In addition to exporting its cuisine to the world, Japan has also exported the very popular cooking show Iron Chef. In this program, which ran as a series in Japan from 1993 to 1999, chefs from Japan and abroad challenged the show’s resident “Iron Chefs” to cooking “battles.” Ryori no tetsujin, as Iron Chef is known in Japan, was only one in a long line of food- and cooking-themed shows on Japanese television. There have also been a very large number of food- and cookingthemed manga (Japanese comics), and some of those manga have been turned into television anime series.