Routledge Handbook of Food in Asia

Cecilia Leong-Salobir

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317209379
• Subtopic: Agricultural Public Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Throwing new light on how colonisation and globalization have affected the food practices of different communities in Asia, the Routledge Handbook of Food in Asia explores the changes and variations in the region's dishes, meals and ways of eating.

By demonstrating the different methodologies and theoretical approaches employed by scholars, the contributions discuss everyday food practices in Asian cultures and provide a fascinating coverage of less common phenomenon, such as the practice of wood eating and the evolution of pufferfish eating in Japan. In doing so, the handbook not only covers a wide geographical area, including Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, India, China, South Korea and Malaysia, but also examines the Asian diasporic communities in Canada, the United States and Australia through five key themes:

• Food, Identity and Diasporic Communities
• Food Rites and Rituals
• Food and the Media
• Food and Health
• Food and State Matters.

Interdisciplinary in nature, this handbook is a useful reference guide for students and scholars of anthropology, sociology and world history, in addition to food history, cultural studies and Asian studies in general.

1
Introduction

Cecilia Leong-Salobir

Throughout the ages, man’s efforts in producing, preparing and consuming food have shaped whole civilizations. Food cultures have undergone changes during war and famine and throughout periods of exploration, conquest, colonization and globalization. Over the past few decades, the study of food has burgeoned and expanded into research areas across almost every field of the social sciences and humanities. Increasingly, food studies courses are offered at universities and colleges, interrogating the inquiry of food in pedagogical contexts and disciplinary perspectives. New scholars to food history/studies are now greeted with an avalanche of journal articles and books dealing with topics as disparate as food commodity histories, food appropriation, food consumption in literature and film, school food, food security and food and animal rights.

Worldwide, academics are using foodways, food systems and food culture as ways of conducting analyses across the different disciplines. Food studies is an increasingly popular option among students, mirroring the voracious feeding of food-related content in the popular media. This handbook is useful for academics and students in colleges and universities in areas such as anthropology, sociology, world history, Asian history, food history/studies, cultural and social history, cultural studies, Asian studies and human geography. It will be of use as a reference guide for the media and other researchers.

This handbook builds on the comprehensive Routledge International Handbook of Food Studies edited by Ken Albala in 2013. Other substantial reference works on food studies/culture/history in general include Routledge History of Food (ed. Helstosky 2015), Cuisine & Empire: Cooking in World History (Laudan 2013), Food: A Culinary History (eds. Flandrin and Montanari 2013), Food and Culture: A Reader (eds. Counihan and Van Esterik 2013), Food in World History (Pilcher 2017) and Food and Foodways in Asia: Resource, Tradition and Cooking (eds. Cheung and Tan 2007).

Consisting of twenty-three chapters, the handbook presents diverse topics such as negotiating American kitchen space for Hmong families, food and the state, ethnic food tours, the French legacy of bread in Vietnam, the history of wood eating in Japan and the advertising of milk in Singapore, just to name a few.

In their different ways, chapter authors discuss the diverse confluence of cultural, social, economic, political and literary influences within the disparate nations that make up “Asia”. For the purpose of this handbook, Asia includes North Asia (Japan, Korea and China), South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) and Southeast Asia (Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).

It may seem that Japan is disproportionately represented in the handbook. It is merely by coincidence that so many worthy food scholars on Japan submitted their contributions to this handbook. Nevertheless, this handbook provides a sample of different methodologies and theoretical approaches across a wide range of fields and disciplines. The handbook covers five broad themes: food, identity and diasporic communities; food rites and rituals; food and the media; food and health; and food and state matters. Following are brief summaries of each chapter.

Part 1 Food, identity and diasporic communities

Gentrification projects in “ethnic” neighbourhoods of postcolonial cities of the West suggest intriguing implications for culinary futures. Jean Duruz’s chapter (Geographies of fusion: re-imagining Singaporean and Malaysian food in global cities of the West) traces the ways in which traditional tastes of Singapore and Malaysia’s “mixed” food cultures are reinvented in cities where shared histories of British colonialism intersect with Florida’s “creative city” planning. In recent years, in both Toronto and Melbourne, “fusion” food, together with associated hipster lifestyles and landscapes, has been declared “hot”. Although this trend might be cast as culinary adventuring, Duruz states that it is possible that new spaces and identities of belonging, vested in the “Asian”, the “cosmopolitan” and the “hybrid”, are being forged.

Nicholas Tošaj’s chapter (Finding France in flour: communicating colonialism in French Indochina through bread) examines the place of bread in French colonial Indochina in the first half of the 20th century. The racialization of wheat bread and rice in French Indochina created a binary which came to constitute a key example of culinary “othering” manifested within the colonial context. Bread’s role as a staple food led it to occupy a central place in the colony’s foodscape, providing insight into notions of race, hybridity and identity within the Indochinese Union. Despite significant logistical and financial hurdles, bread remained a central part of French culture in Indochina, appearing in French dietary habits as well as in language and expressions. Habits of consumption and preference led to French attempts to maintain wheat bread’s central dietary role despite the considerable expenses undertaken to do so. While French attempts to maintain consumption of the staple persisted, the context in which it was consumed gave bread new meaning as the supply chain and processes necessary to produce it shifted. Bread continued to be a basic staple for French colonists in Indochina in addition to entering the diet of local populations. For indigenous bakers who undertook the difficult work of producing the French staple in the colonies, baking bread provided a potential venue for economic success within the colonial system.

The use of Indochinese workers as labourers in French bakeries, workers who in turn opened their own bakeries, casts a different light on bread than on other foods identified as French. For indigenous bakers, creating bread identified as French when French bakers backed away from the trade provided an important venue for economic success even though some local bakers chose to adopt French names for their businesses.

In recent years, Japanese restaurants have spread around the world. Authors James Farrer, Christian Hess, Mônica R. de Carvalho, Chuanfei Wang and David Wank base their chapter (Japanese culinary mobilities: the multiple globalizations of Japanese cuisine) on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, detailing a historical and sociological overview of the global expansion of Japanese restaurant cuisine in Asia, North America, Europe and Latin America. The chapter describes the different historical waves of Japanese culinary globalization and the different types of culinary communities that played a central role in each wave of globalization, from imperial diasporas and settler communities to business expatriates. In the most recent phase of culinary expansion, it emphasizes the importance of non-Japanese migrant entrepreneurs who have furthered the spread of Japanese restaurants around the world in recent decades.

The authors have narrated their research in terms of three patterns: Japanese settler migration, Japanese corporate expansion and ethnic succession mainly by other Asian groups. All of these patterns do overlap, however. They also emphasize that non-Japanese, both locals and migrants, have always been involved in the globalization of Japanese foodways. In addition, their concept of culinary mobilities includes movements of products, ideas and spaces, usually connected to human mobility.

Christina Nope-Williams explores the impact of colonization on Indonesian society through food hybridity, food and social class and food and gender (Food and identity construction: the impact of colonization in Indonesian society). Nope-Williams uses both cookbooks and novels to examine attitudes between Dutch colonials and Indonesians, and to observe how food was used as markers of racial difference. Certain foods consumed by the Dutch were also consumed by the wealthy Chinese and elite natives. European foods were served at royal Javanese celebratory events. Eurasians consumed wines, smoked cigars and ate canned food as ways to disguise their perceived inferior part of their in-between identities. When Indonesia gained independence in 1945, its social stratification changed markedly. The move to establish a common national culture among Indonesians was galvanized by the political elites. The people of the newly independent nation started tearing down the barriers that differentiated the colonizers from the colonized in an assertion of egalitarianism. This extended to food consumption, when eating Western or imported food was seen as being on equal terms with the previous colonial masters.

Paula Arvela follows the culinary footprints left by the Portuguese in Melaka. Her chapter (Searching for culinary footprints: A question of cultural identity – Kristang foodways and the Portuguese culinary legacy in Melaka) focuses on Gente Kristang, a small community in Melaka who still claim identity ties with their Portuguese forebears. From her fieldwork observations in Melaka and analysis of four cookbooks Arvela discusses the iconic dishes representing Kristang cuisine and reminds us of the entangled cultural associations between two geographically distant continents – Europe and Asia – drawn together by the vagaries of history. The study highlights this enmeshed cultural-culinary relationship, which is underpinned by the Kristang’s willingness to use it as an identification marker. This is associated with an imaginary place and a cultural heritage with which they feel a deep affinity but are only familiar with through intergenerational storytelling. The Kristang-Eurasian community of Melaka harnesses their cultural heritage, religious affiliation and foodways as cultural signifiers and tools of empowerment. By clinging to the symbols that are meaningful to them and with which they identify, they are consciously making an effort to maintain the “difference” that qualifies their cultural identity as an ethnic and religious minority in Malaysia.

Diasporic populations arriving in the United States often find that their cooking traditions and cultural sensibilities do not align with the built environment of the American kitchen. Hongyan Yang’s chapter on “Cooking in the Hmong cultural kitchen” focuses on how three Hmong-American families readapt their kitchen spaces to conduct traditional cooking, bringing a unique sensorial experience and an informal materiality to the domestic space. Although most diasporas like the Hmong face difficulties in adapting to the different environments during resettlement, this research also demonstrates the power of culturally specific culinary practices in reshaping the sensorial experience and physical conditions of space and bringing the space a new cultural identity. The Hmong cultural kitchens offer a culturally specific experience through the smells of food and the arrangement of kitchen, as well as traditional Hmong diets. The seemingly chaotic materiality of the Hmong kitchens is actually in their cultural order, which is shaped by their everyday traditional and innovative culinary practices, as well as the authority of first-generation Hmong parents in regulating the space. Influenced by their traditional practices in Southeast Asia, Hmong-American families have brought a sense of informality and casualness to the domestic kitchens. They seek to consume familiar food or use traditional cooking techniques to maintain cultural continuity and search for cultural comfort. At the same time, they learned to re-create traditional dishes and invented new dishes using readily available new ingredients and cooking techniques in the United States.

Part 2 Food rites and rituals

Jon Morris’s intriguing study (Eating of wood: the practice of mokujiki in Japan) examines mokujiki (“eating of wood”) in Japan. It introduces the various Taoist traditions relating to abstinence from cereals and the consumption of bark, leaves, pine needles and nuts which influenced the Buddhist practice of mokujiki and traces the establishment of those practices in Japan. Practitioners believe this diet of tree-based foods supports longevity and the development of spiritual powers. Mokujiki is, in essence, a mountain diet imbued with a spiritual energy and purity, which is in marked and deliberate contrast to a worldly diet based on cereals. It was and is taken up during short annual periods of religious practice on sacred mountains, though many have practised it for longer periods. Some ascetics vowed to continue the practice for life, taking “Mokujiki” as part of their religious name.

Mokujiki, which was at the height of its influence from the 16th century to the end of the 19th century, is known in association with certain traditions of Buddhist statuary and Buddhist mummification in Japan. It is particularly associated with Shugendo and esoteric Buddhist traditions, though it was also practised within other Buddhist schools and institutions. Morris’s study gives particular weight to the importance of the mokujiki diet as a means for ascetics to develop their identity and social roles, and illustrates the diversity of mokujiki in Japan with regard both to institutions and the actual diets taken up by practitioners. Focusing on the dietary aspect of the practice rather than purely doctrinal concerns, Morris shows that it is the social and religious significance of personal vows to eat and act in the mokujiki mode, rather than sect orthodoxy or strict orthopraxy, which defines the practice and gives it its power.

Jiri Jakl traces the history of Javanese slametan, a communal ritual meal in Cooking for demons, soldiers, and commoners: history of a ritual meal in Java. Scholars differ in their interpretations of Javanese slametan as either pre-Islamic or Islamic religious phenomena. There is little doubt, however, that the imprint of Islamic food culture on the culinary tradition of slametan has until recently been minimal. Moving toward a diachronic perspective, Jakl demonstrates that we can get new insights into the origins of slametan by comparing Javanese and Balinese ritual meals and by using textual evidence of kakavins, or epic poems composed in Java between the 9th and 15th centuries CE in the literary register of Old Javanese.

Jakl argues, through reading anthropological evidence against the Old Javanese textual sources, that the origins of Javanese slametan can be traced to pre-Islamic participatory animal sacrifice. In Java before 1500 CE, sharing of meat dishes and alcoholic beverages was crucial in binding community members together and sealing oaths between them and protective guardian spirits. He elaborates on a thesis advanced by Fuller and Rowlands (2011) about the symbolic meanings of glutinous rice in rituals in East and Southeast Asia. Thus Jakl advances the notion that Javanese ritual cooking has more in common with East Asian rather than South Asian culinary tradition, although Indian influences had changed some of the Javanese culinary preferences. Interestingly, the same symbolic qualities pertaining to glutinous rice are prominent as well in (pre-Islamic) Javanese and modern Balinese ritual dishes prepared from meat.

Chunghao Pio Kuo addresses how the eating of pufferfish evolved from a dangerous activity to a safe and enjoyable delicacy in the modern era (Enjoying a dangerous pleasure: the evolution of pufferfish consumption in modern Japan). The consumption of pufferfish peaked in China in the early modern era, and cultural interactions between China and Japan subsequently spread the dietary custom to Japan. However, without sufficient knowledge of the pufferfish’s toxin, people consuming the fish then suffered bouts of food poisoning, causing paralysis and death. The Japanese government banned consumption of pufferfish until the Meiji era. During this era, pufferfish consumption in Japan underwent a pivotal change. Encouraged by the Meiji Restoration’s embrace of modern Western medical knowledge, medical researchers discovered pufferfish toxins and safe ways to consume the fish. Subsequently the consumption of pufferfish, states Kuo, was no longer an exercise in gastronomical Russian roulette, but a source of culinary enjoyment in 20th-century Japan. Through pufferfish consumption, Kuo reflects how Japan skilfully absorbed foreign culinary cultures while sealing them with distinct Japanese dietary characteristics.

Italy is recognized as the major European producer of rice, yet the cross-culinary connections between Japan and Italy have received scant notice. Annette Condello’s research addresses the historical encounters between Japanese and Italian cultures, as well as the intersection between Italian futurists ideas about food (Crossing Japanese rice products with Italian futurism: fortune cookies, onigiri and arancini as communicant rice-bites). Within the Italian futurist cuisine of the early 1930s there are common ingredients within Japanese culture, specifically leftover rice from risotto dishes to make antipasti. Considering rice is a more sustaining food for the masses rather than pasta, Japanese rice-bites affected futurist ideas about cuisine. Condello unravels the intertwined influences of the rice traffic between Japanese culture and Italian futurism. Interpreting the way Japanese cuisine was understood in the Italian context, it explains how Italian cuisine became established in Japan. As “communicant” rice-bites, fortune cookies, onigiri and arancini impart futurist messages through their spherical form. “Rice oranges” appealed to futurist protagonist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and celebrated author of The Futurist Cookbook (1932). It demonstrates why the Italian futurists were attracted to Japanese cuisine through its military dimension. Although the Japanese onigiri and Italian arancini appeared at different times, the Japanese version most definitely preceded the Italian ones. Analyzing the cookbook’s Japanese origins and Marinetti’s penchant for fast, portable tidbits, the chapter argues how some recipes, to be consumed in foil-like interiors, were indebted to Asian traditions.

Part 3 Food and the media

Food is increasingly being recognized as a significant component of the tourism experience, and many destinations promote themselves as centres of food culture or gastronomic experience. Donna Lee Brien’s chapter (Food writing and culinary tourism in Singapore) focuses on an acknowledged leader in the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• PART 1 Food, identity and diasporic communities
• PART 2 Food rites and rituals
• PART 3 Food and the media
• PART 4 Food and health
• PART 5 Food and state matters
• Index