Effects Of Globalization On Japanese Food Culture And Health Essay

Effects of Globalization on Japanese Food Culture and Health by Cherise Fuselier “Japan Today” spring quarter 2006 Dr. Harumi Moruzzi Final Draft

Effects of Globalization on Japanese Food Culture and Health

Introduction In this paper I will attempt to describe the changing Japanese diet as a result of the effects of globalization. I will discuss several Japanese staples of past and modern times. These include rice, millet, soba and udon noodles, seafood, cattle, and soybeans. Their origins, past applications, and modern place in the Japanese diet will be examined. Delving deeper into Japanese cuisine, I will discuss Japanese food aesthetics and the impact of selected imported and fast foods. Finally, I will end with current diet and health statistics and draw conclusions from these and previous discussed topics to theorize the future of Japanese health based on their Westernizing diet. I hypothesize that due to the adverse consequences of globalization on the changing Japanese diet, Japan’s population will experience increased instances of nutrition-related health problems.

Grains Rice is certainly among the first foods one thinks of within Japanese cuisine. The Japanese word for cooked rice- gohan- means “meal”, and indeed rice has long been the main staple of the Japanese diet. In the year 2000, Asia was responsible for 95 percent of global rice cultivation and consumption, with

East Asia alone consuming 35 of that 95 percent (Cambridge World History of Food 133). Rice cultivation was introduced from China and is debated to have started between the third century B.C. and the late Jomon era (1,000 B.C.) (139). Rice could not be cultivated in certain areas of Japan because of unsuitable climates until the Meiji era (1868-1912) when modern technology was implemented to combat this problem. In the southern regions of Japan where rice cultivation was not possible pre-Meiji era, the more common staples of the diet were sweet potatoes, wheat, varieties of taro and radish, and millet (Naorai 11). Where rice cultivation was impossible due to climate in the pre-Meiji era, millet was a much more common staple. Japanese millet (Echinochloa crusgalli) is a type of temperate grass with a little known history. While once grown in mild European climates, today E. crus-galli is only grown as a cereal grain in China, Korea, and Japan. Millet was once consumed instead of rice by peasants living in climates where rice productivity was low. However, due to more modern rice cultivation techniques, millet is no longer the common staple it once was. Nor is it still a mark of poor class status, although old prejudices about this may continue. Millet is more nutritious than that of white rice, and can be cultivated more easily. Millet grains are hardier than that of rice, and can grow more efficiently in harsher conditions. In the 2004 article “Japan: Cooking a New World”, Kobayashi Kazunori argues for the frequent use of millet rather than rice.

One of the arguments Kobayashi cites is the growing of millet instead of rice would be a more efficient use of farmland, and Japan wouldn’t have to rely on imported food so heavily. This would reduce pressure on global farmlands and allow some of Japan’s former imported food to be exported to a less selfsufficient country.

Kobayashi expands:

“Considering Japan’s self-suffiency rate of food supply is 40 percent (calorie-base) and the fact that it imports more than half of its food from overseas, changing from white rice to miscellaneous grains is one way that Japan could help mediate the world’s food problem”. The last argument Kobayashi makes for the revival of millet is that it is nutritionally superior to white rice. Millet contains balanced proportions of protein, vegetable fat, and starch and has more dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals compared to white rice. More of the grain’s nutrients are retained, as compared with “…nearly a 50 percent loss of the vitamin B complex and iron” (Cambridge World History of Food 144) in the milling process of rice. Two more important staples in the Japanese diet are udon and soba. Udon are made from wheat flour, while soba are made from a mix of buckwheat and wheat flours. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, noodles made from flour became popular as a light snack or lunch. Consumption increased significantly after the development of a soba processing technique in Edo. Even today, soba are mainly popular in Eastern regions, whereas udon are mainly popular in Western regions.

Soba and udon were the original fast-food items, providing quick and nutritious meals for those on the go. Perhaps because of the prevalence of such noodle carts (and the people who patronized them), soba and udon were once thought of as a low class food. A curious custom when eating soba and udon (and menrui in general) is that noises such as slurping is allowed. Hot and cold menrui alike are consumed in this manner, with great amounts of noise permitted. One theory for this custom presented by Donald Richie in his book A Taste of Japan, is that “… menrui was originally a…low-class food…the lower classes are noisy, and consequently…it is consumed in its original, highly audible manner” (59).

Proteins Japan is surrounded by oceans plentiful with aquatic life and seafood is an important staple of the Japanese diet. Japan’s history is filled with Buddhistinfluenced taboos on eating meat, however the consumption of aquatic life was largely ignored by all but Buddhist monks. The early meat-eating taboo that permitted the consumption of seafood helped to develop such a large reliance on seafood within the traditional Japanese diet. In 1989, the Japanese consumed twelve million tons of fish and shellfish, with only two million tons being imported from other countries (Naorai 38). A proverb describes the preferable methods of seafood preparation, “Eat it raw first if at all, then grill it, and boil it as the last resort.” (Cambridge World

History of Food 1177). The taste and texture of fresh raw fish is preferred. Popular raw fish include sashimi and nigiri-sushi. In addition, one seafood delicacy popular in Japan is fugu. Fugu are spiny fish that blow itself up when threatened, and are known to the Western world as blowfish or pufferfish. Parts of fugu contain a potent poison form of tetrodotoxin, and consuming the liver or ovaries of fugu is fatal to a human being. The poisonous properties of fugu are documented to have been known in China around 200 B.C. (Richie 45). Japan developed careful preparation methods to render fugu harmless and has consumed it for centuries, and even the seventeenth-century poet Basho wrote about fugu. He said: “I enjoyed fugu yesterday. Luckily nothing has yet occurred” (Richie 45). Raising cattle for food is a relatively new practice in Japan, and meateating was actually banned in Japan until the late 19th century (Cambridge World History of Food 495). This meat-eating ban was largely influenced by Buddhism and Shintoism, and permitted the eating of seafood. Today, the main sources of protein in the traditional Japanese diet are seafood and soybeans. According to Richie: “…in 676 the Emperor Temmu issued an ordinance aimed at making his people stop eating cows…He did so because at this time Japan has embraced Buddhism and its prohibitions concerning meat eating…the cow was not mentioned until the middle of the nineteenth century” (24). Richie goes on to expand on this concept, eventually equating the rise of eating cattle with Western globalization. Cattle was consumed in the West at the

time, and Richie says the Japanese learned to equate cattle with being modern (or “Western”), and thus consumed meat to become more “Western” (or “modern”). A popular Meiji era aphorism said, “A man who does not eat beef is an uncivilized man” (25). Meat clearly represented modernization, and perhaps this explains Japan’s sudden eagerness to consume formerly banned meat. Soybeans are also a staple protein in the traditional Japanese diet. Soybeans are largely versatile and nutritious, and several forms of this legume manifest in the Japanese diet such as soymilk, tofu, miso, and shoyu. Modern day soybean varieties (Glycine max), and there are more than 20,000, can be traced back to the wild soybean plant Glycine soja that originally grew in northeast China. There is some debate as to how long soybeans have been cultivated in Asia, with some sources placing cultivation as early as 4,500 years ago and other sources claming soybeans appeared in China only 1,000 years ago (Cambridge World History of Food 422). What is known about soybeans is that their domestication in Japan is credited to Buddhist monks. Being vegetarians, it makes sense for Buddhists to have an interest in the soybean, which is a high-quality vegetable protein. They experimented with this legume and developed a flour, milk, curd, and sauce. They brought the soybean and their soybean inventions with them during missionary work. Japan was introduced to the soybean in the sixth century A.D., by way of missionary monks traveling from Korea (423).

Food aesthetics The Japanese have many traditional aesthetic concerns with food that are uniquely Japanese. Food is served in small, individual portions in separate dishes. Pieces of meat are already cut small, and easy to handle with chopsticks. There is a specific canon of presentation regarding the way Japanese food looks. According to Richie, this canon of presentation involves colors that are artfully opposite, different types of arrangement, asymmetrical aesthetics, law of opposites, and seasonal variety (9). Presentation is best when the colors of the food items are opposite colors, such as the bright pink of tuna sashimi with the light green of wasabi. There are five different types of food arrangement, or moritsuke. Yamamori is a mound-like arrangement, sugimori is standing or slanting, hiramori is a flat, ayamori is woven, and yosemori is gathered. Of these, yamamori is the most popular. Consideration between food and plate size is also part of the canon of presentation. Food and plate size considerations include asymmetrical aesthetics and the law of opposites. If a food is round in shape, it will appear on a long, narrow, flat dish. Generally speaking, a food will be served on a dish that is opposite to that food’s shape. Seasonal variety is also an important part of the canon of presentation. Dishware, foods, and garnishes all have seasons of use. Seasonal concerns for food are still important in Japanese cuisine today. Some examples of seasonal variety include eggplant, which is a summer food, and spinach, which is a winter food.

Imported Foods Two of the most modernly popular foods in the Japanese diet are foreign: curry, which came to Japan from England, and ramen, which is Chinese in origin. According to Morieda Takashi in an article titled The Unlikely Love Affair with Curry and Rice, “The average Japanese eats curry at least once a week— far more often than the dishes most commonly associated with Japan—sushi, tempura, and sukiyaki”. Curry rose in popularity during the Meiji Restoration in 1868, a time when Western foods were becoming more accepted. During this time, perception held that Western foods were nutritious. According to Morieda, “This consideration would have been even more pronounced in the years immediately following the Restoration, when the height difference between Japanese and foreigners was positively startling”. Curry came to Japan from England, not from India. This is due to British colonization in India. The British learned to like the Indian foods they were surrounded with, and took curry back to England where it eventually was introduced to Japan. Curry powder was first imported from England, but by the second decade of the 20th century curry powder was being made domestically. The popularity of curry rose with the popularity of instant foods after World War II. New technologies were making cooking easier, and today the most popular form of Japanese curry comes in an instant pouch (Morieda).

Like the importation of curry from England, ramen noodles were once imported from China. However, after the rise of instant foods after World War II, ramen noodles were being made domestically. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, starvation was a common possibility. The United States provided shipments of American flour as a form of aid, even though Japan paid for these shipments. Bread made with US flour was a staple in school lunches instead of more traditional foods such as miso soup and rice (Okumura). The postwar schoolchildren generation grew up eating more Western foods due to incorporation into their school lunch programs. In 1958, the first commercial instant ramen brand, Chikin Ramen, was introduced. During that time, cooking technology was advancing and making meals easier to prepare, and the Japanese exhibited a rise in working hours, as well as a newly-emerging woman workforce. Ando Momofuku, the inventor of Chikin Ramen, set out to create the first instant ramen noodles using surplus American flour shipments with the intent to make an easy-to-prepare, high-calorie food. He utilized the advertising potentials of the new television technology, and 13 million packages of ramen were sold in the first year alone. In 1989, figures showed that annual per capita consumption of ramen was forty servings (Naorai 90). This equates to about 4.5 billion servings annually and, “in many ways instant noodles are symbolic of both industrialization and the way other cultures have been absorbed into Japan’s own” (Naorai 79).

A survey in 1999 asked 1,500 Japanese people of varied ages what the most representative Japanese food of the 20th century was. The most common answer was instant ramen with 78.9 percent of votes. Second was the hamburger, with 33.6 percent, and third was instant boil-in bag curry with 27.9 percent (Traphagen and Brown).

Fast Food While noodle carts serving steaming bowls of soba and udon were the main fast foods of the past, these have been supplemented with several other modern manifestations. One of fast food venues popular in Japan is the American company McDonalds. Japan is home to the greatest number of McDonalds locations in any single country outside the US. In 1993 McDonalds had 1,043 Japanese locations, in 1997 it had more than doubled with 2,439 locations (Gaouette). It’s easy to zero-out McDonalds as a villain in the process of Western globalization, but a 2001 article by Traphagen and Brown argues that McDonalds, “…[expresses] long-standing Japanese cultural patterns, and facilitate human intimacy and warmth not possible with some other, more traditional styles of inexpensive and rapidly served food in Japan”. They argue that the rise in popularity of Western fast food companies, and McDonalds in particular, can be attributed to changes in Japan on a global scale, and not solely as a Western invasion.

Based on their ethnography research, a common practice within Japanese eating habits in these fast food chain restaurants is sharing foods between family members and friends. They argue that these restaurant practices “…indicate the importance of these venues in providing contexts for reinforcing emotive bonds among family and friends”. These restaurants also provide family bonding. Dining out in a place like McDonalds is often seen as a special occasion, and provides an opportunity for the entire family to dine together. This gives children a rare chance to dine with their fathers, who in 2002 only dined with their families an average of once a week (Traphagen and Brown) due to long work hours.

Nutrition and Health Trends In the article “Japan’s Ramen Romance”, Okumura Ayao describes a 2001 study she conducted about the frequency of noodle consumption. Okumura surveyed a class of 151 women at Kobe Yamate College and found the average noodle consumption was nine times a month. “Italian pasta” was the number one favorite, followed by udon in second and ramen in third. When surveying men, ramen was the number one favorite and Italian pasta was third. Okumura explains this discrepancy by stating that, “…Women tend to like Italian pasta because it is fashionable, whereas men tend to be more pragmatic and see ramen as a better investment of serving volume”. Women could also be consuming more foreign types of pasta because they are equating eating Western foods with Western values, which are perceived to be less sexist towards women.

A typical breakfast in the traditional Japanese diet contains plain rice, miso soup, and tsukemono. In the Cambridge World History of Food, it is that said that in the year 2000 thirty percent of the adult population ate bread for breakfast. Bread is rarely eaten for lunch or dinner, and perhaps the prevalence at breakfast can be accounted for by bread’s timesaving qualities versus rice (1183). The fact that the post-war schoolchildren generation grew up eating bread in school lunches could also account for today’s statistics of bread consumption at breakfast. Globalization has provided more of a variety of foreign foods to the Japanese table. In 1995, Japan bought eleven billion dollars worth of American foods, more than any other country (Glain and Kanabayashi). These foreign foods are adapted into the Japanese diet depending on circumstances. The flavors of the foreign foods must complement staple flavors such as rice and must be able to be consumed with chopsticks. The Cambridge World History of Food argues that “…such modifications should be viewed as part of an expansion of Japanese eating habits and cuisine, rather than a headlong adoption of foreign dietary patterns” (1183). The Ministry of Health in Japan recommends a daily intake of twenty to twenty-five grams of fiber for adults. In 1998, the average daily intake of fiber in Japan was only fifteen grams, which compared to the averages of Western countries. In 1952, the average daily fiber intake in Japan was 20.5 grams which declined to 14.9 grams in 1970, and stayed steady around fifteen grams up to

1998. Lack of fiber intake is thought to be a factor in diseases such as colon cancer and coronary heart disease, among others. Nakaji et. al expands, “A decline in total [daily fiber] intake…is predicted for Japan in the future, because these parameters were lower among the younger generation. This may be due to the marked changes in the dietary habits of the younger generation, and is a problematic trend for Japanese health”. A 2003 World Health Organization report places the life expectancy at 78 on average for males, and 85 on average for females, the highest in the world for over 30 years (McCurry). In the 2004 article Japan: Cooking a New World, Kobayashi says, “Life expectancy in Japan is currently…the highest in the world. Available data indicates…that this longevity record is thanks to people born before 1920, who have maintained a traditional diet”. Statistics from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare state that in 2004 among Japanese on non-traditional diets, more than half have lifestyle-related diseases, a third suffer from allergic reactions, and a fifth are obese (Kobayashi). The Ministry of Health and Welfare says that one in six adults, sixteen million people, have diabetes or are at high-risk of developing diabetes. The number of at-risk people is rising, and includes men and women in their 30s (McCurry). According to Weisburger in 1997, “One of the best pieces of evidence for an enhancing effect of many dietary fats in the nutritionally linked cancers [cancers of the colon, breast, prostate, stomach, pancreas, and endometrium] is the current increase in the incidence of these diseases in Japan as the nutritional habits of people in that country become more Westernized”.

These emerging adverse health trends can largely be contributed to the alteration of the traditional, healthier Japanese diet and other factors of a modern lifestyle such as decreased physical excursion due to modern technologies.

Conclusion In the modern industrialized world, one’s place in capitalism is primarily that of consumer. Everything offered is a commodity, even the very things required for human survival. Water is a commodity, which one can purchase in hormone-leaching plastic bottles. Food is also a commodity. One has endless variety when glimpsing at the colorful supermarket shelves full of pretty packages dressed up to make food a capitalist commodity. One of the very things required for human life is bought and sold, heavily marketed, imported and exported, and one of the biggest commodities in modern industrialized life. According to Cwiertka and Walraven, “During the last few centuries, the number of people relying entirely on local products in their diet has gradually been diminishing” (3). This reflects the effects of globalization on diet, with food itself is becoming an increasing product of globalization. Transnational corporations market global homogeneity in the diet by exporting the same food products all around the world, so that it’s nearly possible to eat the same thing in any industrialized country regardless of any unique national food culture. The importation of Western foods into the Japanese diet reflects not solely the invasion of Western culture, but the globalization of food commodities as a whole.

Japan’s rising adverse health effects are directly related to changes in the traditional Japanese diet, especially among younger generations. A fifteen year study conducted by Nakamura Yasuyuki, an associate professor at the Shiga University of Medicine and Science, found that “…men could reduce the risk of dying from heart disease, strokes, and other causes by as much as [thirty percent] by eating fish once every [two] days” (McCurry). I believe that by returning to a more traditional diet and making general steps to improve health overall, the Japanese can reduce their rising risks for nutritionally-related diseases such as heart disease and certain cancers. Once these changes are made and the Japanese return to a more traditional diet, Japan will maintain its status of having the highest life expectancy in the world.

Works Cited

Cambridge World History of Food. Ed. Kiple, Kenneth F. and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 2 vols.

Cwiertka, Katarzyna and Boudewijn Walraven. Asian Food. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001.

Gaouette, Nicole. “More Hambaagaa, Less Sushi”. Christian Science Monitor. Boston: 1998.

Glain, Steve and Kanabayashi, Masayoshi. “The grocery list in Japan includes more U.S. foods”. Wall Street Journal. New York City: 1996.

Kobayashi, Kazunori. “Japan: Cooking a New World”. Women’s Feature Service. New Delhi: 2004.

McCurry, Justin. “Japanese People Warned to Curb Unhealthy Lifestyles”. The Lancet. London: 2004.

Morieda, Takashi. “The Unlikely Love Affair with Curry and Rice”. Japan Quarterly. Tokyo: 2000.

Najaki, Shigeyuki, et al. “Trends in Dietary Fiber Intake in Japan Over the Last Century”. European Journal of Nutrition. New York: 2002.

Naorai. Ed. Mitsukuni, Yoshida and Sesoko Tsune. Hiroshima: Mazda Motor Corporation, 1989.

Okumura, Ayao. “Japan’s Ramen Romance”. Japan Quarterly. Tokyo: 2001.

Richie, Donald. A Taste of Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd, 1985.

Traphagen, John W. and L. Keith Brown. “Fast Food and Intergenerational Commensality in Japan: New Styles and Old Patterns”. Ethnology. Pittsburgh: 2002.

Weisburger, John H. “Dietary Fat and Risk of Chronic Disease: Mechanistic Insights From Experimental Studies”. Journal of the American Dietic Association. Chicago: 1997.