Axis of Eatin', II: Japan

We return to our discussion of culinary nationalism with a look at strange things afoot in Japan. I started to post about this back when it happened but it is, perhaps newly relevant in this context. The sushi police are coming:

Officials of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, claiming that some of the food served in Japanese restaurants abroad is not recognizable as Japanese, announced late last year that they planned to create a panel of food experts to travel abroad and inspect restaurants for authenticity.

Conservatively speaking, this is seven kinds of wrong. Most of all, the relation between the state and its culture that this posits is concerning, in that it suggest the government determines what are genuine exponents of a culture. It would be as if Oprah assumed federal powers, and could give a "Great American Novel" imprimatur the force of law. Even if one assumes that the government of Japan, or any other national  government, has the right to define official expressions of its culture, this question of "authenticity" remains wicked problematic. Obviously, the Aramark sushi I've been known to have for lunch in case of emergency might usefully be called "inauthentic," but any regional cuisine that has a global reach must a) adapt or b) wear out a lot of can openers. For instance, a chef could do any number of stages in France, then open a restaurant in California that would make the angels and Paula Wolfert weep, but without access to the fish species of the Mediterranean, there could be no "authentic" bouillabaisse in California. And so what? Considering that the French famously cannot agree on the definitive bouillabaisse from one village to the next, and have been known to fight duels over the constituents of a cassoulet, the notion of an officially authentic foodstuff seems foolish -- I would imagine that the sashimi in Kyoto is different from the sashimi in Tokyo, so which guy gets to decide if Masa, or the stuff in your supermarket's deli case, gets the seal? It seems as if taste and the market works pretty well to make these distinctions.

Comments

[Skeen]

For what it's worth, the Japanese market in my town (it caters to expatriates) claims that sushi is eaten infrequently in Japan and that the country's most popular dish is... curry. Any South Asians have a bone to pick with that?

[Rose]

True...sushi is popular but curry is king. I would say korean bbq, ramen, and spaghetti also beat out sushi in popularity.