It has taken the worst recession since the war to force Japan’s kitchen-phobic white-collar workers, known as salarymen, to get in touch with their inner chef.
Falling wages, slashed bonuses and fear of redundancy have shrunk household budgets, and for a growing number of workers that means cutting down lunchtime trips to the local sushi or ramen joint. Instead, almost 10 percent of men now take bento boxed lunches to work in an attempt to save money, according to a survey by a Japanese bank.
And in a sign of the shifting power relationships in Japanese households, many of the men now seem happy to wake up early and cross the kitchen threshold to create their own bento ensemble, typically grilled fish, rice, pickles and an omelet, all lovingly arranged in a compartmentalized box.
Despite his popular image as a formidable corporate warrior during office hours, the average salaryman is far more docile when it comes to household finances. About 40 percent of salarymen hand over their monthly pay to their wives, who dish out pocket money for essentials such as lunch, manga comics, canned coffee, cigarettes and after-hours bonding sessions over beer and sake.
But, according to the survey, average monthly allowances have fallen over the past year to about 45,000 yen (US$490), well down on the 76,000 yen (US$830) at the height of Japan’s economic bubble almost 30 years ago.
The bento craze has spawned a new range of sleek black or metallic lunchboxes with matching chopsticks, clearly designed with the younger salaryman in mind.
Bento box sales in Tokyo have doubled over the past year as male office workers join aficionados among their female colleagues.
An array of books, including the bestselling Danshi Gohan (Food for Men), guide hapless amateur cooks through the minefield of assembling nutritious and aesthetically pleasing boxed lunches. Others get recipe advice from What Did You Eat Yesterday?, a manga about the dietary habits of two cohabiting men, or hone their cooking skills at weekly evening classes.
Masafumi Ono, a business software developer, eschews restaurant lunches in favor of a bento he makes himself. “I used to eat out all the time, but since I got married and had a child I have had to be more frugal,” he said as he settled down to lunch in the Tokyo sunshine.
Ono, 33, uses leftovers from the previous night’s dinner and reckons he is saving between US$220 and US$330 a month.
His bento comprises a rolled omelet, mini-hamburger, fish sausage, sauteed mushrooms, pickled radish and rice with seaweed on top.
Chuji Takeda, who works for a medical supplier, has been less ambitious. “My son is studying overseas, spending my money, so I have to count the pennies by making this sorry excuse for a bento,” the 49-year-old said as he looked down on his meager offering of rice ball, hard-boiled egg and pickles.
The intricately arranged bento of today is a far cry from the original version from the Kamakura period (1185 to 1333), which was often nothing more than a clump of dried or boiled rice eaten on the hoof.
The bento took on a more refined look around the 19th century, when rice balls were packed into woven bamboo boxes and consumed during breaks in Noh and Kabuki performances in theaters.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,