Japanese Food and Food Packaging with Katarzyna Cwiertka

Podcast duration: 27 minutes

Interviewer: S

Interviewee: C

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This is the Nordic Asia podcast.

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S: Welcome to the Nordic Asia Podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Satoko Naito. I'm a docent at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku in Finland. And I am delighted to welcome Dr. Katarzyna Cwiertka, who has graciously agreed to discuss her recent and ongoing research on food and food packaging in Japan. Dr. Cwiertka is the chair of Modern Japan Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands and is an expert on food history and cuisine in Japan and Korea. She's published extensively on food and its many associated cultural, social and, of course, political issues. Currently, she is co-editor of the Consumption and Sustainability in Asia book series from Amsterdam University Press, and she is also editor in chief of the journal Worldwide Waste, which looks at sustainability and waste studies in Asia and beyond. So your research really is very wide ranging. Thank you so much for being here.

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C: Oh, thank you so much for inviting me to be part of your podcast.

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S: Thank you. I’d love to begin with your most recent book publication, “Branding Japanese Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku” from the University of Hawaii press, co-authored with Yasuhara Miho. Your central thesis concerns the phrase washoku, that received a 2013 designation as a UNESCO intangible world heritage. You detail how exactly various agencies manipulated and constructed the image and the definition of this so-called washoku, solely for the purpose of the UNESCO nomination. It’s really a fascinating read. Can you tell us a bit about your research into this project?

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C: Well, let me say that what we basically did with this book is kind of pretty straightforward. So we juxtaposed the content of the washoku nomination submitted to the UNESCO by the Japanese government. We juxtaposed this content with the promotional educational activities centered on washoku that were undertaken by the Japanese government and a variety of organizations and businesses after the UNESCO inscription in 2013. So already, by kind of juxtaposing these two messages, we found a lot of inconsistencies. And then further, these two data that we gathered, we further compared them, contrasted them with historical data and other material about the use and definition of washoku that we collected from cookbooks and etiquette manuals, menus, newspaper articles and so forth.

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C: And to be honest, we were actually quite surprised by our own findings the degree of manipulation that was involved in the whole school UNESCO inscription scheme was, we were really flabbergasted by it. So I won't take much more time to explain the book, but, well, please have a look at yourself. We also have the paperback coming out in January, but we also have a Kindle edition, which is very accessible. So I would encourage you, your listeners, to just have a look for themselves. What I wanted to add is that this 2020 book that came, the English version, is actually a kind of a revised version of the earlier book that we published into 2016 in Japanese in Japan.

C: And it took us two years to finalize the manuscript, it is not simply a translation of the Japanese version, but rather a completely different book, because, as you can imagine, the non-Japanese audience requires much more information on the background issues than the Japanese audience would. But there is something else that happened when we were working on the English version. We actually discovered that the manipulation of historical facts and actually manipulation of reality in the case of washoku was actually a continuation of similar practices that were employed for centuries in Japan for branding of foods as iconic markets, markers of tourist attractions. And I'm thinking here about meibutsu and omiyage that most Japan studies people know what these are. But if you would like me to elaborate on these two terms, I'm happy to do that.

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S: Yes. Yes, please do.

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C: So basically the omiyage - or maybe let me start with Meibutsu. In the now kind of a classic book about domestic tourism in Japan by Nelson Granburn from 1993, he describes meibutsu as a noted or special product or feature of a place, is a feature of a place, site, or building. So meibutsu you could be a natural product, a fish, a cultural product, for example. It could be pottery or silk or even a building, although the building or a place would be maybe more of a - the word meisho would be used. But meibutsu is basically a special or noted or special product or that kind of represents a place.

C: And omiyage is, there is, again, a kind of I could talk a little bit more, or longer about that. But basically, Omiyage is usually translated as a souvenir from a trip. And basically, when we could analyze that that's the meibutsu that has been brought home.

S: I see.

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C: Yeah, that's the easiest kind of definition. But what is interesting, so we looked at meibutsu and omiyage that are edible because washoku is that kind of food thing. So when we found the parallels, we found the parallels in edible meibutsu. And on the other hand, as many of the listeners of this podcast know, of course, the beautifully wrapped omiyage are now so ubiquitous in all of Japan that people probably do not wonder even when this practice actually began.

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C: But when we look into sources, we see that edible omiyage, although they did exist in pre-modern times, this is basically - now they occupy a central place in the omiyage business. All kinds of cookies and, you know, savoury biscuits and all kinds of stuff that we can buy all over Japan. And it's actually very closely connected to the changing pace of travel, to the introduction of the train. And as you might know, the premodern travellers there was quite a sizable tourist industry in Japan in premodern Japan back to tourists, primarily travel on foot. So you can imagine that perishable food items would not travel well home before the advent of train travel. But actually, the practice of omiyage as we know it today actually goes back to the post-war period, 1960s, when the domestic tourism was experiencing its tremendous growth. And although we might be talking about mass tourism to a certain extent during the modern era, this took entirely new proportions during the 1960s.

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S: So, the omiyage-tourism-industrial complex as we know it today, is rather new, but as you’ve said, it has roots in premodern times, with travellers visiting various meisho and eating various meibutsu. And nowadays at least there’s the idea that if you haven’t had the meibutsu from the location, you haven’t had the full experience of travel.

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C: So this notion of your travel is not complete unless you have not taken the food of the area is has actually emerged in the late 18th and 19th century. And it has actually persisted the legacy of this practice. It exists to this very day, but it is something that has been constructed very, very perfectly. I must say, by primarily the publishing industry of the early modern era, so the publishers of, there is great literature on this topic, so the publishers of travelogues, diaries, board games and of course the publishers of woodblock prints, they were very much interested in promoting their in giving their products and a kind of sense of - or rather - giving the readers of consumers of their products a feeling that they were themselves armchair travellers.

C: And the fact that they included the details such as meibutsu was very essential for the popularity of their of their products, so to a certain extent it was not as much because edible omiyage at the time was very limited. It was not that much the commercialization of the omiyage business at the time, but rather the publishing industry of travel literature that was responsible for this proliferation of the idea that you had to try the local specialty, otherwise you were not really there.

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S: This reminds me, of the tradition of pilgrimage where you visit a temple, or shrine, offer prayers, then maybe also get a omamori for yourself and to bring back with you or bring it to your family back home. So this kind of needing to prove your you're actually physically having been there. And also by taking a piece of something from there, to transfer the benefits of visiting a sacred site, onto a physical object that you can then bring back with you. And this—this was a kind of omiyage as well, I believe.

S: So you discuss omiyage and its packaging here, and your new project focuses on food packaging, including edible omiyage.

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C: Yes, so, of course. So, as I mentioned, the omega first, the proliferation of edible omiyage becomes increasingly strong during along with the proliferation of train travel. So the first omiyage that we that scholars were able to are actually the first. So what happens? I have to I have to explain it a little bit more so you can imagine when people would travel on foot along the road, traveling on foot. We cannot even imagine how you can travel a week on foot, right. But the point is that you're traveling on foot and every two or three hours -

C: - this was the commercial development, of course, surrounding the travel was that every two or three hours, maybe four hours, there would be a teahouse that where you could rest for a while, take some some refreshments. And these tea houses would come up with their special usually rice cakes that they would offer to travellers. And in order to differentiate themselves from the tea house, that would the travellers, they would they would encounter three hours further on the road. They would invent a story usually that connected those specialty of this particular place with folklore or historical event or historical personage. So this is how the meibutsu were actually kind of emerging. They're actually different types of food meibutsu. But let's keep it simple. So imagine a certain point,

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C: the train replaces the train travel, which traces trip. So all those tea houses, a majority of them go out of business, of course. So what they cleverly do is they relocate to railway stations and they put their meibutsu that people would in the past, you know, try with their tea. They put them in the boxes and they sell them as omiyage. And this is actually the kind of very logical explanation behind the growth off of meibutsu since their early 20th century when the railway network is expanding more and more. So then what brings us to packaging is, OK, so they put it in boxes that are made from wood, oribako. And they get this idea of doing that by following the example of ekiben, so the lunch box at the train station lunchbox as we know it. Right. So, again, ekiben didn't exist before the train, so the train station lunchbox didn't exist before the train. So again, we go to the 1870, right. When the first train lines are established in the 1880s, when gradually more and more stations come up with the idea of selling a lunchbox.

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C: And this is the kind of inspiration that the omiyage sellers get when packaging packaging their omiyage. And what is interesting in this case is I began actually of course I knew about ekiben for a long time. There is the nineteen eighties article about ekiben history, which I knew of course for decades. But this connection with packaging and those boxes has provided me with a completely new research topic that I never thought that I would embark upon. And that's so fascinating about being a scholar, right? You work on the book and then you kind of find a topic. Yeah, this this needs to be investigated a little bit more. So this is so this working on the English version of the of the washoku book actually has kind of directed me towards the packaging theme. And I'm currently working on the manuscript of the book that we do have a title already, “How to wrap up Five Eggs: Transformation of a Food Packaging in Japan”. The book is coming out next - I think it will be 2020, 2022.

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S: That is such a great title. When we spoke earlier, you mentioned that it was a reference to an earlier work, or series of works, “How to Wrap Five Eggs”.

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C: There are actually many editions of this book, but it's basically the same content. Was the author of those books is graphic designer Oka Hideyuki. And he single handedly put the spotlight on this rather obscure category of Japanese crafts. The packaging and the English translation of the first book was published in 1967, and then the second one was in ‘75 and the ‘75 “How to wrap Five More Eggs” was accompanying the display of the collection of kind of crafts, packaging crafts that Oka has brought to the United States and toured across the United States and Canada.

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C: Oka argued that this traditional packaging was representative of how food was basically packed in Japan, and he argued that this is something that is quite traditional. However, I would like to argue that packaging of food as such has not been so widespread before the modern times. And of course, we all know that it underwent tremendous transformation during the 20th century. Right. When we look at how food is being packaged today with many layers and a plastic paper, all kinds of embellishments. This is a modern development.

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And there is a lot of people who argue, especially the people from the packaging design business, argue that there is a continuation between how food was passed or that between the premodern practices and modern practices that only now they have become more. There are different materials being used and that. The industry has, of course, grown, but my argument is that there is no continuity between premodern packaging practices, which were very limited and the modern practices, but rather that the modern or contemporary packaging industry is actually kind of taking inspiration merely from the premodern art objects rather than from practices that that were characteristic of the premodern era.

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S: Ok. That gives us a nice segway for me to mention you beautiful catalogue called Too Pretty to Throw Away, from an exhibition you organized with Dr. Ewa Machotka of Stockholm University. You discuss the historical nature of packaging and how there is a lot of a constructed continuity and a kind of forced nostalgia for a past that maybe never existed. Can you tell us how you and Dr. Machotka came to came to this project?

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C: Yes, this is actually one of the project that nearly ended up as a disaster because we had this wonderful idea, right, that my colleague, Dr. Machotka was at the time at the University of Leiden. And we are both, you know, born in Poland and educated in Poland. So we became friends quite quickly and we thought, well, why don't we do a project together? It would be fun. And she's an art historian. I am specialist on, you could say, history of consumption in in the broad sense. So we decided, oh, why don't we look at this packaging contemporary packaging practices and how they and their historical roots. So we were quite it's a kind of very catchy topic. So we want a museum or Sibhold house museum in Leiden already expressed interest. We got the funding and then we started putting putting the exhibition together. And after two or three months of work, we discovered that there is no connection between because as you as you rightly pointed out, that there is this all retrospective nostalgia kind of connection, but there is actually discontinuity rather than continuity. And then it was too late to, you know, cancel everything. We already had the opening day for the exhibition and then we decided why don't we just take this opportunity of this discovery to focus on exactly what we discovered the that there is no continuity between the past and the present.

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C: The packaging becomes increasingly important, more important than the content, and we see this, of course. There is and this is something that that my colleague, Dr. Machotka, actually argued that the wrapping of art objects from the early modern period, which was quite extensive as some viewers, some listeners might be aware of that, that the art objects in Japan are usually packed in several layers of. There is a furoshiki and then there is a box and there is another box. So very precious art objects are usually packed like that.

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C: And that's what we actually see in the contemporary practices, packaging practices in Japan. And the most extreme examples are, of course, the gifts, presents, or omiyage is part of that, so but it's becoming increasingly common in normal commodities.

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C: But we see that the it is the packaging that that it becomes important, becomes actually the primary focus of attention and what is inside is actually irrelevant or the kind of secondary nature and this is what we see increasingly, for example, when we see the aesthetic aspects of ekiben, so the kind of aesthetic connection with the place is more important very often than what is actually being eaten.

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C: So in the early 20th century, it was the ekiben wrappers. So the you know, the piece of paper where when there was usually the connection with the place, so it was would be like Mount Fuji when the station was near the Mount Fuji or the more modern types of ekiben, So for example, in the skiing areas, there would be a kind of a figure of a skier put on it. So it starts very simply with ekiben wrappers. And there is in Japan fortunately tons of collectors of ekiben operas. So we have, fortunately, a magnificent collection of ekiben wrappers since the 1920s, actually. And those collectors also publish books, their collections in all kinds of publications. So this is a tremendous, tremendously useful source.

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C: So we see this. So there is the omiyage and ekiben that have this exclusivity in them through the aesthetic connection with the place, and we see that this tendency that starts in the early 20th century is kind of expanding to everyday commodities. So we have like confectionary that is only available for a certain period of time, seasonal confectionary in a very particular packaging. So there is at that point. There is no connection with the place, although we could argue, like, for example, the Kit Kat would be one packaging. It would be one example of, you know, this this practice going out of hand, actually.

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C: But we see increasingly that this branding strategies that were that were initially invented for the purpose of omiyage and ekiben are expanding to other commercial products, I would say food, because that's what I'm kind of focusing on.

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S: Well, food is a big category, so it's enough to focus on. When you say Kit Kats, it makes me smile because a lot of times when I visit Japan, I’m asked to and I bring back Kit Kats, the chocolates themselves are not exclusive to Japan. But, well, the flavours often are, and they are exclusive to a location like a city or a prefecture, or kisetsugentei, when it’s only seasonal. And, also, I think they might have had sine Kit Kats exclusive to airports.

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C: Well, this brings me to actually kind of took full circle to back to my botulinum yogurt that I discussed in the book, which is that it is the stories, in the case of packaging, it's the stories that we see on the packaging. But in the case of meibutsu, it was the stories that were told by the publishers of the travelogues and were depicted on woodblock prints. It's the stories that made the meibutsu and omiyage special, but these stories were hardly ever based on any reality. So while they are essential for the popularity of meibutsu and omiyage. They are manufactured in the same way as what washoku is today.

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S: Thank you so much for your time today. It's been fascinating and I'm really looking forward to your ongoing research, of course your forthcoming book. Thank you especially because this is a work in progress. So you're talking about research that you're right in the middle of conducting, so. I'm really grateful for your willingness and generosity to share your expertise with us

[00:26:27] C: Well, thank you for your time and for. Sharing my research with your listeners.

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S: Again, thank you to Dr. Katarzyna Cwiertka, and to our listeners, thank you for joining the Nordic Asia podcast, showcasing Nordic collaboration, and studying Asia.

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