Twelfth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Japanese filmmaker Ryūsuke Hamaguchi explores the impact of the 3/11 earthquake and the resultomh Fukushima nuclear disaster in his work. He describes his quietly apocalyptic cinema as attempting to “capture a sense of dread as everyday life continues.” This paper examines “Asako I & II” (2018) wherein Hamaguchi merges fears related to tainted food from the affected Tōhoku region with a meditation on strategies to push against objectifying male gazes. In one sequence, a female volunteer from Tokyo helping Tōhoku fishermen is asked to eat local seafood after she has been verbally sexualized by one of the men. As she tastes, Hamaguchi stages a suspenseful pause that generates unease among the audience: after 3/11, does this Tokyo resident find Tōhoku delicacies inedible? While she claims that the food is delicious, her pause shows how the tasting of food can be an act wherein those objectified might regain destabilizing power. Their palate can be deployed to upturn the gaze’s hold. Simultaneously, the particular Japanese cultural conflict that Hamaguchi stages here—where Tokyoites taste Tōhoku seafood in the shadow of Fukushima—points to how the approval of the savoring palate of those from the center can be so vital for food workers from the traumatized site to heal. Combining formal analysis with personal interviews with Hamaguchi, feminist film theory on the male gaze and sociological studies around food safety concerns following 3/11, this paper ultimately reveals cinema’s vital interest for food scholars seeking to more richly imagine how traumas taint our culinary pleasures.