- 會議論文
The Invention of Delicacy: Cantonese dim-sum in Yokohama Chinatowns
並列摘要
Yokohama Chinatown, began in 1859, being a local ethnic community with exotic and foreign characteristics, has been one of the most favored destinations for local Japanese tourists in the search of ＂real＂ Chinese goods and cuisine. With the drastic change occurred particularly in the last few decades, Yokohama Chinatown has extremely different appearance comparing with that in the late 1940s. Apart from the concern of how economic development becomes possible through Chinese restaurants, it is also reminded that the search of delicacy in the Japanese society has been playing an important role in the revitalization and development of the ethnic community by the growth of domestic tourism. Looking at different eras in the Japanese post-war period, I investigate the cultural significance of food and cuisine in relation to the awareness of internationalization initiated by the Japanese government in the early 1980s. Here, in this paper, I seek to clarify Yokohama Chinatown's change starting from the late 1970s in relation to the public's search of delicacy, represented by the authentic Cantonese ＂dim-sum＂ among some leading Chinese restaurants. In other words, the search of delicacies can help us to investigate the construction of the cultural identity as an international person (being a kokkusal-iin) within the Japanese socio-cultural context. This paper aims to examine particularly the cultural meanings of the emergence of ＂delicacy＂ in Japanese post-war society through exotic and foreign foodways provided by Chinese restaurants in the Yokohama Chinatown. According to different social values connoted by Chinese cuisine in Japan, I would divided the post-war period into four eras as follows: (1) Japan's post-war history about Chinese cuisine when Chinese delicacies was high society oriented (mainly those cuisine in the northern part of China, and it might due with the Manchuria period as well as people come back with different kinds of lifeways and foodways involved); (2) during the economic development in the 1960s, when the new emerged middle class who have been looking for something difference, including Chinese noodles ( ramen in Japanese), fried rice, dumpling and mass- produced in-expensive chuka-ryori (means Chinese cuisine in Japanese) which combined different regional cuisine; and finally, (3) from the late 1970s when the idea of internationalization became an obsession in the practice of daily experience which includes social commitment such as learning English, overseas tourism, study abroad and the search of exotic as well as authentic cultural experience for the mean of distinction. The search of delicacies became more obvious than ever, as we have seen, the first Man-Han Imperial Banquet in 1977, organized by a Chinese restaurant in Yokohama, emphasizes those exotic ingredients and unusual culinary skills, and also a popular TV program, started in the early 1990s, called ryori-no-teitsujin (iron man of cooking) has changed the social value of food and cuisine in the Japanese daily experience. The above social change can be investigated through the introduction and invention of Cantonese ＂dim-sum＂ in the Japanese society, especially the construction of Yokohama Chinatown as the ＂real＂ place for Chinese cuisine. Furthermore, the search of delicacy in Japanese contemporary society is not an isolated social phenomena occurred in Yokohama Chinatown, but is embedded in the social everyday life elsewhere in Japan. Again, the change of Chinese community in Japan does not only provide us an insight into how overseas Chinese in Yokohama Chinatown survived in -between two or more cultures, but also offers as a tool to discern how Japanese construct their ＂self＂ in terms of other cultures as well as the ideas of otherness.