Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature

by Aoyama, Tomoko

• ISBN13: 9780824832858
• ISBN10: 082483285X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr

Summary

"How much do we, and should we, read into the way food is represented in literature? Reading Food explores this and other questions in an unusual and fascinating tour of twentieth-century Japanese literature, Tomoko Aoyama analyzes a wide range of diverse writings that focus on food, eating, and cooking and considers how factors such as industrialization, urbanization, nationalism, and gender construction have affected people's relationships to food, nature, and culture, and to each other." "Food is everywhere in Japanese literature, and early chapters illustrate historical changes and variations in the treatment of food and eating. Examples are drawn from Meiji literary diaries, children's stories, peasant and proletarian literature, and women's writing before and after World War II. The author then turns to the theme of cannibalism in serious and popular novels. Key issues include ethical questions about survival, colonization, and cultural identity. The quest for gastronomic gratification is a dominant theme in "gourmet novels." Like cannibalism, the gastronomic journey as a literary theme is deeply implicated with cultural identity. The final chapter deals specifically with contemporary novels by women, some of which celebrate the inclusiveness of eating (and writing), while others grapple with the fear of eating. Such dread or disgust can be seen as a warning against what the complacent "gourmet boom" of the 1980s and 1990s concealed: the dangers of a market economy, environmental destruction, and continuing gender biases." "Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature will tempt any reader with an interest in food, literature, and culture. Moreover, it provides appetizing hints for further savoring, digesting, and incorporating textual food."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: Why Read Food in Modern Japanese Literature?	p. 1
Food in the Diary	p. 15
Down-to-Earth Eating and Writing (1)	p. 46
Down-to-Earth Eating and Writing (2)	p. 71
Cannibalism in Modern Japanese Literature	p. 94
The Gastronomic Novel	p. 131
Food and Gender in Contemporary Women's Literature	p. 172
Conclusion: Confession of an Obsessive Textual Food Eater	p. 204
Notes	p. 211
Bibliography	p. 249
Index	p. 263
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