National Identity in The Gourmet Club

Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Gourmet Club depicts Count G’s quest for finer cuisine as Tokyo’s eats become increasingly mundane for him and his club of Japanese gormandizers.  Through his choice of diction, Tanizaki fills Count G’s world of cuisine with sexual flavors.  Additionally, he employs exoticism to create nationalistic overtones and critique upon how the Japanese should identify with another culture.

It becomes important to establish the erotic nature of the food in The Gourmet Club because it helps the reader understand just how far Count G and his underlings will go for gourmet cuisine.  Tanizaki explicitly makes it clear from the beginning that the members of the club truly respect and admire cooking.  For the Gourmet Club, “cooking was an art” (99) and “they took as much pride and pleasure in [discovering some novel flavor] as if they’d found a beautiful woman” (99).   The narrator’s opening commentary states that the members’ hunger for fine food matches their lust for the pleasures in the bed sheets.  Tanizaki’s selection of vocabulary also aids in making the sexual characteristics of food quite prevalent.  The narrator comments that the members seek a “blissful new experience” (104) for the taste buds on their tongues which had to “lick and slurp” (102) for any new flavor.  Later, the scene with the Chinese cabbage pushes even further the sexual tone food carries in the narrative.  The supposed woman who comes out into the darkness to play with A’s “lips, stretching and releasing them” (133) is rather erotic with her actions; her hands later become covered with A’s saliva and create a “sweetish flavor, with an aromatic, salty undertaste” (135) after the fingering of his mouth. The opening commentary and this scene under consideration allow the reader to note not only the sexual overtones but also the greater impact of the sensual experience that food elicits in the members of the Gourmet Club. 

The reader must also understand how exoticism is created in the narrative.  Tanizaki creates a sense of exoticism for China by placing discontent of Tokyo eats amongst those in the Gourmet Club. By having them be “sick to death of Japanese food” (102), he separates cuisine into Japanese self and other foreign cuisine like “Chinese food—that rich cuisine said to be the most developed and varied in the world” (102).   The commentary makes the exotic food of China seem different and more appealing.

Finally, Tanizaki establishes nationalistic overtones to the narrative with his final commentary.  Not until the end, after working up the uniqueness of Chinese cuisine, does the narrator state that the gormandizers of the Gourmet club are “consumed” (139) by the fine cuisine Count G can now make after a night of peeking upon the banquet at Chechiang hall.  Throughout the whole narrative, Chinese cuisine is seen as something lucrative and exotic.  At the banquet, “not one of them looked ill, or seedy, or shabby…” (117) and most “…were fine-looking men, well built, with healthy faces” (117) in “Western dress” (118).  These people are clearly not Japanese.  Tanizaki utilizes exoticism to critique the national identity of the Japanese by endowing the foreigners in his narrative with negative attributes.  The narrator describes those at the banquet as being “abstracted, as if some inner focus had been lost” (117), and later, he peeks in a room with a “strange odor” (127), an opium den.  Tanizaki acknowledges an alignment with the Chinese perhaps as both being oriental, but it is almost as if this alignment causes a loss of national identity amongst the Japanese.  This is a critique on Japanese national identity because the narrative targets a mainly Japanese audience.  The narrator acknowledges that he must be “strict in my choice of reader” although “it is impossible to do so” (128).  By acknowledging the reader, Tanizaki suggests to the reader (likely Japanese) to reflect upon him or herself.

Gourmet Exoticism

Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s The Gourmet Club portrays food as erotic tool that sets a group of five men to embark on a search for the ideal food cuisine. One day the leader of the group, Count G, finds a private restaurant he is drawn to by the Chinese cuisine offered, due to the lack of authentic Chinese food in Tokyo.  Nevertheless, their goal to obtain an orchestral cuisine is only achieved once they utilize their endless imaginations to achieve a taste like no other. Tanizaki Jun’ichiro implements the idea of continuity of new food cuisines to emphasize the concept of exoticism in The Gourmet Club.

When Count G returns to his club, he features food dishes which appear to be common Chinese dishes which feature tastes unfamiliar to the club members. Count G’s argument to achieve better tasting food is to taste food “with their eyes, their noses, their ears and at times with their skins. At the risk of exaggerating, every part of them had to become a tongue”(121). Each individual has different views and reactions the food they consume therefore a dish is only as exotic as the individual allows it to be. The more the men exaggerate about the aspects of the food, the better the food will taste and the more exotic the dishes become to the gentlemen. When the bok choy fingers are served, they are served using erotic techniques to prepare the men for a different cuisine experiences. Before they ate, a young woman would rub her face against his, caress his neck, and give him a facial massage to seduce the man into believing the woman’s fingers were inside his mouth when eating the bok choy (135-136). The individuals create these visions in their minds and hence gain a new cuisine experience that satisfies their constant desire for exotic dishes.

The men of the Gourmet Club are consumed by the idea of searching for fine cuisine to the point where their senses cause them to slowly lose their sanity. “They no longer merely “taste” or eat” fine cuisine, but are “consumed” by it and could only lead to two outcomes, either raging lunacy or death” (138) because these men cannot be kept from creating new forms of cuisine. Since the Count’s course depending on a combination of senses, his creations became more exotic as he experimented with food that can be felt moving inside one (Bok Choy Fingers) to food that can be worn (Deep Fried Woman). Their use of imagination calls for an expansion of possibilities for food experiences which they are desperate to taste even if it may be the last meal they ever have.

Exoticism is revealed through the character’s never-ending desires for exotic cuisines. Throughout the story, the characters continuously think about what new foods they should try next and there is never a stop to the creation of exotic foods. The old style of eating is irrelevant therefore allowing new exotic styles to prevail in The Gourmet Club.

Literary Analysis: Thingification with food

In the Factory Ship by Kobayashi Takiji, the ship hands, fishermen and all the workers are all dehumanized to work like machines and tools. They all struggle to survive with the terrible treatment and living conditions, and the torment and verbal/physical abuse mainly from Asakawa. The story uses a lot of sensory details and metaphors to describe how the condition is to help us understand or maybe even feel how the situation at each scene was, mainly with food.

            The way food was used most commonly was in scenes where they were describing particular smells and visuals. Oyster’s slimy and bouncy surface was used to describe an ill fisherman’s bleated eyes. A Crab’s bright red color was used to describe the men’s freezing hands and face. By using these types of similes to describe the men, the men are also somewhat reduced to objects for the use of the executives, emperor, and company for their own benefits and profits. Their labor, lives, energy, and hard work are drained by how they work nonstop, only to be consumed as a resource to be taken advantage of. Since they are described with food, they themselves are might as well be considered food eaten by the authorities.

            Not just by how they are use similes within the story, they are also described octopuses because of their conditions of how they would “eat their own limbs (if they could) in order to survive”. This describes Japan from the current period very well because of all the workers (including farmers, miners, etc…) and their struggles to get money, which are stripped from the higher-ups. A little different from how the ship workers are described, Asakawa also directly addresses everyone on the ship as pigs.

And though the factory ship was a ship to capture and fish a lot of crabs for profit, there was only little talk of crabs. The only times crabs were mentioned were when there were empty broken shells on the deck, when they were canned to be shipped, or the juices that splashed on the men everyday, causing their stench and body odor to get worse by the day. Which leads to the lice and the fleas. Instead of the crabs being the stock (for food), it is almost as if the men are treated as livestock for profit on a farm. The situation where they are only allowed to bathe twice a month and for them to live with fleas and lice also hints animal qualities at a farm.

By the hints and treatment like animals within the story, Takiji shows how the men are considered possessions for whom they work. Not human workers, but they are “thingified” to be livestock, and their resources to be consumed and eaten by their owners as food. Maybe even worse than livestock since they are not even fed properly, but to be used as machines that work without rest, and not cared for (or abused) when ill or injured.

Exoticism with Gourmet Club

 Exoticism with Gourmet Club

Tanizaki Junichiro’s “The Gourmet Club” has exoticism, so he expresses his feelings and ideal by using character that has exoticism.  The story is about the gourmet club who are tired of the Japanese food, so they crave for some kind of exotic food.   Count, the leader of gourmet club, just walks around the road to find the food that he never tried, and finds the Chanchiang Hall, the private Chinese hall, that is full of actual Chinese food.  In the hall, he met and experienced his exotic experience- the genuine Chinese food.  Count understands the real meaning of exoticism from the hall, so he treats his exotic food to the gourmet members. Then they realize their exoticism.

     In the story, the author dramatizes food with the idea of exoticism.    Exoticism is an ideology that people who are unsatisfied with their reality go with this ideology because they long for any culture of another country’s longing and romance.  In other words, Count longs for exotic food like Chinese food in the story.  “Cooking was an art” (99) and “we need a kind of orchestral cuisine!” (103) are simple example about the author’s dramatizing technique.  In those simple scenes, the author uses hyperbole technique to dramatize food with exoticism.  Even though the author can express about food normally, he uses the hyperbole technique in those scenes because he can appeal the character’s expression and his intention well by dramatizing food.

     One of the best scenes with exoticism is the impression of A who is one of the member of gourmet club of “Bok Choi Fingers.”  For example, “A. thought the matter over even as he licked away at the fingers similar to the smell of the ham used in Chinese cooking” (135).  In this scene, A. is just waiting for the food to be served in the dim room, but suddenly he receives a woman’s massage.  However, that woman’s fingers are actually the food with Bok Choi.  Although the gourmet members who are really tired of foreign food made in semi-Japanese style, they have some taste in exotic Chinese food like the above mentioned Bok Choi.  That is, they realize the exoticism’s real meaning.  By using the hyperbole technique, the readers can feel the member’s feelings well even though the readers do not eat the food in real life.  Also, the readers can realize the member’s attitude is changed.

     In Count’s next meeting’s menu, all food’s names are dramatized such as “Pigeon-Egg Hot Springs, Fountain of Grapes, Phlegm-and-Spittle Liquid Jade” (139) and so on. He named all food by using dramatizing technique, so it makes the foods seem exotic even though those are semi-Japanese style food.  By using hyperbole technique to express the food, people can realize more exoticism from normal food and get a strong impression.  Therefore, the author dramatizes food with the idea of exoticism to convey his feeling and ideal through the book well.

The Reputation and Commonplace of Authentic Chinese Dining

Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s The Gourmet Club, a striking food-driven short story featured in The Gourmet Club: A Sextet, follows a group of five gluttonous Japanese men and their indulgence in bizarre delicacies. While fleeing from their banquet of typical Chinese dishes, the Count, the head of the Gourmet Club, discovered an unfamiliar Chinese restaurant called Chechiang Hall. To adhere to the audience’s senses and familiarity of the dishes, word choice and figurative language heightens the experience of the Count’s visit at Chechiang Hall in order to exemplify the exoticism found in this eccentric Chinese cuisine.

By describing the atmosphere of the banquet at Chechiang Hall, the use of word choice enhances the written words in order to emphasize the reputable reputation of the exotic dishes served. At one of the tables at the banquet, the main dish served was situated in a “great big beauty of a bowl.” (Tanizaki 116) By utilizing a series of rudimentary words to define the bowl, the bowl is used as a prop to house the amazing dish contained in its deep interior. To illustrate the consumption of the main dish, the author uses powerful words such as “assault” and “thrusting” to describe how the bowl of food was consumed fiercely and rapidly due to its delicious and admirable nature. (Tanizaki 116) When a popular appetizing dish is served in front of a large group of people, the contents tend to diminish quickly since everyone would want a hefty serving of it on their plate.

Although the Chinese dishes served at Chechiang Hall seem foreign to the Japanese, Tanizaki uses figurative language to compare the texture of the exotic dishes to common food from Japan.  During the banquet, the Count laid his eyes one of the exotic dishes served at the table, a thick and heavy soup with a boiled unborn piglet. Beneath the skin of the boiled unborn piglet, the author describes the texture as “something soft and spongy, rather like boiled fishcake and quite unlike cooked pork.” (Tanizaki 116) Fishcake and pork are common staples of popular Japanese dishes, such as ramen and udon. Even though this delicacy remains unusual to the typical Japanese consumer, the familiarity of the texture of the meal provides a sense of commonplace. Furthermore, the skin and the contents of the piglet were described as being “as soft as jelly.” (Tanizaki 116) From eating it as a snack to adding it to a dessert, jelly remains as a widespread foodstuff across Japan. The soft, semisolid consistency is well known to the average Japanese person; therefore, the texture of the piglet’s skin and contents are considered to be recognizable.

From the meticulous choice of words to the comparative use of figurative language, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki displays the high regard and commonplace of the exotic cuisine served at Chechiang Hall. With the use of these devices, the ambiance of exoticism in Chinese cuisine comes to life for the audience with experience and regard to Japanese cuisine.

Literary Analysis of “The Factory Ship” by Takiji Kobayashi

As we embark upon our literary voyage in the 1929 manifesto “The Factory Ship”, by proletariat author Takiji Kobayashi, we learn of the unscrupulous working conditions aboard a crab cannery ship named the Hakkō Maru. In this story, Kobayashi takes creative license in his portrayal of Shōwa era Japan’s totalitarian, ultra-nationalistic and fascist government through the select use of anthropomorphism and character reification. Ultimately, Kobayashi orchestrates a gripping tale exposing the unrelenting suffocation of Japanese working class citizens by an oppressive government solely focused on rapid industrial development at the expense of human life.

Kobayashi’s foreshadowing of the totalitarian nature of the Hakkō Maru’s leadership is evident with his choice for the opening passage “We’re on our way to hell, mates!”(Kobayashi 3), and becomes increasingly more obvious as he depicts the marginalization of the crew through a strategic sequence of character reification. As we venture below deck to the crew’s berthing, we find the labor workers are treated as commodity resources “…the fishermen were sprawled about like pigs in a pigsty” (Kobayashi 5), and have lost any resemblance as human beings. Kobayashi reinforces this idea again later with another passage describing the same berthing space “The hold itself was like a vast cesspool and the men in the bunks resembled maggots” (Kobayashi 10). Kobayashi’s repeated visceral depiction of this space makes his audience keenly aware that the Hakkō Maru’s leadership makes no distinction between the labor worker’s and its consumable stock. Essentially, each labor worker is inventoried without clear distinction. This idea is reinforced during the scene when the factory superintendent inventories the crew like stock while they sleep “as if inspecting pumpkins, he twisted the heads of the sleeping factory workers” (Kobayashi 15). Even as the crewmen suffer through their daily work, Kobayashi provides the appearance of an animalistic transformation, “their hands, raw and red as crab claws” (Kobayashi 11), further blurring the division between cargo and devaluing the labor worker’s overall worth. Through this recurrent primitive reification of the crew, Kobayashi makes a clear dissimilarity between the socio-economic hierarchies afflicting Shōwa era society. Furthermore, he highlights the countries deplorable working conditions and the government’s complete disregard for human life as the central conflict within his story.

In contrast, Kobayashi’s anthropomorphic portrayal of inanimate objects, used by both the crewmen and factory superintendent, underpins his view on fascism. The ship itself is commonly referred to as a “stallion” (Kobayashi 13), “ox” (Kobayashi 3), and “giant” (Kobayashi 11) in numerous passages reinforcing Kobayashi’s elucidation of imperialistic economics as a vicious beast. Comparatively in other scenes, the ships ropes become “snakes” (Kobayashi 25) while weapons of death become “toys” (Kobayashi 15). Kobayashi uses these metaphorical inferences to describe the constrictive nature of Japanese capitalism, its obligatory adoration of state, blind devoutness to the emperor, and over emphasis on ultra-nationalism. Moreover, it underlines the government’s blasé practice of corporal punishment to abate those who dare retaliate.

Every aspect of “The Factory Ship” is representative or symbolic, of Kobayashi’s larger abstract concept of an oppressive Shōwa era Japanese government.  Subsequently, through his literary use of anthropomorphism and character reification, he is able to convey a more graphic portrayal of the working class citizen’s plight. Kobayashi tugs at the reader’s emotions and attempts to ignite the same revolutionary spark witnessed within the text of his story. In the end, Kobayashi is calling for immediate action and pleading for the working class to “unite as one solid body” (Kobayashi 75) and fight the injustices against humanity by a foreboding imperialistic government.

Food and Exoticism – A Pathway to Intercultural Influence

 

In Junichiro Tanizaki’s Gourmet Club, the plot revolves around a group of “gastronomers” and their quest for the ultimate dining experience, one that would put “poetry, music, and painting in the shade” (99). The members of this club are true connoisseurs of food; they spend every day attempting to find the most unique foods that would quell the boredom they find in the foods found in Tokyo and the surrounding areas. Their “tongues lost all taste for the usual ‘fine cuisine’; lick and slurp as they might, they could no longer discover the excitement and joy in eating that they demanded” (102) and thus, “driven by their gluttony” (103), they created a contest to see who could discover or create the most delectable and exotic dish.

The leader of this club, Count G., takes it upon himself to find the dish that would blow the minds of his comrades. He wanted to discover “foods whose flavors would make the flesh melt and raise the soul to heaven” (104), ones that would be so unique that it would be virtually unfathomable to the rest of the club. He begins his journey into the depths of Tokyo within an inclination that he would discover his the winning prize. He travels deep into the depths of Tokyo, ignoring the major restaurants and stopping to test out the smaller, less well-known eateries. He finally discovers a building in a back alleyway that seems as if it holds the answers to his quest. He is fascinated by the fact that it is a “three-story wooden house of Western style” (108) with just the name Chanchiang Hall written on a sign by the locked door. The music that comes from the third floor stirs up images of food within the Count, instantly igniting his already roaring appetite. Tanizaki states that, “from the moment he realized it was not a restaurant, his desire to sample the food here had burned all the more fiercely” (111). The building itself and his realization that within laid a genuine Chinese club with traditional Chinese food, could perhaps “be the grail that he’d been seeking” (112).  Within the club, he encounters an environment that overwhelms him. The hazy atmosphere combined with the smells and sights that he is unaccustomed to make his experience all the more intense. He meets the president of this club and is dismayed at his rejection from this exclusive Chinese dining club. He states “I’ve been longing to encounter a man like that-the ultimate connoisseur” (126), a man whose food surpasses even that seen in Count G.’s dreams.

Through sheer persistence, the Count is able to convince a member to let him secretly observe the meals in the club and from this he gains his inspiration for the ultimate dining experience. He brings this inspiration and creates dishes that electrify and stupefy the rest of his club. His dishes are far more exotic than the other members could have imagined. With names like “Pigeon-Egg Hot Springs”, the Count was able to create a dining experience that was unbeknownst previously. He states “in order to provide ourselves with other satisfying tastes, we must both greatly expand the range of that ‘cuisine’ and also diversify as much as possible the senses we use in enjoying it” (137).  This last statement epitomizes the idea of exoticism and its connection to food. The concept of exoticism is something that is attractively strange or remarkably unusual. The Chinese restaurant is familiar and fashionable to the Count but at the same time, it is different and strange, thus peaking his interest and creating the sense of exoticism that he desires. Exoticism exists in the folds between notions of inside and outside; these “exotic foods” desired by the club are connected to the mainstream market, but still maintain themselves as separate from mainstream culture. The Chinese club serves as the inspiration for the Gourmet Club, it serves as the representation of one culture for the consumption of the other; in other words, it is exotic.