Foodscapes of Contemporary Japanese Women Writers: An Ecocritical Journey Around the Hearth of Modernity

Food binds us to each other and to the environment. But the ways that food brings together various forms of life changes in different times and places. Here, Yuki explores the logics and systems of value that surround food consumption, distribution, and production as expressed in the works of four female Japanese authors: Ishimure Michiko, Taguchi Randy, Morisaki Kazue, and Nashiki Kaho. Yuki uses interviews and socially informed literary analysis to weave together multiple voices and perspectives to answer to the following questions: Why do some people knowingly eat contaminated food? How have the commodification and quantification of food affected our social and environmental relations? How has the meaning of making and sharing food changed and for whom? And how are changing relations to food affected by changing relations of language to meaning? This book is of interest to scholars of food studies, environmental studies, ecocriticism, modernity, Japan and Japanese literature.

Reviews of Foodscapes of Contemporary Japanese Women Writers: An Ecocritical Journey Around the Hearth of Modernity

"A fascinating study of the frequently fraught relationships among food, literature, the environment, and modernity, Yuki Masami's Foodscapes of Contemporary Japanese Women Writers is an innovative contribution to the growing body of writing on Japanese literature and the environment. The book's distinctive format, combining pioneering analyzes of creative work by Ishimure Michiko, Taguchi Randy, Morisaki Kazue, and Nashiki Kaho with transcripts of interviews with these key environmentally engaged writers, thus bringing to the table multiple voices, offers a bounty of resources for scholars and enthusiasts of Japan, Japanese literature and culture, food studies, and ecocriticism alike." – Karen L. Thornber, Professor of Comparative Literature and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, USA "A fine example of fourth-wave ecocriticism in its focus on both the discourse and the material nature of food, Masami's book also reminds me of Ishimure's own work in its multidimensional, many-voiced texture. Readers will appreciate how the book so gracefully, so lightly, introduces Japanese environmental history, food culture, gendered experience, and ideas of sustainability – in addition to sharing the words and ideas of several major contemporary writers. This work also shows the evolution of Yuki's scholarship from soundscapes to foodscapes." – Scott Slovic, Professor of English, University of Idaho, USA and co-editor of Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data