Bento blogs: Japanese women's expression in digital food culture

Abstract

For many Japanese mothers today, the bento (boxed lunch) that they prepare for their children is an expressive medium, used to construct intricate images that reference popular culture. Within the past five years, bento weblogs, through which Japanese and non-Japanese women regularly publish their food-based creations on the Internet, have become increasingly prevalent both in and outside of Japan. Through such blogs, women interact with a network of women in similar circumstances, sharing ideas and experiences on subjects such as childcare and food preparation. The bento's purpose thus transmutes from an intimate communication between preparer and consumer into a supportive public discourse between peers. In the context of Japan, women bloggers reiterate the importance of bento within Japanese socialization and the gendered role in preparing it, but claim a public setting for their work. Blogs thus offer a visual and literal articulation of the effort that goes into these otherwise ephemeral creations.

Keywords:

• blogs
• women
• bento
• Japan
• decorated food
• lunchbox

Notes

1. Obentō is the honorific form for the noun. In this paper I will use the common form without diacritics, bento.

2. Kyaraben is a compound contraction of kyarakuta, the Japanese Romanization of the English “character” and the Japanese “bento.” It is also transliterated as charaben.

3. At the time of writing this article, there is no consistent term that describes people who make bento. I have chosen the term bentoist, used by Makiko Itoh on her blog, Just Bento. In a blog post titled, “What do you call a bento creator?” (8 November 2010), Itoh critiques some of the bento-related wasei-eigo (English loan words and morphemes) used in Japan, including obentā and karisuma (from charisma) and opens up a reader discussion on the subject (http://justbento.com).

4. Anna the Red 2008b.

5. Anna the Red 2008a.

6. Interview with Anna the Red, 9 September 2009.

7. Most preschools (nursery and kindergarten) do not have lunch facilities and require that parents provide their children with a lunch box. Elementary schools often do provide lunch, so mothers need not prepare lunch, unless perhaps for a school outing or event like Sports Day. High schools commonly do not have lunch facilities, making home-made bento necessary again.

8. See for instance Russell and Echchaibi 2009, or the University of Minnesota's online collection of academic articles on blogging, Into the Blogosphere (Gurak et al. n.d.).

9. Economist 2010.

10. Although the bento blog has assumed a trans-cultural presence, with non-Japanese enthusiasts in countries such as the United States, France, and Indonesia, this article is concerned with tracing its development among Japanese women who have experienced bento as a familiar part of everyday life and now negotiate its representation and meaning in a new role on the Internet. Yet, while the basis for this study begins with Japanese female bento bloggers, I could not limit my focus to bloggers that were physically in Japan. Some bentoists blog from Europe, the United States, and other Asian countries. Furthermore, as the international online bento community continues to grow, communication boundaries have shifted; Japanese bento bloggers who initially only corresponded with bloggers in the Japanese blogosphere have begun to explore connections with non-Japanese bento bloggers. With online communication tools, these disparate geographies cohere as digital publics or communities, sustained through social networking sites such as Twitter and file sharing sites such as flickr. It therefore became necessary to consider the bento blog genre as an evolving web of groups that include Japanese and non-Japanese participants, women and indeed some men. These groups may have varying reasons for blogging about bento, however, and it is therefore necessary to situate their mode of expression in relation to broader social movements. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss an in-depth comparison of Japanese and non-Japanese bento blogs, my study is informed by this multifaceted nature of the genre.

11. Unlike the mommy blog (kosodate nikki, lit. child-rearing diary), which focuses explicitly on child rearing and may occasionally mention food, the kyaraben blog may only reference childcare and housework but is not devoted to that specific topic. While women do author the majority of kyaraben blogs, the genre is not limited to mothers. Moreover, even when a mother writes a kyaraben blog, the bento she blogs about are not necessarily made for her children.

12. Blogs are often saturated with web links and web gadgets, or widgets, that function, not only as navigation tools, but as personal touches that reflect the blogger's choices in self-representation as much as the actual blog posts. In studying these blogs I therefore followed links to ancillary websites such as corporate sponsors, kyaraben contests, social networking sites such as Twitter and mixi.jp, and links to cookbooks and reviews written by bento bloggers on commercial websites such as Amazon.co.jp.

13. Rodríguez del Alisal 2000, 49.

14. Cwiertaka 1998, 52.

15. Miller and Slater 2000, 5.

16. Ibid., 10.

17. Blogmura.com, a Japanese blog listing and ranking website counts over six hundred members under the kyaraben category. Blogmura.com, n.d., Kyaraben page (accessed July 12 2010).

18. Lupton 1996.

19. Ibid., 23.

20. Yahoo blogs, n.d.

21. Pikko 2010.

22. Luckysundae. n.d.

23. Anna the Red 2010.

24. Paasonen 2002, 31.

25. Ken 2009.

26. Asako and Kiyomi 2007.

27. Interview with Makiko Itoh, 25 March 2009.

28. Onosaka 2003, 96.

29. Interview with Luckysundae, 27 June 2010.

30. Interview with Anna the Red, 10 September 2009.

31. Salyers 2008, 33.

32. Sanrio kyaraben contest website, http://sanriobb.com/charaben/.

33. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1999, 1.

34. DeVault 1991.

35. Salyers 2008, 21.

36. DeVault 1991.

37. Allison 1991, 203.

38. Anna the Red 2008b.

39. Dale Spender, Man Made Language (1990), referenced in Marjorie DeVault1990, 107.

40. DeVault 1990.

41. Following increased economic hardship in 2009, Tokyo office men were reported to be making bento to bring to work in an effort to save money. As a result, stores saw an increase in sales of men's bento boxes, which tend to be much larger. Since then, the small but noticeable men's bento blog genre has become a pop culture phenomenon, with many male bento bloggers publishing best-selling bento cookbooks.