??? Postmodernism Postmodernism in the World of Bento A Superficial Analysis by Caitlin Cronin What is Bento? To foreigners, it is merely a Japanese-style box meal, analogous to the everyday brown-bagged lunches of American school cafeterias. However, in Japan, the hastily made sandwich and all-purpose Ziploc bag do not reign supreme. Rather, to the Japanese, Bento is a long-standing tradition that, over hundreds of years, has developed into a true art form. And, unlike its American counterpart, the focus of a Bento is on the aesthetics and symbolism of a flawlessly arranged meal; a good Bento both maintains a perfect balance of "color, delicacy, touch, effect, harmony, [and] relish," and connects a mother with child (Barthes, Mythologies, 19). In other words, the primary meaning of the Bento is not found in its nutritional substance; the actual food items contained within its small lacquer confines are of great import only to the extent that they are of artistic and societal value. This is especially true of Character Bento, the most frivolous variety of Bento, which serves as the epitome of superficiality and postmodernism in Japan today. In this essay, I will discuss the relationship between postmodernist theory and the Bento by highlighting several defining characteristics of this unique meal. DECENTRALIZATION Viewed simply, the main theme of postmodernism is "the decentering of that formerly centered subject or psyche" (Jameson, 72). This idea opposes the rationality of the preceding modern age, which was marked by a use of the self as a center from which to understand the world. For Jameson and other such theorists, current times have led to a blurring of the relationship between a distinct inside versus outside; the self has been debunked as a reference because it is impossible to fully understand oneself. As eloquently conjectured by the noted Japanese thinker Nishitani, the self cannot be "a point of certainty from which all else can be interrogated...[because] the self is not fully transparent to itself" (Wright, 284). This ideological shift illustrates precisely the difference between Western high cuisine, which follows the school of Enlightened thought and is organized around a discrete center, and traditional Japanese cuisine, which has never historically favored a "main" course, as we understand it in the West. For instance, a standard restaurant meal consumed in the U.S. may include a salad, a steak with potatoes, and some chocolate cake for dessert. The obvious focus in this case would be the steak: the preceding greenery, the accompanying vegetables, even the concluding sweet, sugary contrast of the cake all exist in order to enhance the experience of the beef; the meal is truly chosen around the meat. Besides this supreme role in determining the other elements of the meal, the steak is, in all likelihood, awarded the additional prominence of size: if any are in doubt, its overwhelming significance is clearly denoted by its physical largesse on the plate. In contrast, Japanese cuisine has traditionally valued the rule of ichiju sansai, or "one soup and three side dishes" (http://www.sushi.go.ro/table.html). Interestingly, this term "side dish" is entirely misleading, given that the supposedly- central soup, as well as the rice that is generally included, is rather small. It is true that the soup and rice are the main components of a Japanese meal, but only insomuch as they are staples of the Japanese diet and do not command a position of sensory dominance, unlike the steak (indeed, meat is considered only one of several possibilities for a side-dish, and is not necessarily the go-to choice). Rather, the rice and okazu (side dishes) strike a complete harmony that is not dictated by one center. This is because in Japan, "there is no one big dinner plate with three large portions of vegetable, starch, and meat...[and thus] the eye is pulled not toward one totalizing center but away to a multiplicity of de-centered parts" (Allison, 299). The actual preparation of Japanese cuisine is similarly de-centered in that it has no "buried power [or] vital secret" (Barthes, Signs, 22). Whereas a Western steak may hide orange-flavored accents or be stuffed with trout stuffed with turkey stuffed with hippopotamus, what you see is what you get with the food in a standard Japanese meal (such as a Bento). Rice will always taste like rice, tuna like tuna, nattou like nattou, and so on ad nauseam because in Japan, "the edible substance is without a precious heart...[it is not] endowed with a center" (ibid). For the most part, this principle remains true today; any concealed qualities of Japanese foodstuffs can be owed directly to Western influence and a new melding of high and low culinary culture, another aspect of postmodernism. Generally speaking, though, nattou flavored with Coke is not the norm; Japanese cuisine does not engender the pretense of depth and hidden meaning, like its Western counterpart, it "does not intellectually analyze, synthesize, and reconstruct objects" (Abe, 310). It is its surface, with no separate innerness. The dissimilarity of these deeply rooted concepts, the Western center and the Japanese balance, are also clearly demonstrated in the somewhat less demanding atmosphere of school lunches for children. For example, a normal Western lunch would typically include something like a sandwich, some chips, a bag of carrots, a juice box, and potentially a piece of chocolate or candy for dessert. Of course, the central aspect of such a meal is universally understood to be the sandwich, which receives the most preparation and attention; the other items included are purely accoutrements, last-minute additions meant to provide nutritional value. However, congruent to an ichiju sansai meal, the illustrious Bento has no organizational concentration. Rice here, egg there, sausage over there, pickled radish to the left, apple to the right, there is no clear apex of the meal. Indeed, the Bento is "a collection of fragments, none of which appears privileged by an order of ingestion," and the strategy of eating Bento is in itself an art (Barthes, Mythologies, 22). In Japan, there is no concept of saving one's appetite for the definitive steak (or the sandwich, as the case may be); instead, there is a subtlety to maintaining a balanced palate throughout the meal, and eating all elements in their entirety. The most blatant indication of the absence of centrality in the Japanese Bento is the physical manifestation of the Bento container itself. Notably unlike the American brown paper bag, or even the lunch box, wherein all the contents are jammed together and the sandwich overshadows the more subtle aspects, the Bento box is characterized by many small compartments that necessitate culinary equilibrium. Since no singular food receives the primary focus of any Japanese meal, the Bento box is not designed to emphasize one dish over another; instead, "in a bento box, everything is protected [and] each thing has its own place" (Sachs). Accordingly, even if one wished to create a center, there is no means by which to do so, as there is no one compartment sizable enough to accentuate (or even hold) a sandwich. Accommodating a sandwich would require it to be cut into smaller pieces, thus decentralizing the attempted center. As Western theorists begin to question the rationality of the Enlightenment and its essential subject-object divide, it has become clear that the self "is not encapsulated within an inner sphere and need not, therefore, go out of itself to encounter the world," (Wright, 285). That is to say, the central sandwich may not provide the best position from which to view the entire plate. Instead, the West has found a new ideological fascination with the ancient Japanese (and Zen) understanding that the "source of the self [is] everywhere and essentially untraceable" (Wright, 286). Perhaps the current obesity epidemic isn't the only factor contributing to smaller portion sizes in the United States. EMPTINESS In the words of Nishitani, "it is not that the self is empty...but that emptiness is the self," (Wright, 286). This is because the only thing common between everything is that it is nothing. While this abstract ideology may seem like a stretch to the Western mind, consider the adverse Enlightened concept, which states that objects are something, they have meaning and serve a designated purpose. The true source of this endowed meaning, however, comes only from the human (or society) that defines it. For example, a rose is understood to signify love, but only because historical circumstances have demanded it so. This vibrant red flower would have a completely antithetical meaning if, rather than being presented to the apple of one's eye, a rose had traditionally been presented in sympathy as an offering to the dead. Therefore, the only thing separating love from sympathy, or the peak of life from death, is the applied thought of mankind. As expressed by Barthes, any object "can [be made to] signify in several ways, it is a mere signifier; but if weighed with a definite signified, it will become a sign" (Barthes, Mythologies, 113). The modern-day Japanese Bento, and specifically the kyara-ben, has been formalized to a point at which it has no meaning, and "the exchange-value has been generalized to the point at which the very use-value is effaced" (Jameson, 74). It is empty. Artistic Emptiness and Simulacra Nowhere is this loss of use-value more apparent than in the artistic elements of the Bento. Here, I examine mainly the formula of Bento creation, which has consistently maintained a preference for aesthetic purposes over nutritional ones. After all, the Japanese are said to "eat with their eyes" (Sugiyama).