Ethnicities from food: Food culture of immigrants in a multiethnic area in Japan

The purpose of my presentation is to describe representations of ethnicities and memories of immigrants in a multiethnic area in Japan. Especially I focus on ethnicity brewed through food.

Global immigration has produced many multiethnic areas in Japan. Most of ethnicity studies in Japan have observed only ‘single’ ethnic group like Koreans or Brazilian in Japan. However, this traditional perspective is not useful to study the areas where ‘plural’ ethnic groups live together. Being directed dual diagram of host-guest relationship, traditional perspective also fails to understand multiethnic relationship. From micro-anthropological perspective, "eating" (here signifies not only food and its consumption, but also cuisine and selling grocery.) can be understood as a typical everyday practice. Moreover, food is strongly connected with the culture of immigrants. For these reason, my presentation focuses on the relationship between food and people.

This study is based on fieldwork in Tsurumi ward, Yokohama city, where historically many ethnic minorities including Okinawan, Korean, Chinese and Nikkei Latin American (Brazilian, Bolivian and Argentine etc.) have lived. In this multi ethnic area, I conducted participant observations to some ethnic groups (Okinawa Association, Brazilian NPO etc.). Also I conducted in-depth interviews with some families who have multiethnic backgrounds and experiences in order to understand their ethnicities and changes in the migration process through food.

My presentation describes transformation of ethnicity of migrants based on food from a global historical and spatial angle. From this ethnographical research, food can be understood as an integral of three codes; society, situation, and history. ‘Society’ code corresponds to an entangled country and the area. ‘Situation’ code means a commutative situation according to time, place and occasion. ‘History’ code is aimed at a family's experience inherited among parents and children. Through this understanding, ethnicity is described as an arena of essentialism, hybridity, and flexibility.