Synopses & Reviews
Walk down any commercial street in any major city in the West and you are sure to run into a sushi place. Over the past decades, the popularity of Japanese food has exploded, diversifying not only Western diets but Japanese cuisine itself. In this book, Katarzyna J. Cwiertka explores the origins of modern Japanese cuisine, investigating the transformation and developments that food culture in Japan has undergone since the late nineteenth century.
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Cwiertka examines Japanese cuisine as it has developed in response to a variety of forces, including imperialism, changes in home cooking, wartime food management and military catering, and the rise of urban gastronomy. She shows that Japanand#8217;s patchwork of diverse regional cuisines was increasingly homogenized into the common set of foods and techniques with which the majority of Japanese identify today. As such, she argues, Japanese cuisine is very much a product of modernity, transformed amidst the turbulent events of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The result is a fascinating culinary history that casts the relationship between culture, politics, and appetite in stark relief.
Review
"A welcome addition. . . . This book will find an audience beyond scholars interested in Japanese food. It contains a great deal of historical information about intra-Asian cultural influences. It will thus be of interest to scholars in Asian studies, cultural studies, and popular history. . . . Cwiertka's book is a worthwhile and important addition to the growing corpus of material about Japanese cuisine and its influence worldwide."
Review
"Cwiertka here gives us a history that not only illustrates Japanese cuisine but also exposes the sociopolitical supports upon which it rests. Though properly scholarly, her account is also juicy in details that reveal the "traditional" diet to be something of a modern invention, and diet itself to be the work of sociology, economy, politics and other blind forces."
Review
"A gold mine of fascinating data. . . . Well-worth reading."
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"These are stories that will fascinate foodies and historians alike."
Review
andquot;This is a work to read and reread, as the detail is so rich. . . . It is a strong addition to the growing field of culinary studies and a fine demonstration of novel approaches in area studies as well.andquot;
Review
andquot;For scholars of Japan, serious lovers of Japanese food, and for anyone interested in the formation of modern cuisines, Cwiertkaand#39;s account is both highly readable and essential.andquot;
Synopsis
Over the last decade the popularity of Japanese food in the West has increased immeasurably, contributing to the continuing diversification of Western eating habits; but Japanese cuisine itself has evolved significantly since pre-modern times. and#160;Among the key factors in the shift in Japanese eating habits were the dietary effects of imperialism, reforms in military catering and home cooking, wartime food management and the rise of urban gastronomy. This book demonstrates that Japanese cuisine as it is currently understood and valued, in spite of certain inevitable historical influences, is primarily a modern invention concocted in the midst of the turbulent events of the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.
Modern Japanese Cuisine, now available in paper, will be of interest to the general reader interested in Japanese culture and society, as well as to a more specialized audience, such as scholars of Japan, anthropologists, and food historians.
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Synopsis
Over the past two decades, the popularity of Japanese food in the West has increased immeasurablyand#8212;a major contribution to the evolution of Western eating habits. But Japanese cuisine itself has changed significantly since pre-modern times, and the food we eat at trendy Japanese restaurants, from tempura to sashimi, is vastly different from earlier Japanese fare.
Modern Japanese Cuisine examines the origins of Japanese food from the late nineteenth century to unabashedly adulterated American favorites like todayand#8217;s California roll.
Katarzyna J. Cwiertka demonstrates that key shifts in the Japanese diet were, in many cases, a consequence of modern imperialism. Exploring reforms in military catering and home cooking, wartime food management and the rise of urban gastronomy, Cwiertka shows how Japanand#8217;s numerous regional cuisines were eventually replaced by a set of foods and practices with which the majority of Japanese today ardently identify.
The result of over a decade of research, Modern Japanese Cuisine is a fascinating look at the historical roots of some of the worldand#8217;s best cooking and will provide appetizing reading for scholars of Japanese culture and foodies alike.
About the Author
Katarzyna J. Cwiertka is professor in and chair of Modern Japan Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands. She is the author of several books, including Cuisine, Colonialism, and the Cold War: Food in Twentieth-Century Korea, also published by Reaktion Books.