation.
 Barthes (1957): “second-order connotation”
 O’Barr (1994): “secondary discourse”
Examples include secondary discourse about
gender, individuality, nation, (and the like).
104
Identity in Advertising
A large area of secondary
discourse in food ads
Strikes at all 3 levels:
 National
 Group
 Individual
105
Nationalism
Many food companies employ flag-mimicking
trademarks (Holden 1999b, 2000, 2003b)
Nationalism in Ad Text
In this ad, a man is preparing food in his kitchen, only to
find himself transported onto a tennis court, facing a
powerful foreign player, armed only with a frying pan.
When the egg simmers in the pan, it
appears as a percolating Hinomaru
107
National Identity in Ad Text
A Japanese woman bumps into an Indian man
wearing a Pugree…
108
National Identity in Ad Text
She thinks: “Oh!
Curry…”
Which she
promptly rushes
home to eat.
109
Group Identity in Ad Text
“What would you like?”
the waiter asks…
Cut to a
room full of
patrons who
chant “Sato
rice cakes”
Cut back to
the customer
who says: “I
think I’ll have
Sato rice
cakes!”
110
Individual Identity
in Ad Text
“Oh! It’s the ham
man!”
“I’m Bessho.”
“This year also… just as you’d
expect: the ham man.”
Individual Identity in Ad Text
"Even if it’s raining, don't let
it bother you…"
Individual Identity: Ki ni Shinai
(don’t worry/don’t let it bother you)
"Even if they laugh at you,
don't let it bother you…"
Individual Identity: Ki ni Shinai
(don’t worry/don’t let it bother you)
"Even if you don't know,
don't let it bother you."
V. Conclusions
From Past Work
I have talk about how TV food talk:
1. signals changes in dietary habits, and
2. changes in human behavior and orientation:
* toward a face-paced lifestyle
* rapid consumption
* solitary living
* convenience
* disposable goods
* eating away from home
Food for Conclusion
One question remains: "why food?“
What is it that qualifies foods as a suitable
source and medium for filtering the raw
material of popular culture?
For one, food is something that all Japanese
share in common. It is an essential part of
daily life.
117
TV's food-talk is of interest to
almost all viewers
 Because of food’s history (the agrarian basis of
Japan; its postwar saga from dearth to bounty);
 Food’s place in Japanese folklore (animist roots
and ritual);
 Its ubiquity;
 Its easy availability to nearly all societal
members; and
 Its penetration into many aspects of everyday
life.
118
Food is a Part of the Structure
of Every Viewer’s Life
Thus, it serves as a fathomable conduit
for all manner of other talk.
119
Summarizing Thus Far
 Food discourse is rampant on
Japanese television today
 That discourse comes in at least 3
forms: dedicated, inadvertent
and secondary
 Moreover, discourse can be either
overt or covert
Summarizing Thus Far
 In all 3 forms deeper social, political,
cultural and ideational themes flow.
 Prominent among these themes
concerns identity.
 Messages of identification embedded in
food discourse refer to 3 levels:
national, group and individual.
 Associated with this discourse is
discourse about matters such as
globalization, nationalism, and
individuality
Concluding Themes
 Mediating Global Identity
 Reproducing Nation
 Fueling Local Resistance
 The Local Nation, Above All
Mediating Global Identity
Food talk provides Japan with is a discourse
about itself.
Controlled exposure to “cultures beyond”
Japan’s borders in its food-related shows
can have the effect of inoculating Japanese
viewers against too much foreign intrusion.
It can cauterize the local with the global flame,
providing a more impregnable version of
indigenous identity.
Mediating Global Identity
At the same time, it is not the case that food discourse
works monolithically to nurture nihonjinron.
 The widespread reproduction of traditional Japanese
cuisine and cultural mores, the education about regional
customs and history, can contribute a certain measure of
belief about the uniqueness of Japanese culture.
 However, food talk also assists the integration of outside
influences and lifestyles into Japanese society.
It widens viewers’ “cultural stock of knowledge”
It therefore globalizes
Reproducing Nation
Recall Williams (1981) admonition to frame
sociologies of culture in historical context.
To that end we can recognize that behind food
talk is the legacy of the not-so-distant past:
Embedded in the consciousness of nearly a
third of the population is an era of food
shortage,
which
has
given
rise
to
overwhelming abundance
So, too, does the data reviewed here indicate that
TV food shows provide historical continuity
Historical Re/production
One example is Dochi?! which emphasizes
nation via repeated attention to domestic
cuisine, as well as the ways that foreign
cuisines have been indigenized.
 Little or no mention is made of the fact that
these modifications have been made.
 What was formerly a foreign dish is presented
as Japan’s own.
 Dochi’s approach is to offer documentary style
lessons in regional history and practices.
Reproducing Nation
Local historical narratives serve as evidence that
globalization may be less transformative than roundly
asserted.
In such ways, TV food discourse underscores Curran’s
(2002: 182-3) view that, when it comes to media, “the
nation is still a very important marker of difference.”
Food shows demonstrate that despite numerous
continuities with other contexts, national distinction prevails.
Fueling Local Resistance
Aggregated, the TV food genre strongly communicates
localized discourse.
“We Japanese” eat this sort of food
For reasons of tradition, practices, and ways of life
that under gird these food choices.
This differs from foreign understandings, practices,
and tastes
Consistent with revision in globalization theory:
 Santos (2002): “counter hegemonic globalizations”
 Localized discourses of “territorial cultures” (Hannerz 1992)
A dominant cultural practice writ nationwide: shared by
all and resistant to external pressure to change.
128
Media, Food Discourse and
Japanese National Identity
 The position of TV in Japanese society
 TV’s enormous reproductive power
 Its persistent use of food
 And, through food, the constant theme of “local”
(national) culture
Work together to mediate Japanese identity today.