Netflix Japanese Anime “Delicious in the Dungeon” Reveals Shocking Truth About Rice Consumption in Japan
On the surface, Netflix’s popular Japanese anime Delicious in the Dungeon is a food-obsessed dungeon crawler fantasy tale. Underneath that, however, the show invites the audience to think critically about how food traditions are created and conformed to. It also serves as a reminder that food is highly political and that the “culinary nationalism” seen around the world, particularly in Japan, is more complicated than most people realize.
Delicious in Dungeon talks explicitly and consistently about food taboos and food values, drawing attention to several ideas that usually hide beneath the surface. What is “natural” to eat? Why are some food practices considered taboo, and who gets to decide?
Cultural and social practices regarding the creation and consumption of food, also referred to as “foodways,” are where community connection and in-group/out-group dynamics are formed.
Food is constantly at the center of battles of authenticity, tradition, and values. Described by Japanese literature and academic Tomoko Aoyama in her book Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature, “the seemingly simple and ordinary may turn out to be surprisingly complex, once we pay attention to it […] Food has been discovered, invented, classified, and scrutinized, as well as enjoyed, consumed and devoured.”
Various arms of the Japanese government have been on a quest to define and protect “authentic” Japanese food since the early 2000s. In 2006, a program was created for the certification of authentic Japanese restaurants outside Japan, raising eyebrows across the country. The program has been largely replaced by the non-governmental and non-profit Organization to Promote Japanese Restaurants Abroad, as well as the promotion of businesses that use Japanese ingredients by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
In 2013, Japanese food tradition had a significant change with the UNESCO Intangible Heritage bid that enshrined washoku as the “traditional Japanese dietary culture.” The term washoku, with “wa” meaning Japanese and “shoku” meaning food, emerged during the Meiji period (1868-1912) to describe food from Japan as there was a sudden influx of European foods. Washoku was an everyday term that held no special significance, and there was no uniform of what “Japanese” food was.
After the bid, various undefined Japanese food practices were reduced to a meal that included a serving of white rice with multiple side dishes. Essentially, washoku is an “invented tradition” that was only recently awarded cultural significance and repackaged for the international audience.
Japanese culinary scholar Eric Rath explains, “Washoku is an idealized dietary lifestyle focusing on food popularised from the 1960s onwards, meant to impress audiences outside Japan and guide domestic eating habits.”
Many elements of modern Japanese cuisine didn’t become mainstream until the past 100 years. For example, the majority of Japan’s population before the 1950s rarely ate pure white rice. It was the rice rationing of the wartime government that introduced white rice into the people’s daily meals.
Before that period, food practices and types of food eaten massively varied depending on the region and the climate. However, a “traditional” Japanese diet from pre-modern times included single-pot meals combining millet and barley (sometimes mixed with rice) and local vegetables in general.
Another example of a dish that is considered purely Japanese but isn’t is ramen. Developed in the 1900s by Chinese immigrants in Japan to serve blue-collar workers, ramen underwent several changes and adjustments before it became the rich dish people know and love today.
Regardless of historical reality, the shared imagination of “Japanese food” continues to thrive in fictional worlds and the gourmet genre of media. When viewers see the characters in Delicious in Dungeon debate how to best prepare their dishes or gasp in pleasure at the wonders on their palates, people are seeing a parody of the gourmet genre and a critique of culinary nationalism.
