Critical readings on food in East Asia

This title presents a collection of articles that treat a wide variety of aspects related to food in contemporary East Asia. Cuisine is a very persuasive tool for delineating East Asia as a region. Food and foodways of Greater China, Korea and Japan obviously differ from one another, but they all rest upon the foundations of ancient Chinese civilization that once dominated this part of the world. The use of chopsticks and a widespread consumption of processed soybeans rank among the most vivid indicators of the common heritage of the Chinese, Korean and Japanese cuisines. Yet, the culinary cultures of contemporary East Asia are as much a product of the last hundred years as they are of the previous centuries. The articles are drawn from a variety of sources, covering a number of disciplines, the majority of which have been written in the past fifteen years.