« [SSJ: 8055] Japan History Group, ISS University of Tokyo, 14 May 2013 | Main | [SSJ: 8057] Reminder: Invitation to a seminar on May 15 »

May 2, 2013

[SSJ: 8056] Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Announcement (Jordan Sand)

From: Sophia Univ., Institute of Comparative Culture
Date: 2013/05/02

Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2013

How Tokyo Invented Sushi
Jordan Sand
Associate Professor of Japanese History and Culture, Georgetown University May 10, 2013,
18:00-19:30
Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University Yotsuya Campus

Today sushi is a global phenomenon, coming in countless forms around the world. But the classic Edomae-zushi or nigirizushi, with pieces of raw fish laid over small hand-formed lumps of vinegared rice, was invented by restaurateurs in nineteenth-century Edo. What special conditions of the city of Edo-Tokyo produced this culinary invention, which would go on to represent Japanese cuisine itself? This presentation will explore the social and environmental context that produced Edomae-zushi, then consider how these conditions changed with modernization, and how, in turn, those changes affected sushi. Close examination of a familiar delicacy reveals a surprisingly rich history not only of Japanese gustatory choices, but of fisheries, of markets and class relations in urban Japan, and of the environmental effects of changing political regimes.

Jordan Sand is Associate Professor of Japanese History and Culture at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
He is the author of House and Home in Modern Japan (Harvard University Press, 2004) and Tokyo Vernacular:
Common Spaces, Local Histories, Found Objects (University of California Press, forthcoming 2013). He is also co-editor of Flammable Cities: Urban Conflagration and the Making of the Modern World (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012). Other publications include "Good Science, Bad Science and Taste Cultures: A Short History of MSG" (Gastronomica, Fall 2005), and the journal special issue "Imperial Japan and Colonial Sensibility" (Positions, Spring, 2013). He is presently working on a book about material culture in the Japanese empire.
Lecture in English / No registration necessary

Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture
7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, JAPAN
TEL: +81-(0)3-3238-4082
FAX: +81-(0)3-3238-4081
Email: diricc[at]sophia.ac.jp
Web page: http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/index.html

Approved by ssjmod at 11:19 AM