Nancy Stalker Lecture

Event Date: Tuesday, May 13 · 12:30 - 2pm CDT

THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT AND WILL NOT BE LIVE STREAMING.

Lunch will be provided to those who register.

LECTURE ABSTRACT

Acclaimed films featuring Japanese food, such as Tampopo and Jiro Dreams of Sushi, highlight individuals with zealous attitudes toward food appreciation. Such individuals are often known as bishokuka, or epicureans, and their highly disciplined, aesthetically centered devotion to gastronomy has shaped Japan's gastro-identity, which tends to accentuate culinary values such as seasonality, simplicity, the highest quality ingredients and tasteful aesthetics harmonizing food and tableware. As noted by food historian Katarzyna Cwiertka, however, modern Japanese foodways include not only such elite traditional values but also prominently feature Western and Chinese elements. How did seasonality, aesthetics, etc. become the quintessential values associated with Japanese cuisine when relatively few people eat with these qualities in mind?

These characteristics are deeply associated with Rosanjin Kitaōji (1883-1959), primarily known as a ceramicist in the West but one of Japan's best-known epicureans of the 20th century. As a restaurateur in the 1920s and 30s, he developed a reputation for insistence on the finest and freshest ingredients, exquisite ambience and crafting his own tableware to complement his food. The West would not embrace Japanese cuisine until the late 1980s, coinciding with Japan's own "gurume boom" and especially after the turn of the 21st century, when Michelin rankings began including Japan. At that moment Rosanjin’s epicurean and culturally nationalist views on Japanese culinary arts were rediscovered and became a kind of canon that helped shape essentialist views of Japanese cuisine, subsequently transmitted to the West.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Nancy K. Stalker is Professor & Sen Sōshitsu Distinguished Chair in the Department of History at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She received her Ph.D. in History and M.A. in East Asian Studies at Stanford University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. Her work centers on twentieth century culture in Japan, especially the commodification of practices and beliefs associated with traditional Japanese culture and the interpenetration of ideology, material culture, and the marketplace. In this vein, she has written articles in fields as diverse as popular religion, traditional arts and dietary regimes that examine how these areas intersect with larger constructs of historical modernity, including nationalism, imperialism, capitalism, and feminism.

PHOTOGRAPHY/VIDEOGRAPHY

Please note that there may be photography taken during this educational event by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies for archival and publicity purposes. By attending this event, participants are confirming their permission to be photographed and the University of Chicago’s right to use, distribute, copy, and edit the recordings in any form of media for non-commercial, educational purposes, and to grant rights to third parties to do any of the foregoing.

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