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Article Evaluation

Japanese cuisine, subsection: Outside Japan

The first part of the article is relevant to the topic. There are no distracting sentences or phrases. The article is neutral providing facts from the source given without any opinions. As it was an article dealing with cuisine, it was facts used from the source without much deviation of perspective. The source directly mirrors the article itself and provides a lot of extra background details that supports the initial claim.

The second part of the article makes a claim about the Phenomenon of the California Roll being the spark for "global popularity" of sushi; however, it provides no citation to back up this claim in the sentence itself. In a subsection, it re-rereferenced this claim and provided the citation, however I feel that the initial claim should have had the source as it is relevant to all the subsections.

Draft

Japan has a long history of importing food from other countries. Many of these imports are now some of Japan’s most popular cuisine, signifying their importance in Japanese culinary history. One such dish is Ramen. A survey conducted by a private think tank asked two thousand men and women in the greater Tokyo area to name three Japanese products they thought were outstanding Japanese inventions (Okumura). Instant ramen came up as the answer for roughly one in three respondents. The origins of Ramen are traced back to China (Seligman), with its popularization starting after the Second Sino-Japanese war in 1937, which displaced many Chinese students in Japan (Seligman).

Curry is also another popular imported dish. The average Japanese eats curry at least once a week (Morieda), and curry ranks near the top of nearly all Japanese surveys for favorite foods.

The origins of curry, as well many other foreign imports such as pan or bread are linked to the emergence of Yoshoku, or western cuisine. Yoshoku can be traced as far back as the late Muromachi period (1336-1573) during a culinary revolution called namban ryori, which means “southern barbarian cooking” due to having itself rooted in Europe cuisine (Seligman). This cuisine style was first seen in Nagasaki due to it being the point of contact between Europe and Japan at the time. Food items such as potatoes, corn, dairy products, and also kompeito, a popular hard candy, spread during this time (Seligman). This cuisine became popular in the Meiji period when many considered Japan to have first opened itself to the outside world and all of these imported items still hold a heavy presence in modern Japan.

Works Cited

Ayao, Okumura. "Japan's Ramen Romance." Japan Quarterly 48.3 (2001): 66. ProQuest Asian Business & Reference. Web.

Constantine Nomikos Vaporis. "Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan, and: Japanese Foodways: Past and Present (Review)." Monumenta Nipponica 67.1 (2012): 173-8. Web.

Morieda Takashi. "The Unlikely Love Affair with Curry and Rice." Japan Quarterly 47.2 (2000): 66. ProQuest Asian Business & Reference. Web.

Seligman, Lucy. "The History of Japanese Cuisine." Japan Quarterly 41.2 (1994): 165. PAO Liberal Arts Collection 1. Web.

Theodore C. Bestor. "How Sushi Went Global." Foreign Policy 121.121 (2000): 54-63. Periodicals Index Online Segment 06. Web.

Draft 2

Japan has a long history of importing food from other countries, some of which are now part of Japan's most popular cuisine. Ramen is considered to be an important part of the culinary history, to the point where a survey of 2,000 Tokyo residents named instant ramen as a Japanese products they thought was an outstanding Japanese invention. Ramen is believed to have originated in China and became popular in Japan after the Second Sino-Japanese war, as many Chinese students were displaced to Japan.

Curry is another popular imported dish and is ranked near the top of nearly all Japanese surveys for favorite foods. The average Japanese eats curry at least once a week. The origins of curry, as well many other foreign imports such as pan or bread are linked to the emergence of Yoshoku, or western cuisine. Yoshoku can be traced as far back as the late Muromachi period (1336-1573) during a culinary revolution called namban ryori, which means “southern barbarian cooking”, as it is rooted in European cuisine. This cuisine style was first seen in Nagasaki, which served as the point of contact between Europe and Japan during this point in time. Food items such as potatoes, corn, dairy products, as well as the hard candy kompeito, spread during this time. This cuisine became popular in the Meiji period, which is considered by many historians to be when Japan first opened itself to the outside world. Many of these imported items still hold a heavy presence in modern Japan.

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Anime culture in the United States began as a niche community that had a grassroots foundation built by groups of fans on the local level. . Some of the earliest televised anime to air in the United States were Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and Gigantor, which gained popularity with many American audiences during the late 1960s. Small patches of isolated communities started to form around collective interest towards this new medium, which seemed reminiscent of familiar Disney visuals and Warner-Brothers narratives. One of these communities was the first anime fan club called the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization (C/FO), formed in Los Angeles, California during 1977; club actives involved monthly meets in order to watch newly aired anime. The early popularity was driven by fan-subtitled content and remained that way until much later, when inter-connected entrepreneurs from Japan and the United States saw an opportunity for business through this new medium. These business opportunities eventually led to the founding of Streamline Pictures, the United States' first anime import company in 1989, thus starting anime's widespread commercialization. Over the next dozen years, anime fans became more connected through fan-held conventions and the internet. These groups began to develop new social identities, centered around what they saw as an overall interconnected community.

A subculture began to grow around the United States revolving around people who identified with the social identity “Anime fan.” The strong imagined community built by the fandom since the earliest days was both the backbone and reason for the subculture’s growth. Today, anime has become almost universally recognized media in the United States, with early 2000's shows like Pokemon and Dragon Ball being household names. 

Although anime can be considered by some as distinctly Japanese animation, some scholars and fans relate to them by their animated nature similar to the works of Walt Disney. Researchers found that this created a subset of people that distinct themselves from the similar subculture of Japanophiles.The fandom originally proliferated using participatory media via the nature of fan-subbing anime, or the English subtitling of the original Japanese shows. This voluntary labor connects people on a global scale as fans from all over the world participate in and benefit from the collective community's work. During the 1990's, industry officials viewed fan-subtitlers as useful to the budding Anime industry, as they used fan production to see where potentially profitable markets might lie. Interviews from some of the earliest fansubbers reveal that most of them subscribed to an unspoken code that they should not make a profit from their illegal activities. However, most distributors do asked to be reimbursed for the cost of the tape and for shipping. Whether through fansubbing or professional industry translated anime and manga, the North American distribution of anime and manga has been primarily an import business for the Japanese produced content. However, due to the nature of its roots, the fandom is better thought of as a hybrid of American and Japanese cultural notes.

Interview with modern day anime fans reveal that some have no interest in its Japanese roots, merely that they enjoy the fashion or particular facets of the fandom. Scholars highlight the reason for this phenomenon as being the increasing hybrid factor of anime caused by integrating North America’s popular culture characteristics. Because of the nature of imports, scholars found that the natural selectivity of anime importing by American companies cause the perception of anime to grow increasingly western, as anime itself as a medium cover a broad range of genres.