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Food in literature, according to academic professor Gitanjali G. Shahani in her Introduction to Food and Literature book, isn’t just a conventional form of showing off one’s cookery skills. She defines food in text as a whole new form on its own: food is memory, food is irony, food is drama, food is symbol, food is form (3). Food, just as much as it is loved or hated, consumed or spat, served or left uncooked, is just like text: it is endlessly interpretable. What is distinctly defined by Shahani in Food Studies is that an individual’s sense of taste continuously develops just as that same individual reads literature. Our mouth can become a vulnerable orifice, a delicate organ that craves, our sense of taste tingling with desire (hunger). Food becomes the material in which our desires are projected upon . In several texts, Shahani also explains the textures and metaphors relating to food in order to approach certain characters in literature, and how food can be the leeway of meanings that the writer has strategized to impart to the reader (4). In the pilot episode of 2004 Japanese anime Yakitate!! Ja-pan, we will explore the significance of the culinary object that centered around the show: the Ja-pan.
To understand Ja-pan in its becoming, we should first delve into what Japan and its food culture instills in this aspiration.
The origin of contemporary notions surrounding food in Japan stretch back to its aristocratic period, wherein the revolutionary cultivation of rice made its way to becoming a massive staple in imperial Japanese cuisine. From then on, the consequent periods molded a multitude of cultural and gastronomical foundations that continue to shape the essence of the nation’s diet and tradition. Historically, Japan’s food culture has been commonly intertwined with thritiness and a sense of simplicity. One of the major proliferators of the attitude were the samurai clans who overthrew the deteriorating aristocratic class and established a more “austere aesthetic in art as well as in food” (Ashkenazi and Jacob xvii). The famous sushi dish itself was an innovation born from “the frugality and business acumen'' of regional merchants during the time. (9). This can be seen in longstanding culinary customs such as ichi motsu zen shoku or in translation “one food, used entirely”, and kondate-zukushi—a process of “making a meal using a single ingredient” usually those of “regionally available foodstuffs” (Andoh, 2). However, not only was this an imposition of a cultural and historical force but also a constantly strengthened idea of natural and political circumstance. Decades of social and natural unrest in an agriculturally-sustained prominent lifestyle instilled a fear of “scarcity” or the “threat of famine” (Ashkenazi and Jacob 9) that in turn reinforced the importance of say eating served rice down to the last grain.
Rice is a deeply embedded cultural concept in Japan. In fact, it has been theorized that the Japanese social behavior originate from wet rice cultivation: the definition of "wa" meaning harmony, is essential to Japanese social behavior, as well as "amae" meaning feelings of dependency that pushes Japanese peoples to gather in collective rather than upholding individualism (Wojtan 1). These values are often associated with harvesting wet rice: the cultivation of the rice is a heavy, labor-intensive task. The Japanese family had to divide their labor in rice cultivation that resulted in the harmony and dependency of each member, linking all the surrounding families in their shared destiny of communal resource usage. The fact that wet rice cultivation is an arduous task to complete reflects the perseverance of the families that manifested in motifs in Japanese art to immortalize the significance of rice in Japanese lifestyle. These systems of beliefs are ardently shaped in the manner of rice cultivation, which represents in the highly-valued staple that is served to every Japanese home today.
Azuma’s grandfather, for example, grows the rice they eat himself. His logic for initially disliking bread might not just be driven by a personal or nostalgic inclination, but more so by the need to reap what he sows, nothing more and nothing less, abiding by the set philosophies throughout time. In the scene, we can look at rice then as memory—and its taste as a carrier of historic narrative as Shahani would invoke through a study of “food maxims” found in literature (3).
Moreover, the concept of thriftiness remained prominent even in the religious views of Shintoism and Buddhism, which ascribed its ideals to be “of restraint and elegance, simplicity and frugality” (Ashkenazi and Jacob 19). It is without a doubt a seminal feature of Japanese food culture, but it cannot wholly define its every intricacy. Maybe more so than other culinary structures, the Japanese also delegate extreme importance to the freshness of their ingredients. Food preparation takes full and thoughtful consideration of the seasons, a practice exemplified even in arenas outside of cooking and eating such as “classical poetry or literature included in compulsory school subjects” (21). There is also significant regard to the visual presentation of food, a disposition that also takes its cues from historical influence and Buddhistic spirituality (Web Japan).
It may seem that native food and traditional methodology remains the only staple in their cuisine, but Japan has also cultivated foreign imports into their diets. While foreign culinary practices and items have made their way to the mainstream of Japanese food markets, a process of familiarization still precedes total, but eventual assimilation into cultural normalcy. Parallel to how bread was adapted to variants such as “anpan” (red bean paste bread) or “kare-pan” (curry bread) to suit the Japanese palate, Azuma considered the flavors of natto and miso in successfully making bread that his grandfather likes.
Yakitate!! Japan is not just a fun food show for everyone, it is also an anime centered around bread that defies the rice-loving culture of Japan. In the pilot episode, aspiring baker Azuma is determined to make a name for himself, but there are upcoming struggles which he knows to surely face. His grandfather’s preference of rice over bread to match with beans is an understatement to the intent of the show: it reveals the cultural and historical reflection of their motherland’s past, the ancient routines of Japanese traditions that centered around rice cultivation. Azuma must not only try to make a nationally significant bread for Japan, he must also combat the existing identity of rice associated with his nation. It is here where we can analyze Ja-Pan, a bread the show revolved around to represent the meaning it is ambitiously achieving.
Azuma’s ambition in achieving a name for himself in the baking industry of Japan is a clear intent of Yakitate’s pilot episode. As stated previously, culinary moments in text serve as a critical element that can describe or portray characters in a certain light. But food in text can also serve as a critical element that makes the story spring forward: food can be the theme or method used in literature (Shahani 2). In the case of Yakitate, the bread is the object that operates as a form in which Azuma projects his ideals upon. This reflects the role of our sense of taste in food: our desires are projected upon this food’s edibility and culturally significant process (Shahani 12). Not only does Azuma go through sacrifices to make Ja-Pan a popular bread among his fellow Japanese, but he is also determined in making them taste good bread. He is projecting his culinary ideals not selfishly but at the collectiveness among his people (that reflects Japanese social customs). At the same time, despite his talent in baking, he continues to practice in achieving the ultimate Ja-Pan. Bread becomes the form.
Baking as a method: The scene where the baker invites Azuma to watch him bake in the kitchen of his bakeshop invites the audience to attentively observe the method he uses. The audience obviously knows that bread is supposedly baked, but here in Yakitate it is used as a symbolic method that propels the story forward and eventually inspires Azuma to follow the baker’s footsteps. The baking scene does not serve as a hollow experience that the audience lazily consumes, or another scene to skip, but it is a vital moment that encourages the audience to listen and watch to see how pivotal baking will be in the subsequent episodes: “Rice tastes good, but bread’s fun to make!” (Yakitate!! Japan: S01EP01 10:04). At this critical moment, baking is the method.
Because bread is the form and baking is the method in Yakitate, the audience will expect it to appear throughout the show. Baking becomes the language of the show in which the audience receives as a culinary treat to indulge, a sympathetic process that portrays the essence of Yakitate. As Shahani writes, “The narrative offers a recipe, but the recipe is also in and of itself a narrative.” (6)
Bread has become a staple in the meals of the people. An alternative for rice or a snack to fill the stomach just enough to wait for the proper meal? Worldwide, there are different pieces of bread that you can taste like the croissants or baguettes in France, steamed buns in China, or Rye in Germany. Beyond its value in the religious aspect, as the Bread of Life, bread leans symbolism towards culture, politics, and literature. Bread is used as a symbol of Mediterranean civilization and is the basic reason for conquests, wars, or riots, as well as hunger eradication and food security are only a few of its meanings. Social and symbolic links between bread and the food act related to a certain spirituality are expressed either as rituals or ceremonies. Frances E. Dolan’s Toast and the Familiar in Children’s Literature presents a different upbringing of toast as used in common literary texts for Children.
Toast is associated with the “taste of nostalgia” in the so-called golden age of children’s literature. Robert Hemmings used the passage from Lewis Carroll’s Alice ventures to taste in the rabbit hole in pointing to the highly specific tastes and smells that precedent the rich association with the privileged middle-class Victorian childhood as it seems how buttered toast reaches a larger range than those who can relate to cherry tart and custard (287). Hot buttered toast is “comforting” and an example of nostalgia-invoking as it is a non-vegetable, unobjectionable food that many children like. It creates a filament of connection between the reader and the characters and draws the readers closer to the imagined world of Literature (288).
In Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, buttered toast is used to tame the Toad in prison to make him less sulky and purchase the “comforts and luxury” (288). They ought to provision resourcefully and eat everything set before them with relish, but with the transformations of leftovers that provided comfort and transcendence to some, Toad only felt satisfied or “home” when presented with butter toast. Smell plays a vital role in this scene, as Toad feels olfactory with his whole body (289), he disliked the smell of cabbage in the squeak and bubbles dish as the narrator refers to the smell of cabbage in persistent association of the smelly cabbage with the poor and immigrant people who eat it (288). To the best knowledge, these “smelly cabbage” are fermented cabbages to preserve the food. In this narrative, as Toad managed to make himself his own toast, it suggests that he freed himself from labor and the dependency on other people in making their toasts and risks the perils of toast unlikely to their own specifications.
Toast is a dish that requires “household bread,” “good butter,” “a great deal of attention,” a bright fire, and careful timing (291). It is seen as the gauge of basic culinary literary and self-reliance. A novice cook will claim that all they can make is toast; the mark where the notion “can’t even make toast” is described to someone who cannot cook.
In Lemony Snicket’s The Bad Beginning, Klaus and Violet are novice cooks who are challenged to cook something for the guests of the villain. They reminded how sometimes they burn the toast (292) and the pitch-black toast, for the privileged kids, is a memory of not needing to be competent, of trying to be the caretakers, failing, and not having it matter. The toast stands as the “charred rubble” of the “enormous home they had loved,” where they used to live with their parents who were destroyed by the fire. Moreover, Dolan mentioned how his grandmother would ask for strict specifications for her toast, a "well-toasted, lavishly buttered, and served HOT." His grandmother ate an enormous amount, and the toast speaks for comfort and contentment, but sometimes, toasts can be disappointing and dispirit. People have strong emotions and attachments with toast, and the specifications of the way they enjoy it connects to who or what they are as a person (295).
In Hogwarts, from Harry Potter Series, breakfast tables in the Great Hall are described to have “laden with tureens of porridge, plates of kippers, mountains of toast, and dishes of eggs and bacon” (293). The “mountain of toast” alludes to those toasts that are always part of their breakfast compared on how the breakfast in the Middle East is usually with Naan and Rice or buns in Asian Countries. Its association with tea and white food from white culture sets the toast diverse from the ethnically diverse protagonists in literature. Toast is not necessarily familiar to the readers and protagonists. For example, in Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter in 1950, she described what she eats and what she does not eat, as stated below:
“Her usual school-day breakfast is not cereal, milk, orange juice, toast, pancake, or omelet. Instead, she eats rice, soup, savory, and spicy foods.” (294)
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