Bottom-up Food: Making Rāmen a Gourmet Food in Tokyo

Abstract

This article introduces the Japanese concept of kodawari—meaning obession and a detailed personal aesthetic—as an analytical category to think about the process by which everyday foods are valorized as gourmet. I show that the kodawari of chefs and consumers influence each other and combine to create an aesthetic appreciation of rāmen noodles, elevating it from its inexpensive background to an object of gourmet desire in contemporary Japan. Kodawari is an individual experience, and chefs develop their own techniques to make their rāmen bowls stand out. Likewise, consumers learn to appreciate the personal touches of chefs and shops, while at the same time developing their own complex sensorial appreciation for rāmen from their individual vantage point. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in rāmen shops in Tokyo with chefs and aficionados, this article shows how their efforts result in the valorization of an everyday food item.

Notes

Names of aficionados used in this paper are the nicknames they use in their online blogs.

The average cost for a bowl of rāmen is between 700 yen and 900 yen, but large franchises such as Korakuen serve rāmen for as low as 290 yen. The October 2013 exchange rate is 1 USD to 97 yen.

For example, Barry Glassner (99) describes how non-aristocratic food connoisseurs arose in late 18th-century Paris following the spread of public restaurants.

The Michelin system is used to rank the quality and prestige of hotels and restaurants throughout the world.

Based on online interviews with one hundred self-identified rāmen aficionados, 72% spend ten minutes or less consuming a bowl of rāmen. In ascending order of time: 31 respondents take 5 minutes to consume a bowl, 41 take 10 minutes, 14 take 15 minutes, 9 take 20 minutes, 3 take 30 minutes, 1 takes 40 minutes, and 1 reported taking over an hour.

This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2006, 2007, and 2012 in 22 rāmen shops in Tokyo, interviews with 20 chefs and owners of rāmen shops, communication with 27 rāmen aficionados in online communities, and analysis of aficionados’ blogs.

Two detailed histories of rāmen have been written in English. George Solt emphasized the importance of rāmen in Japanese foodways by analyzing the shift from rice to wheat in the postwar period. Barak Kushner scrutinized rāmen as a foreign, modern, and national food and part of popular culture in Japan.

See Narayan's discussion on curry as a colonial food in Britain.

See Watson and Caldwell.

The most popular regionally specialized food is manjū, a kind of sweet dumpling. Most of them are nearly identical in appearance, ingredients, taste, and packaging. Only regional logos differentiate the dumplings, as the name of the place of origin is impressed on both the manjū and its wrapper.

Heather Paxson (209–212) discusses artisans who develop strong ties with regions, communities, and individual customers who then become part of artisanal production.

Some foods exist on both sides of the “A-grade”/“B-grade” gourmet boundary. Sushi, for example, can be extremely expensive or quite affordable, as in popular rotary sushi restaurants (Bestor 119–122; Issenberg 72–73). So far, however, rāmen is strictly “B grade.”

Connoisseurship among Japanese people is certainly not a new phenomenon. By the latter half of the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), the urban merchant classes had developed styles of elegant dining, clothing, and entertainment and some people became tsū, meaning connoisseurs (Francks 145). B-grade connoisseurship differs largely because of the use of the internet, which has been available from NTT (Japanese Telephone Corporation; NTT Docomo) since 2000.

Tampopo is the only major Japanese film that fetishizes rāmen culture, but most Japanese rāmen aficionados I contacted between 2006 and 2012 had not seen it (although they had heard about it). This may be due to the relative mundane-ness of rāmen as subject matter in the 1980s, before rāmen connoisseurship had arisen. In contrast to the relative obscurity of Tampopo, the comic book series Nijiiro Rāmen, serialized in the popular Shōnen Champion magazine from 2001 through 2004, is widely known and read by rāmen aficionados.

This is so their local coffee beans can be exported to America and other coffee importing countries.

Paxson (197) finds a similar notion operating in how artisanal cheesemakers dream of establishing “a personal signature” by developing their own spectrum of bacteria.

Ingredients usually cost around 20% of the price of the bowl; 30% is considered high-end.

The Japanese government's promotion of domestic foods, as well as several incidents of imported foods being contaminated with pesticide residue at the start of the millennium, serve as incentives for people in Japan to consume domestic food (Akatsuka 16–17).

Back fat is prized because it melts easily in broth and in the mouth.

Since rāmen is consumed as a quick meal, workers do not bother even regular customers with unnecessary chitchat. This explains why I could not interview customers. After I left employment at the shop, with the owner's permission, I planned to interview some customers. When I asked one of the regular customers for an interview, he replied, “Do I have to answer you?” Another group of people responded to my request by silently looking at one another then collectively replying in the negative. They then lit cigarettes and began chatting amongst themselves.

I lacked their enthusiastic, even obsessive, interest because I was working there only temporarily as part of my field research. Mukai-san and the other employees were there for the long-term and expected to become chefs.

Love Seikatsu is an abbreviation for Rāmen Club Life, the blog in which Ken-san expresses his passion for and obsession with rāmen. The English phonemes “r” and “l” sound identical to Japanese ears, as do “b” and “v.” Japanese also add a final vowel to foreign words ending in consonants. Thus the English letter “b” of “club” and “v” of “love” sound nearly identical.

Bowls of rāmen are not prepared individually. Several portions of noodles are boiled together and served at once to a group of customers.

MIXI membership is required to access his blog.

Once in a while, he quotes the by-laws in his Internet blog or MIXI, but not the entire bylaws.

Bodily disciplines often involve eating etiquette in Japan (Kinski 42–43).

Although Ken-san takes a lot of rāmen photos, he does not include a camera as one of the recommended “tools.” This is in keeping with the rāmen philosophy of eating and leaving quickly.