Negotiating authenticity: Berlin’s Japanese food producers and the vegan/vegetarian consumer

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces “feelings of authenticity” as an analytical category in the scholarship on culinary globalization and ethnic food producers to understand changes in cosmopolitan foodscapes by transcending economic conceptualizations of authenticity. It discusses how Japanese food entrepreneurs, chefs and food workers making and selling Japanese food in Berlin feel about and negotiate consumer demands for vegan and vegetarian variations of Japanese cuisine. Why are some Japanese food producers in Berlin more flexible in adjusting their menus to customer demands than others? This paper argues that different responses are related to food producers’ feelings of authenticity informed by different personal standards of what authentic Japanese food is and should be. These standards emerge from their personal biographies, professional backgrounds and values. Based on six years of fieldwork, this paper introduces three groups of Japanese food producers who perceive authentic Japanese food differently and shows how ethnic food producers’ perceptions and feelings of authenticity affect negotiations between food producers and consumers.

KEYWORDS:

• Authenticity
• Japanese food
• Japanese restaurateurs
• Berlin
• vegan
• vegetarian
• consumer
• emotions
• culinary globalization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The names of all research participants and restaurants are pseudonyms.

2. I use the term “ethnic” and “ethnicity” with regard to food and people not as a marker of a fixed, essentialized or predetermined identity, but because food entrepreneurs and food workers represent themselves and the food they sell as “Japanese” and because the Japanese eateries and the food I write about are perceived as ethnic by consumers. Although some Japanese food is perceived as high-status foreign food (Ray 2016, 27), the restaurants I write about do not belong to the small group of high-end gourmet restaurants featured in the Michelin guide (as of September 2021, the Michelin guide only features two Japanese restaurants in Berlin). They are either family-owned neighborhood restaurants run by Japanese entrepreneurs or catering services operated by self-employed Japanese women. All are first-generation migrants from Japan who sell food they call Japanese for an average price and although their migration trajectories might be different from other migrants selling ethnic food in Berlin, making a living of producing food is just as much a matter of necessity (Ray 2016, 28).

3. Interviews were conducted by the author, some together with students from Freie Universität Berlin (Reiher 2018). Most interviews are one-on-one interviews, some are group and couple interviews. I have interviewed six research participants multiple times over the past six years. 30 interviews were conducted in Japanese, six in German. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and translated.

4. Konbu is edible seaweed (kelp).

5. Dashi is a soup stock made from shavings of bonito flakes (katsuobushi) and is used as broth for many soups and sauces in Japanese cuisine.

6. This number is based on data derived from tripadvisor.com from May 25, 2021 and completed by our own offline counts. Compared to November 2020, the number of Japanese eateries has decreased slightly from 285 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

7. This is the result of an analysis of menus from all Japanese restaurants in Berlin via restaurants’ websites, social media accounts or the website speisekarte.de (in cases where restaurants do not have their own website) in January and February 2021.

8. Ohitashi refers to a dish in which vegetables are steeped in a dashi based sauce.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cornelia Reiher

Cornelia Reiher is professor of Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and vice director of the Graduate School of East Asian Studies. Her main research interests include rural Japan, food studies, globalization and science and technology studies.