Tampopo: When Japanese Cuisine Transcends the National Boundary
I love exploring Japan and its culture. My frenzy over Japan has led me to take at least a course about this country, or at minimum, Asia-related every semester at Harvard. During my senior spring, after delaying for four semesters, I finally took a class called Global Japanese Cinema with Professor Alexander Zahlten. This is one of my favorite classes at Harvard! Thanks to Professor Zahlten’s recommendation, I discovered Tampopo, a classic Japanese movie about food and Japanese culture. I was completely blown away by this movie and the messages that it conveys. The essay below was my attempt to peel deeper layers beneath this classic must-watch.
Tampopo, the ever famous “ramen western” directed by Itami Juzo in 1985, is a movie that depicts a young widow named Tampopo on her quest to create the perfect bowl of ramen as a chef, aided by her new friends. Even though Tampopo is the main character, the film intermingles elements of satire and comedy and incorporates a series of vignettes about the daily lives and issues that people from every social class faces in relation to the value and appreciation of Japanese cuisine. The movie incorporates many themes and genres that portray itself as a product of transnational, and later on, global cinema. Specifically, the film borrows elements of the American movie-making conventions to romanticize a uniquely Japanese ramen obsession while simultaneously presenting struggles many people face in society.
Tampopo is a classic that every foodie should definitely see.
The film utilizes deliberate scene framing that has characterized itself within a transnational framework. The opening scenes portray a cowboy-hat-wearing trucker, Goro, with his sidekick, Gun, each wearing a neckerchief at his throat, riding into town in their big truck to look for a place to chow down a “perfect” bowl of ramen. This scene pays a close resemblance to classic American movie western, which typically opens with a cowboy riding his horse into a desolate town after his long journey.
Through opening with a seemingly strange, yet quite familiar scene, the film effectively and humorously conveys its central message of ramen obsession to those whose notion of ramen excellence is still foreign.
In another scene, Goro and Pisuken, a contractor with a knack for decoration, face off against each other in a fight. The scene chooses to depict the characters in two large silhouettes under a large bridge, instead of showing their face up close. This decision reminds common western movie fans of face-off scenes between cowboys and villains in a large desert, or of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, iconic cowboy actors. The tap to Hollywood’s movie essence makes the film more receptive to the American audience, as citizens coming from different backgrounds can easily resonate with the character and their attempts to reconcile to focus on bigger goals.
By weaving in iconic western elements and culturally-pride elements of Japanese cuisine throughout the movie, Juzo has formulated a narrative that transcends Japanese geographical and cultural boundary and provokes new forms of perception everywhere in preparation for his grand goal of mass popularizing and idealizing Japanese ramen.
Though ramen occupies an important space in Tampopo, it takes on a more important mission to become a connector of life. The film has changed the global audience’s conception of ramen, from a cheap dorm-room fast-food noodle to a widely available dish that takes shape after many hours of perfecting the broth, springy noodles, and fresh ingredients. The movie’s portrayals of people getting in line for ramen after school and work, slurping the last bits of tonkotsu broth, or talking to each other over the meal foreshadow a near future where ramen undergoes mass global consumption. Indeed, Tampopo’s international box office success in the mid-1980s has helped popularize the cosmopolitan eating experience as currently seen not only in Japan and the United States, but also in other parts of the world. Ramen has become big business in many countries, as seen in the emergence of big-name chains like Ichiran, Ippudo, or Tenkaippin.
Thanks to the movie’s global appeal, ramen and also other Japanese food, such as egg omurice, sashimi, and soba, portrayed in the many vignettes through the movies, have gained mass popularization. The film has successfully conveyed a culinary ideal: that tasty, delicate dishes can be enjoyed by many, not just the wealthy few.
Throughout his ramen western, Itami chooses to break out from the norms of food culture. He celebrates all the odds and hardships in cooking and people's culinary experiences and reverses commonly-held stereotypes about Japanese dining mannerism, gender expectation, and societal pressures. Tampopo has presented many parts of life, of cooking, enjoying food, forming friendships, and resolving conflicts, those that are relatable and inclusive to anyone and everyone.
Reference
Itami, Watanabe, K., Miyamoto, N., Yamazaki, T., Janus Films, & Kanopy. (2019). Tampopo. Janus Films (The Criterion Collection).
