From Skoko Imai

Hello, my name is Shoko, a graduate student in Japan currently working on PhD thesis on Japanese food in the world and globalization. I am new to this blog project, in fact though I have read some of his works before, I only met Professor Cook a couple of weeks ago and just heard about this exciting project. So I do not really know any of the people who have posted to this blog site so far. Well, surprisingly (but at the same time naturally), I do feel less scared to post my comments to this website, because I simply don't really know all of the contributors. But I also know I would get more scared later when I find out who you are and what you do and so forth. Yet, in a way, I find it kind of interesting to put some comments to something in public without any fear or hesitation so I just force myself to do it and see what happens. I am just trying to describe my feelings about participating in this project, collaborative writing as one of unknown authors, I mean working together without knowing well each other or his/her works well. But at the same time, I believe it doesn't really matter since as long as you have some ideas or thoughts about this common topic of food. Maybe ideally academics should be open and fair to anybody who is interested with an atmosphere of peace.
Anyway, one issue I would like to bring up here is whether you need to be a good cook, or at least have to be interested in cooking in studying food. When we discuss food issues, we often use food related phrases and terms metaphorically, for example, “I would like to ‘cook’ this argument more” or “I am hungry for what you wrote about”. But how about literally, you need to be cook to study food? I have some experiences, when I introduce myself that I study food, some people assume that I must be a good cook, or at least I would be a good person to ask for recommendation when they are looking for some good food for their dinner. Well, myself, I am interested in cooking and I love to cook. But I never really thought of combining cooking and writing or studying about food together in an academic way. I have assumed passion for cooking should be separated from the academic interests in food and just keep it more like a hobby. But why not? Yet still, at the same time, I have to admit that I have taken it for granted that if people are interested in studying food, then most of them must be interested in cooking like me in their ordinary, I mean, non-academic life too. But why? What kind of assumptions have made me think this way? Is it something based on cultural background or environments you grew up with? And is it true that you really need to be good cook or at least interested in cooking? In my opinion, it is not really necessary to be good at, but knowing a bit of cooking is sometimes very helpful for studies, because it gives you a power of imagination in various culinary scenes described in texts. And I believe this knowledge of cooking gives you a new insight or a way of approach toward food studies as long as you try to combine them. As you know, many works done by researchers who used to be chefs, or being chef at the same time, have been fascinating and informative. For myself, I have never thought about this consciously, but my interests of cooking have surely influenced the way I analyze or understand in my research. That would have been different if I had not known anything about cooking. I am not saying here that it is always better to have knowledge about cooking, but rather it is necessary to be a bit more conscious of having some ideas of cooking when you disentangle the food issues. It’s rather interesting to synthesize my academic interests on food with my own cooking experiences or passions, and that is connected to the issue of autoethnographic writing.
The other issue I would like to comment came up in my mind when I was reading the argument on ‘Eating the Other’ in Professor Cook’s paper, “Geographies of food: mixing”, the decontextualization of white culture and black culture using an example of food. This can be a great digression from the main discussion, however I wonder whether this ‘eating the other’ can be possibly applied to the discussion in case of non-white but non-black either, Asian people in the same context or not. What does it imply when white people eat Asian food, for example, and how about the case of black people eating Asian food? What kind of ideology would be constructed or destroyed by doing that? Or is it from the beginning, Asian people should be in the same category with black people or white people, or wouldn’t fit in neither of them, something else? Then what is it? Who are they really? On the other hand, what does it really mean for Asians to eat white people’s food? Do we need to apply a completely new perspective? If Asian researchers discuss white people’s food or other people’s food, is there any special positions they need to take? Are there any notions or concepts to be adopted? Is this another way of resistance, conquering or colonizing with a new form of commodification and consumption? Is there any kind of paradigm shift needed? Well, put it more simply, how you feel when other people who have different cultural, historical background based on different locations discuss “eating the other” argument and is it OK to do? I find myself, to be perfectly honest, a bit hesitating on this topic, even though I just know I shouldn’t be. Then I am curious why sometimes I feel unstable and unsafe when I talk about white people’s food issues. Is this natural or very specific? And more particularly, who are Asians? Is it OK to discuss putting all Asian people in together? For instance, is there any possibility for Japanese or any other people to have a chance to get rid of this context just because of its economic power, without been criticized that escaping a responsibility as one of Asian counties?

Shoko Imai
American Studies
University of Tokyo