“the way of the sword, the way of the chef”
August 28, 2016 6:10 AM   Subscribe

Food Manga: Where Culture, Conflict And Cooking All Collide [NPR.org] “In Japan, nearly every interest has a manga dedicated to it, whether it's sports, music or shooting pool. So it's no wonder that food, which has always been tied to Japan's cultural identity, has skyrocketed as a genre of manga, which represents about 40 percent of all books published in that country. Food manga first appeared in the 1980s, when the Japanese economy was strong, says Nancy Stalker, professor of Japanese history and culture at the University of Texas at Austin. One of the first, Oishinbo, ran for more than 20 years and became the basis for an anime series, as have many manga since. Conflict and cooking are at the heart of many food manga: Food Wars, Soldier of Food, Wakakozake, Detective Glutton, Solitary Gourmet, Criminal Grub, Cooking Master Boy, Antique Bakery, High Plains Gourmet.”

Related:

- Japan’s 10 Best Culinary Manga [Medium]
1. Shota’s Sushi (将太の寿司)
2. Ramen Discovery Legend (ラーメン発見伝)
3. Cooking Papa (クッキングパパ)
4. Natsuko’s Sake (夏子の酒)
5. Natsu’s Brewery (奈津の蔵)
6. One Man’s Train Station Bento Journey (駅弁ひとり旅)
7. The Ambassador’s Chef (大使閣下の料理人)
8. Professor Genmai’s Bento Box (玄米先生の弁当箱)
9. Third-Generation Tsukiji Fish Market Man (築地魚河岸三代目)
10. Oishinbo (美味しんぼ)
- The 5 Best Farm Mangas [Modern Farmer]
1. Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture by Masayuki Ishikawa
2. Silver Spoon by Hiromu Arakawa
3. Genmai Sensei no Bentou Bako by Kitahara Masaki
4. Shota no Sushi by Daisuke Terasawa
5. Natsuko no Sake by Akira Oze
- The Joys of "Oishinbo" [The New Yorker]
“This expertise is vast, and it makes the series an enlightening read. Most of the stories center on the discovery of some aspect of Japanese cooking: as Yamaoka samples fish and mills rice, he also guides the reader through new ingredients and old traditions, with the help of copious footnotes. I did not know, for example, that black edamame are a delicacy, or that sake comes in so many varieties. But his mission is not only a search for good ingredients. The book constantly admonishes fanciness when simplicity will suffice, and flourish that ignores basic principles. In one story, an amateur chef given to showy knife skills has to peel a three-metre strip off of a single radish to prove his worth. In another, a worker attempts to impress his date by eating elegant French food, only to realize that nothing is more satisfying than ramen noodles. (French food, it might be noted, does not come off very well in the series).”
- “Osen”: a Manga That Conveys Japanese Food Philosophy and Tradition [Going Japanesque]
There is a concept that is called “Shokuiku (Food education)”. This concept promotes an idea that selecting and eating one’s food properly is the basis of growing a healthy person. This concept is widely adopted, for example in instructions at Japanese kindergartens. Valuing traditional dishes as a part of the culture and passing them down correctly is also a part of Shokuiku. This time, we would like to introduce “Osen”, a manga that describes Japanese culture with an emphasis on “food”. Yoshio Ezaki is a young man, who is expected to succeed his family’s Japanese inn operation. As part of his training, he was employed at “Issho-an”, a restaurant touted as one of the best in the industry with its long established history. The beautiful maître d’ of the restaurant is Sen Handa. Though usually lazy and loves drinking, she is capable of providing a top-notch, superb hospitality when it is necessary. This is a humanity drama of this woman and people around her, featuring her multi-talented efforts made for the sake of customers and other people, in the areas of food, ceramics and so on.
posted by Fizz (38 comments total) 49 users marked this as a favorite
 
Food Wars (Shokugeki no Soma) is one of the best manga/anime right now. The second season is currently streaming on CrunchyRoll and I highly recommend it. It's entertaining and fairly informative. Quite a bit of food history and knowledge is packed into each episode.*

* That being said, be aware that the manga/show highly sexualizes and objectifies men and women (soooo much fan service). There are scenes where men and women experience orgasmic delight as a result of the foods that they are tasting. It can be a bit silly and at times too much, but if you turn off your brain for a little while, it's a delightfully entertaining show.
posted by Fizz at 6:16 AM on August 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


Also, throwing in a recommendation for Silver Spoon. I never knew that a manga/anime about farming could be so interesting or fascinating, but it honestly is.
It depicts the daily life of Yuugo Hachiken, a high school student from Sapporo who enrolled at Ezo fleeing from the demands of his strict father. However, he soon learns that life on an agricultural school is not as easy as he initially believed. Unlike his new classmates, he has no intention of following an agricultural career after graduating, although he envies them for already having set goals for their lives and the pursuit of their dreams.
posted by Fizz at 7:04 AM on August 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


While not Manga, I thought of Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.
posted by clavdivs at 7:13 AM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


Food Wars (Shokugeki no Soma) is also one of my favorites.

Other manga/anime that may be of interest:
Yumeiro Patissiere, about a Japanese middle school student who goes to a culinary boarding school specializing in pastries. Features magical "Sweets Spirits" who assist some of the students in learning about baking.

Sweetness & Lightning about a single parent who decides to learn how to cook. While I haven't seen this show or read the manga, there seems to be a lot of buzz online about this one.

My favorite for sheer insanity level is Fighting Foodons. A sort of cross between cooking manga and monster training manga, the chefs cook up dishes that come to life and fight each other. It's like Iron Chef meets Pokemon.
posted by cruelfood at 7:39 AM on August 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


Sweetness & Lightning is great! Makes me want to cook japanese everytime I watch it, and Tsumugi is so cute !!!

I like Food Wars but the fanservice can be distracting sometimes.
posted by Pendragon at 7:48 AM on August 28, 2016


I just want to give a shout out to Yakitate Japan as one of my personal favorites in this genre. Delightfully silly and informative. You will never crave bread so much in your life.
posted by Aznable at 7:49 AM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


Food Wars is awful and misogynist. Made it through two episodes before the puerile sexism overwhelmed anything positive I could find in it. I might end up hate watching it during my exercise sessions, but it fell off our household's regular viewing schedule faster than anything ever has.

Sweetness and Lightning is great, though. It's Yatsubato! only food-centric, and it brings all the feels. Since Yatsubato! will never be adapted to anime, this is as close as you'll get.

Wakakozake was made into a single-season series of short episodes that are delightful to watch. Crunchyroll has it archived.
posted by ardgedee at 8:15 AM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


Slightly OT: Midnight Diner (Shinya Shokudō), while not a food manga in the strict sense, features a simple dish that relates to the story in each chapter. The manga is not for everyone, but those who love it really do.
posted by fatehunter at 8:15 AM on August 28, 2016


Miles Thomas, Brand Manager at Crunchy Roll, an anime and drama video-streaming web site, remembers an anime called Grave of the Fireflies. "One of the most evocative films I've seen, about two orphans during World War II who are starving," he says. "They steal food, trying their hardest to survive. There are these candies that this girl really likes in this metal tin. They are this girl's entire world."
Some tie-in merchandise hits harder than others.
posted by sukeban at 8:21 AM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


I fell off the manga wangon for a while but I just started reading again with the aid of Dungeon Meshi. It mixes D&D-style exploration and adventure plot with cooking, using monsters as ingredients. The characters are delightful. Highly recommended.

fatehunter - Shinya Shokudo is lovely stuff - I was hooked after a couple of chapters when I first discovered it.
posted by shortfuse at 8:23 AM on August 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


In another, a worker attempts to impress his date by eating elegant French food, only to realize that nothing is more satisfying than ramen noodles. (French food, it might be noted, does not come off very well in the series).”

Obligatory: Tampopo French Restaurant Scene.
posted by languagehat at 8:23 AM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


Food Wars is awful and misogynist.

And tropey as hell. I mean, sure it's anime and different cultural standards apply, but I find the show cringey and generally difficult to watch with its lazy storeytelling, sexist imagery, etc, etc. As most anime, it's junk made by 30-somethings pretending to be 20-somethings for an audience of teens.

Sorry for the parade pissing but I'm getting tired of anime.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:25 AM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


Foci for Analysis, Ardgedee,

You're not wrong about the misogyny and puerile nature at the heart of this show. It is so very trope-y and fan service-y. Watching Food Wars is like eating a bag of potato chips. You know that eating the entire bag is unhealthy for you, it's filled with all kinds of things that are unnatural, but it's also easy to consume and highly addictive. We should be better than this, but sometimes you just get lazy and want something easy to enjoy.
posted by Fizz at 8:43 AM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


Nthing Yakitate. A great show and also really packed with decent information about bread and bread recipes and techniques.
posted by Naib at 8:54 AM on August 28, 2016


I don't know where these Japanese recipe comics come from, or how to give them proper credit, but they have been a game changer for me. So simple and easy to digest, and each one I've made has been spot on!
posted by furtive at 9:00 AM on August 28, 2016 [4 favorites]


I am a female anime / manga fan and I found Food Wars extremely unpleasant, without even a smidgen of junk food joy.

On the other hand I did enjoy Dagashi Kashi, even with its share of fan service.

Silver Spoon and Midnight Diner are both great.

Among Fumi Yoshinaga's food manga, I think I would recommend What Did You Eat Yesterday? over Antique Bakery, as the focus is on the shopping and preparation of daily meals, and includes recipes, plus the main character doing the shopping and cooking keeps a running tally in his head of how much a given meal costs.

Sweetness and Lightning is all the feels about home cooking, comfort foods, the companionship of cooking and eating together, conveying love through food. Just all the feels.
posted by needled at 9:33 AM on August 28, 2016 [5 favorites]


I tried to watch Food Wars, but within a minute of the first episode, a girl has an orgasm from fried rice, and within about 5 minutes there's someone being raped(?) by a squid dish.

So, yeah, no. Nope, nope.

Yakitate has the tropes of food orgasms and such but never seems mean-spirited. It's also the one that most makes me want to cook things myself.
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:52 AM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


In the vein of Dungeon Meishi linked above, I try and plug Rutabaga as much as possible. First volume in B&W is online, vols 1 and 2 in color available at stores.
posted by curious nu at 10:07 AM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


3. Cooking Papa (クッキングパパ)

Well that finally explains why a restaurant near me is called "Cooking Papa". It's a Chinese place but the owner is presumably a fan of that Japanese manga and maybe identifies with the story.
posted by w0mbat at 10:55 AM on August 28, 2016


want to submit another plug for Silver Spoon. they had this whole arc where they 1) found an abandoned wood-fire stove, 2) started raising animals, 3) rebuilt the stove, 4) felt guilty about slaughtering animals, and 5) made pizza that their whole class enjoyed and started paying for. and that's not accounting for the detailed explanation about horse riding competitions (English style, mostly), explanations about what exactly is a cloaca, pretty much nil fan service, and lots of character development thrown into the mix

also, as a bit of trivia, the author/artist is Hiromu Arakawa who was the author/artist of Full Metal Alchemist. it has the same ridiculous kind of humor (including a very Fuhrer looking dad figure) but it's very much slice-of-life compared to FMA's young adult, constant action plot. she apparently had spent a lot of time living on a farm and this manga is a reflection of all the things she had learned while there!
posted by runt at 11:34 AM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


oh and I guess no mention of the ridiculousness that is Toriko which, at least to me, reads like the gayest manga in popular circulation right now where beautiful, extremely muscular and barely dressed food hunting men go out of their way to save their platonic tiny male chef friend from danger and women are pretty much all dowdy distractions from where the real relationships are
posted by runt at 11:39 AM on August 28, 2016


Toriko feels like a battle manga dressed as cooking manga. Lots of cooking manga are similar, I suppose - so many duels and contests. It must be hard to resist the lure of what works / sells well for shounen manga. Even Oishinbo has used the competition trope over many years and stories, although I like the chapters where the problem / conflict isn't just a setup for a cook-off.

Not that battle mangas all suck. Some Toriko arcs I read were good fun. Even old chestnuts like Bleach (RIP) had some highs.
posted by shortfuse at 11:53 AM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


she apparently had spent a lot of time living on a farm

Arakawa comes from a Hokkaido farm family! She talks about it in "Noble Farmer" (Hyakushō Kizoku) which isn't translated to English AFAIK but was published in Spain by Norma Editorial and in France by Kurokawa. Of course, her family is drawn as cows, as she's always done her self-portraits in the FMA bonus pages.
posted by sukeban at 12:02 PM on August 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


at least to me, reads like the gayest manga in popular circulation right now where beautiful, extremely muscular and barely dressed food hunting men go out of their way to save their platonic tiny male chef friend from danger

Not to derail: but you obviously haven't read Free! aka High Speed! (ハイ☆スピード! Hai Supīdo!?) because trust me, it's as gay and fan-service-y as you can get. The anime is beautifully drawn and though the fan-service is overwhelming at times, it's also one of the best sports-manga out there. Definitely worth picking up, assuming you can set aside those fan-service hang-ups. So many shots of muscular bare-chested athletic men wearing skimpy swim-suits.
posted by Fizz at 1:33 PM on August 28, 2016


I remember a year or two ago they had posters for Kōfuku Graffiti all along the train line I live on in Kyoto, and I checked it out on Crunchyroll and gave up after a single episode due to irrational anger at poor subtitles and also the way it was, as a friend once described Rachel Ray, "shot like a porno."

Which is not to say the whole genre deserves to be written off. Polar Bear Café is a fun slice-of-life series with occasional dry humor and some genuinely educational bits about coffee.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:05 PM on August 28, 2016


Misogynist stuff isn't easy for me to enjoy though, so it rather ruins the analogy.

I am so interested in cooking anime now though.
posted by geek anachronism at 4:03 PM on August 28, 2016


> Sorry for the parade pissing but I'm getting tired of anime.

Anime -- at least what's accessible to English speakers -- is better than it has ever been, and I'm saying this as somebody who rented his first anime video tape in the late 80s and whose enthusiasm has waxed and waned several times over the decades. There's a whole lot more diversity now in what's appealing and interesting, and grown-ass middle agers can enjoy anime about topics interesting to grown-ass middle agers, without apologies and excuses.

I mean, there's a lot of shit too. But don't let that get you down. Keep an ear to the ground (and an eye on the quarterly Mefi Fanfare post on the eve of every new anime season).
posted by ardgedee at 5:00 PM on August 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


There's a live action version of Wakakozake of which CrunchyRoll recently added the first season AFTER simulcasting the second. For a while there I thought the dorama was meant to be a sequel to the anime. :P

Going to throw in my suggestions of Bartender, Kami no Shizuku / Drops of God, and Golden Kamuy. The first two are about cocktails and wine, while the last isn't primarily a cooking manga but there's a lot of cooking scenes and some food history that's particular to the Ainu people.
posted by vaghjar at 6:02 PM on August 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


What's annoying about Oishinbo in English is that we can read it only in a heavily edited version. As I recall, the English version is more or less excerpts from the series, chopped up and put back together again out of sequence with endnotes to explain the missing parts. I've always been dying to read the original unedited series, but as far as I know, it's not available in English and I don't read Japanese.
posted by holborne at 8:14 PM on August 28, 2016


The funny thing about Wakakozake is how they managed to turn a three minute anime into a half hour live action series. But really, that original anime is the best at showing the pure unadulterated joy of eating, two and half minutes of anticipation followed by thirty seconds of bliss as the protagonist finally gets to enjoy her meal. And no nonsense about the joy of cooking, or of eating responsible, just a woman going out for a meal after work.

Food Wars is drawn by somebody who previously did hentai, so it's no surprise that it's high on the fanservice; what saves it for me is that the series isn't shy about disrobing buff men as well as buxom women not to mention the various old men judging competitions by shedding their clothes. The series has lost its way a bit though, with the latest arc.

Amaama to Inazuma is great -- a teacher who just lost his wife six months ago learns to cook for his three year old daughter with the help of one of his pupils, whose mother runs a restaurant and is a tv chef. It's incredibly sweet, but that bit of backstory, that layer of grief and loss existing just below the surface, gives it an edge and depth that elevates it above just being a cute manga.

Another manga series with a similar setting is Ane no Onaka wo Fukuramaseru no wa Boku "It is me to fill the stomach of my sister" as MAL translates the title as, about two step siblings who lost their parents and are now living together on their own. She's in high school, he goes to elementary school and they cook for each other every other chapter, while explaining their recipes to the reader. It's fun, but I'm sort of keeping a wary eye out for the not quite incest that may pop up, the author making such a big deal about them not being blood related.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:27 PM on August 28, 2016


I remember a year or two ago they had posters for Kōfuku Graffiti all along the train line I live on in Kyoto, and I checked it out on Crunchyroll and gave up after a single episode due to irrational anger at poor subtitles and also the way it was, as a friend once described Rachel Ray, "shot like a porno."

Which at least spared you from being infected with this earworm for weeks on end, unlike me, but it's a vbit of a pity as it got better. A strange series though. On the one hand, it's clearly a feel good/slice of moe series about cute girls cooking together and becoming friends that way, but the main character's background is horrifying once you stop to think about it.

The series starts after all with her cooking for herself, trying one of the recipes her deceased grandmother taught her, then eating it and wondering why it doesn't taste of anything. She thinks it's because she's not that good at cooking, but it's clear she might just actually be clinically depressed, what with living alone, her grandmother dead and her parents living abroad and not overtly bothered by not having seen her in years. She gets better through the joy of cooking for others, but it still leaves a bit of a bad taste to have this sort of cute, fluffy series about a middle schooler left alone suffering from depression because her parents find their work more important than her.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:20 AM on August 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


There are lots of cooking Japanese dramas too. For several seasons, Kodoku no Gurume (the Solitary Gourmet) aired. This was a 30 minute show about a self-employed man who, after a business meeting, would inevitably get hungry and spend time searching for food about a train station. When finding the place he liked, he'd order lots of small dishes and eat to his heart's content.

There's also the currently airing Otoko Meshi about a man who is forced to stay with a yakuza. The yakuza doesn't know when he'll die, so he makes every meal great. One of the actors in said show has just been found guilty of a serious crime, so the show may be cut short.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 4:01 AM on August 29, 2016


Ms. Moonlight, I think they are making a new series of Kodoku no Gurume. I've seen it on tv recently, and Mrs. Ghidorah told me it was a show based on a popular manga, though I didn't catch the title.

Cooking manga might be the perfect thing for me to finally start studying Japanese again. Awesome post.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:14 AM on August 29, 2016


I'm going to have to try Sweetness and Lightning now. I originally "nope"ed the hell away from it when I read the description and saw that it involved a high school teacher and one of his students.

> On the other hand I did enjoy Dagashi Kashi, even with its share of fan service.

I enjoyed this show way more than I thought I would, too.
posted by Gev at 5:52 AM on August 29, 2016


> Which at least spared you from being infected with this earworm for weeks on end, unlike me

Not only did I know what this was without having to click on it but it also immediately got stuck in my head. Again.
posted by Gev at 6:00 AM on August 29, 2016


As I recall, the English version is more or less excerpts from the series, chopped up and put back together again out of sequence with endnotes to explain the missing parts.

That's mainly due to the series spanning a decade. It would be pretty much impossible to make Oishinbo a viable series in the West without the concatenation because of the size of it.

As for Toriko, the best description I ever heard for it was "Chowder meets Fist of the North Star".
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:18 AM on August 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm going to have to try Sweetness and Lightning now. I originally "nope"ed the hell away from it when I read the description and saw that it involved a high school teacher and one of his students.

You don't have to worry. Maybe this is a bit of a spoiler, but I read the manga.
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The student does have a bit of a crush on the teacher, but she knows it's just a crush and does not act on it. The teacher up until the last issue I read, doesn't know about the crush. So nothing to "nope" about.
posted by Pendragon at 10:49 AM on August 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


The tension in "Sweetness and Lightning" is handled realistically, I thought. The teacher seeks advice from other faculty about the wisdom of visiting his student's place, and he remains mindful of ensuring appearances match the reality of the hands-off platonic friendship he wants to maintain. For the student's part, I think she looks to him as a father figure at least as much as like a high school crush. Also I think she is enjoying the opportunity to learn cooking in front of appreciative guests, filling the gap she feels between her own skills and those of her celebrity chef mom who's perpetually too busy to teach her what she knows.

The show prefers to stay on the "nice" side of realism: the little girl is never in real danger when she goes outside alone, the teacher has a network of friends perpetually willing to babysit her, innocent crushes remain unspoken and innocent. Crises are short-lived and mostly averted. But it's okay, the stories are each setups for that week's preparation of another comfort food. They all complement each other.
posted by ardgedee at 6:38 PM on August 29, 2016


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