Local Food in Japan

Abstract

Local foods are foods that are rendered local via discourse, informed by political and social boundaries as well as geoclimatic, historical, and cultural factors that are deemed important. Locally sourced foodstuffs and traditional place-based recipes have been talked about and characterized differently at different historical junctures in Japan since the early modern period. Since late in the 20th-century, groups in Japan have promoted, protected, and even created local foods while participating in discourses referring to local foods as such using a variety of Japanese language terms. Examples from throughout the country demonstrate that food and locality are intertwined in a multiplicity of ways in contemporary Japan.