One might say there was an unacknowledged mind-body mind-body dichotomy in the study of Japan in the English-speaking world until as late as the early 1990s. Until then, little serious research on the country’s foodways-and on consumption in general-had appeared in print,1 even though many scholars of Japan-all of them form my own experience – personally enjoyed the enormous variety of food and beverages the country’s creative and dedicated chefs, brewers, and caterers had to offer. Neither the rarified aesthetics of the highbrow kaiseki nor the economy of the humdrum gyudon-not to mention the simultaneously revered (domestically produced) and reviled (foreign import) unagi kabayaki,the globally popular
And locally morphing sushi, the adored “Kobe beef” and its inevitable clones, and many other appetizing examples-could tempt researchers away from such stolid (and absolutely worthwhile) topics as the Japanese company, the U.S.-Japan alliance, Tokugawa Confucianism, the Korean and burakumin minorities, and so on. Few scholars showed an academic interest in the food they encountered in the course of research: the lunch served at a company’s staff cafeteria, the meals monks ate at a Buddhist temple, the banquet at a ryotei frequented by the rich and powerful. Or the overpriced homemade soba slod at the artistically rustic restaurant in a depopulated village seldom became a research topic. Personal insights on food were usually consigned to conversation during conference receptions or postseminar parties, where the food and drink weare again enjoyed but uninvestigated in academic terms. Against this background of simultaceous interest and oversight, the books reviewed here are a welcome addition to the small but growing body of English-language work on Japanese foodways. By shedding light on notable aspects of Japan’s rich culinary heritage, some of which are discussed here in depth for the first time in English, these volumes deepen and broaden the field and, most important, should stimulate further research.