The Symbolic Multilayers of Japanese Obento
By Anja Gogo
Image via: Rebecca Nolten
I remember my first day of school vividly. I was observing the other parents in the classroom, looking like giants and, despite feeling small, I was relatively calm because, to be quite honest with you, I had no idea of what was going on. A lot of them were trying to manage their screaming little humans, who didn’t look ready to separate from their comforting providers, for 8 hours each day. It was a “full-time” school, one of many in Italy. They were perfect for working parents who couldn’t pick their kids up from school before the afternoon. Packed lunches weren’t ubiquitous as we’d often resort to the eating at the mensa.
Having said that, while I have the fondest memories about the school’s food and the reliable menu which to this day evokes a degree of nostalgia, I was completely in awe when I discovered Japanese obento. My first exposure to obento culture traces back to quarantine-induced rabbit holes, immersing myself in the Ghibli universe and its magical realism. Maybe the claustrophobic reality that I felt was suddenly imposed on me allowed me to appreciate details that as a kid I never paid attention to. Mundane elements of everyday life, in this case food, would be imbued with a sort of irreplaceable beauty, despite being ubiquitous in reality. But of course, in the Ghibli world, any food is mouth-watering: each dish is flawless, seasonal, colourful. It’s as if they receive the perfect amount of sunshine and nutrients to flourish. Miyazaki’s depiction of these scenes is characterised by a lack of rush: there’s an effortless attention to detail and in some ways that’s exactly what makes it exceptional. There’s something about the food that is delectable, more so than the real-life kind. Scott McCloud points to the sense of universality that is conveyed through these drawn images, where only the most “critical” features and subtleties are included. Because Miyazaki can’t manifest the taste of the food visually (Keller), the preparation and consumption of it are often manipulated: the gustatory imagery is now a substitute of the sensory experience that we could have otherwise experienced if we weren’t the audience. But there’s more.
Image via: Siena Kelly, Wordpress, Spirited Away movie still (Hayao Miyazaki)
Food gems in the Ghibli multiverse: to get us started
In Howl’s Moving Castle, just like in Ponyo, food is an emblem of safety, despite the ongoing disarrays, whether it’s an ongoing war or a natural disaster. In Spirited Away, we learn that food should be treated with respect, as gluttony is brought up to be the echo of the pervasiveness of consumerism. This can be seen in the scenes with Kaonashi, mostly known as No-Face. Chihiro’s onigiri is another iconic scene, where the protagonist bursts out crying after Haku offers this simple food to her. Chihiro realises how overwhelmed she feels in having to fend for herself, while trying to find a way that will bring her parents back to human form. The onigiri embodies the familiar experience of the petit madeleine moment:
“the smell and taste are still long, as souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of everything else, to wear without flinching, their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory” (Proust, 1913)
In The Wind Rises, food becomes an instrument, a catalyst to aid one in purpose. Jirō, almost always eating fish, finds himself immersed in studying the bone structure of mackerel. This is a trivial obsession, as it allows him to improve Japanese aircraft, without needing to copy the Americans.
These are clearly some biased examples I’ve decided to include, stemming from my taste and the level of interest that the symbolism behind the domestic-ness of food could provide. However, there’s a fleeting form of food that we only get glimpses of, in My Neighbour Totoro and From up on Poppy Hill, one that inhabits culture, and social layers, in boxes.
Image via: The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, GDK Films (twitter account)
The symbolic significance behind Japanese obento
Generally, we can think of symbols as ways of exploring, by standing for something else, the subjectivity and the social relations of an individual, which then amount to a complete account of identity. One of reasons why we need them is that they hold an interpretative function, where they display meaning or rather layers of it in a web of significance.
Japanese lunch boxes, so called obento, are symbols with an apparent explicit function, but hiding a much more profound and multi-layered significance. This kind of packed lunches tends to have a recurring theme that includes rice, meat/fish as the main dish accompanied by vegetables on the side. There is a meticulous effort in balancing flavours, varying ingredients and achieving a final product that is both healthy and appetising. Obentos aren’t just containers of aesthetically organised food, as the full potential of their significance emerges in the school context.
Nutrition is only a superficial function of food in the context of obentos. The transition into the real world, when entering nursery school, can be a traumatic landmark. Therefore, the obentos ease the child’s discomfort as devices for assistance, serving as reminders of home that accompany them. And, funnily enough, children as recipients of the food are probably the least appreciative of it, as they normally have limited appetite. One might think that these carefully crafted boxes are all waisted effort, but the food here represents so much more: it codes for the mothers’ needs to affirm themselves as the good ones, when contrasted with others in a social domain. It is the formula for social integration, an imperative they cannot escape. The mothers aren’t just robots aiming to provide assistance for their children, but also something in and of themselves. These lunchboxes reflect their commitment to their children, which can be viewed as a source for future motivation for the child as a student. Trends of cutesy bentos and their respective tutorials on YouTube range from rice balls made to look like pandas/Hello Kitty to heart-shaped side dishes. These are all demonstrative of mothers’ needs to assert themselves as the best carer.
Image via: Rebecca Nolten
Symbols do not belong to us, but the way we use them and the way we interact with them, as aesthetic and cultural apparatuses, makes them ours. We structure ourselves through them and sometimes that can be unconsciously practiced. For instance, finishing an obento lunch conveys expected societal demands being met, which translates into a need for strategies to ensure it happens always. Foods that are easy to eat, that the child is already used to and enjoys, are preferred. Appearances that disguise the natural look of food but engage interest are replicated. But not necessarily because of the children’s feedback. Rather, it is the repeated scrutiny from authority figures that pushes mothers to do so. The products encapsulate their identities, in an alienating way. This can be to some degree exhausting: it is one way to connect to symbolism terms of identity, but it is quite another to let them restrict one’s choices under the social threat of comparison, judgement, or acceptance. Nonetheless, it’s hard to deny the beauty that lies in the obento art. It’s the quintessential turning point that breaches the superficial value of food as something that we merely eat. It’s hard to not indulge in the nostalgia that they can bring and the cultural interest they provoke.
