Tampopo and Varieties of Culinary Nationalism

What we eat says a lot about what we are. Tampopo is about food, but in telling stories of food, it touches all aspects of society and life.
Similarly, in categorizing different dishes from the movie into national categories, we will explore not just conceptions of the Japanese nation in relation to others, but many interesting details about food and life.
0:00 Introduction
1:36 Japanese Cuisine
4:03 Western Cuisine
7:07 Chinese Cuisine
8:22 Ramen
10:23 Primal Tastes
11:33 Conclusion
Works Cited
Aoki, Tamotsu. “The Domestication of Chinese Foodways in Contemporary Japan: Ramen and Peking Duck.” Changing Chinese Foodways in Asia, 2001, 219-33.
Cam, Lisa. “Yakiniku: Wagyu Beef Eateries for the Meat Lovers.” South China Morning Post, November 13, 2019. www.scmp.com/magazines/good-e....
Coates, Jamie. “Between Product and Cuisine: The Moral Economies of Food among Young Chinese People in Japan.” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 48, no. 3 (December 2019): 381-99. doi.org/10.1177/1868102619898927.
Curry, Adrian. “Movie Poster of the Week: Juzo Itami’s ‘Tampopo.’” MUBI, October 21, 2016. mubi.com/notebook/posts/movie-....
Ehrlich, Linda C. “Itami Juzo’s Tampopo (1985).” Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, 2007, 263.Hoff, Katharina. “The Colonial Noodle Soup: Food and Cultural Identity in Juzo Itami’s Tampopo,” n.d.
Iles, Timothy. “Tampopo: Food and the Postmodern in the Work of Itami Jûzô.” Japanstudien 12, no. 1 (January 2001): 283-97. doi.org/10.1080/09386491.2001....
Itoh, Makiko. “Soft-Set Omurice: From the Big Screen to the Kitchen Table.” The Japan Times, June 15, 2019. www.japantimes.co.jp/life/201....
Kobayashi, Akira. “Some Prefer Noodles: Soba and Udon in the Edo Period.” nippon.com, November 20, 2020. www.nippon.com/en/japan-topic....
Motohashi, Takashi. “A Cultural History of Noodle Slurping.” nippon.com, June 20, 2017. www.nippon.com/en/views/b07501/.
Ogihara, Yuji. “The Rise in Individualism in Japan: Temporal Changes in Family Structure, 1947-2015.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 49, no. 8 (September 2018): 1219-26. doi.org/10.1177/0022022118781504.
Omori, Isami. “The Redefinition of Washoku as National Cuisine: Food Politics and National Identity in Japan.” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 7, no. 12 (2017): 6.
Serper, Zvika. “Eroticism in Itami’s ‘The Funeral’ and ‘Tampopo’: Juxtaposition and Symbolism.” Cinema Journal 42, no. 3 (2003): 70-95.
Vitali, Elisa. “The Role of Language and the Significance of Primordialism in Nationalistic Rhetoric.” Colloquium: New Philologies 4, no. 3 (December 2019): 149-90. doi.org/10.23963/cnp.2019.4.3.13.

[@a-love-supreme]

this is such a cool analysis! great video!

[@kanyambu7874]

As an african,i love films that showcase other people's culture.It's through such ,we see places we never heard any idea existed and may even decide to visit them to experience the culture first hand.
Good work👏

[@OtakuBox]

Jeez, it's been like, 4 ish years since I last saw Tampopo, let alone thought about it. Makes me really want to revisit that time where I watched a bunch of Japanese live action film. At the time I think the biggest part of the film for me was the Western food representation and the idolization of the West as you noted, but the dissections of Japanese/Chinese cuisine was really apt and interesting, especially because there was so much blending and muddling of what one would expect like with domesticity.
Watching this made me think about all the food related shows I've seen, Sweetness and Lightning, Restaurant to Another World, Poco's Udon World, hell even Koufuku Grafiti, and the way food is used in their context. There's probably at least some level of cultural analysis in something like Restaurant, but I've never really considered it until now, it's quite an interesting lens to think about, so thanks for making this.

[@windgemini66]

interesting, never heard of this film

[@Cybernaut551]

"It's better to be a wise vagabond than a rich fool."
-- Itami
That's my thoughts exactly but I couldn't summarise it better.

[@angryguythatedits]

Nice work on the riffs!

[@igkewg]

Will you still make RUclips videos?

[@Thixotrofic]

Perhaps! I have thought of it. I may give it another try.

[@haruzanfuucha]

I always found this movie to be pretty racist with its portrayals of Chinese people and culture, and how it treats the Japanese appropriation of Chinese culture as "improving" it when nativized and molded with Western influences.