Gastronomy vs gastro-anomie? Japan’s foodscape

The article focuses on the concept of foodscape, which is relatively new to the Russian academic community. In the theoretical and methodological part of the work, the authors deconstruct the term “foodscape,” identify the epistemological foundations and the conceptual roots of the concept. For the first time in world science, the concept of foodscape is compared with related semantic complexes in accordance with the theory of the “culinary triangle,” which was developed by C. Levi-Strauss. Using the method of scientific visualization and comparative analysis, a model of the taxonomic hierarchy of the foodscape is constructed, which symbolizes the symbiotic relationship between nature and culture, registered with the help of an innovative author’s classification – at the global, national, and local levels. The practical part of the article is devoted to the study of the transformation process of the foodscape of Japan, characterized by balancing between gastronomy and gastro-anomie. It is proved that, along with the import of foreign food products, which undermined the food self-sufficiency of the state, the patterns of the Euro-American civilization were imported, which modified the model of social behavior, ingrained eating habits, and age-old culinary foundations of Japanese society. As empirical evidence, the authors present and analyze successful marketing strategies of multinational corporations that focus on monetization of cultural and household rituals, commodification of traditions, and consumerization of ancient religious rituals. In addition, the authors reveal the powerful protectionist potential of the washoku as traditional food culture of Japan. It has been found that the washoku’s ideological module was flexibly converted by the modern Japanese government, both for domestic and foreign policy of the state. Nowadays, washoku is the institutional foundation for a specialized legislative act regulating the procedure of Re-McDonaldization of the population. Along with this, washoku is also an effective tool of soft gastronomic power and gastrodiplomacy, creating a charming image of Japan in the eye of the beholder (the international political community). In conclusion, the authors diagnose the dialectical nature of the process of Kawaii-fication of Japan’s foodscape, characterized by the charm of infantilism with a grain of salt – radical escapism and social maladjustment.

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