Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Eating Japanese food in diaspora as identity building: The case of a Japanese Canadian church

Eating Japanese food in diaspora as identity building: The case of a Japanese Canadian church In the life of a Japanese Canadian Christian church, food – especially Japanese cuisine – occupies a central place in parish life. Food not only nurtures members of the congregation physically but it serves as a focal point for collective identity formation. In the community where the majority of members are still survivors of Japanese Canadian internment during World War II, I argue that by planning, preparing, and serving food, women constantly create and maintain the imagined homeland in a Canadian diaspora. Based on 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper illustrates the ways in which food serves as a symbolic means to create a homeland and define women’s position within that cultural creation. The paper also illustrates the ways in which ‘race’ is experienced in dynamic ways in relation to the group’s shifting position in the global arena by contrasting the bitter experience of Japanese Canadians during World War II with the recent popularity of Japanese food. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Contemporary Japan Taylor & Francis

Eating Japanese food in diaspora as identity building: The case of a Japanese Canadian church

Omori, Hisako
Contemporary Japan , Volume 29 (2): 14 – Jul 3, 2017
Download PDF

Eating Japanese food in diaspora as identity building: The case of a Japanese Canadian church

Abstract

In the life of a Japanese Canadian Christian church, food – especially Japanese cuisine – occupies a central place in parish life. Food not only nurtures members of the congregation physically but it serves as a focal point for collective identity formation. In the community where the majority of members are still survivors of Japanese Canadian internment during World War II, I argue that by planning, preparing, and serving food, women constantly create and maintain the imagined...
Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/eating-japanese-food-in-diaspora-as-identity-building-the-case-of-a-K7udPzz0yd
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2017 German Institute for Japanese Studies
ISSN
1869-2737
eISSN
1869-2729
DOI
10.1080/18692729.2017.1351024
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In the life of a Japanese Canadian Christian church, food – especially Japanese cuisine – occupies a central place in parish life. Food not only nurtures members of the congregation physically but it serves as a focal point for collective identity formation. In the community where the majority of members are still survivors of Japanese Canadian internment during World War II, I argue that by planning, preparing, and serving food, women constantly create and maintain the imagined homeland in a Canadian diaspora. Based on 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper illustrates the ways in which food serves as a symbolic means to create a homeland and define women’s position within that cultural creation. The paper also illustrates the ways in which ‘race’ is experienced in dynamic ways in relation to the group’s shifting position in the global arena by contrasting the bitter experience of Japanese Canadians during World War II with the recent popularity of Japanese food.

Journal

Contemporary Japan – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jul 3, 2017

Keywords: Japanese Canadian; identity; food; Japan; globalization; gender; church

References

  • Japanese mothers and obentōs: The lunch-box as ideological state apparatus
  • How to make a national cuisine: Cookbooks in contemporary India
  • Vietnamese New Year rice cakes: Iconic festive dishes and contested national identity
  • Transmission interrupted: Reconfiguring food, memory, and gender in the cookbook-memoirs of Middle Eastern exiles
  • How sushi went global
  • Keeping kosher: Eating and social identity among the Jews of Denmark
  • The taste of nationalism: Food politics in postsocialist Moscow
  • From ethnic to hip: Circuits of Japanese cuisine in Europe
  • The Protestant churches and the resettlement of Japanese Canadians in urban Ontario, 1942-1955
  • Eating tie bou jenn in Turin: Negotiating differences and building community among Senegalese migrants in Italy
  • Food and memory
  • Introduction: Consuming memories of home in constructing the present and imagining the future
  • Dominican migrant cooking: Food struggles, gendered labor, and memory-work in New York City
  • Rite of redemption: Japanese Canadians, remembrance day, and the restorative power of ritual. Paragrana
  • Collective experience of political violence as identity: Conversion, citizenship, and religious identities among second generation Japanese Canadians
  • Food and globalization
  • The labour and leisure of food production as a mode of ethnic identity building among Italians in Chicago, 1890-1940
  • Passing time, moving memories: Interpreting wartime narratives of Japanese Canadian women
  • Washoku, traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese, notably for the celebration of New Year
  • Ntsambu, the foul smell of home: Food, commensality and identity in the Comoros and in the diaspora
  • From the editors
  • “Real Belizean food”: Building identity in the transnational Caribbean