Abstract
This paper analyzes politics of food education in Japan where food education has become one of the central motifs of food policy in recent years. It describes the emergence of private enterprise institutions that offer credentials for people as “food education experts,” the majority of whom are women. Based on a survey of more than one hundred food education experts, the paper explores motivations of these women and finds that the reasons for the popularity of food education certifications are not so much that women wanted to challenge the dominant food system—as agrofood scholars may have expected or hoped for—but for reasons related more to the gendered career expectations and pressures for women to conform to a culturally-scripted feminine ideal. The paper’s importance beyond Japan lies in the discussion of dynamics and implications of privatization of food education. “Privatization” indicates a shift in the location of control and in what is considered to be “necessary” knowledge about food. Subject to market logic, food education is at risk of becoming an exercise of superficial mastering of “sanitized” information. Furthermore, at the core of privatization of food education is an increasingly pervasive approach to food education that I term “food literacy” approach, based upon a deficiency framework which posits individual knowledge and skills as sole reasons for inappropriate food choices, dietary behaviors, and culinary practices. Not only is the food literacy approach highly individualistic and apolitical, but it also enables and exacerbates the privatization and gendered pressures of food education.
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Notes
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is commonly known as “mad cow disease.” BSE-contaminated product is linked to human brain disorder called Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (vCJD) (USDA 2005). Genetically modified crops or genetically engineered crops refer to crops developed by recombinant DNA techniques (USDA 2007). Recombinant bovine growth hormone is protein hormone injected in dairy cow to increase milk production (FDA 2009).
See the Slow Food website at http://slowfood.com.
The Japanese government proclaimed the 19th of every month to be Food Education Day.
5-A-Day was changed to Fruits & Veggies-More Matters campaign (see http://www.5aday.gov/ and http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov/) which is also a private–public partnership.
Indeed, their website, http://dole5aday.com, prominently features Dole logos and product pictures. This website redirects viewers the dole.com superkids site and its new “SuperKids” campaign, which is then linked to the Dole Corporate Social Reliability website at http://dolecsr.com/.
For instance, according to Martin and Severson (2008), organic products are typically 20–100% more expensive than their conventional counterparts in the US.
Since 2002, various instances of false labeling were uncovered, from chicken to fresh vegetables. The most prevalent infractions were falsified labels on imported food products that claimed to be of domestic origin. The social impact of the scandals was significant, because there were major food players ranging from the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives to large food manufacturing corporations found to have falsified their labels. For instance, Zen-noh (The National Federation of Agricultural Co-operative Associations) was involved in falsely claiming that imported meat was domestic. One of the large meat and dairy companies, Snow Brand, was also found to have falsified its labels and was forced to go out of business.
The Plan set nine goals for the 5 year period (2006–2011) (1) increasing the number citizens who are interested in food education from 70 to 90%; (2) decreasing the rate of children who do not have breakfast from 4 to 0%; (3) increasing the percentage of local food used in school lunches from 21% to more than 30%; (4) increasing the proportion of citizens who follow the Dietary Balance Guide to more than 60%; (5) increasing the number of citizens who are aware of metabolic syndromes to more than 80%; (6) increasing the number of citizens having proper basic knowledge about food safety to 60%; (7) increasing the number of volunteers involved in food education by 20%; (8) increasing the number of municipalities which have educational farms to more than 60%, and increasing the proportion of citizens who have basic knowledge on food safety to more than 60%; and (9) increasing the number of prefectures and municipalities that have food education promotion plans to 100 and 50%, respectively (Cabinet Office, n.d.).
See http://www.mixi.jp.
Although there is no complete guarantee that these people hold the certifications that they claim on Mixi, I only contacted people who had had previously posted messages in the communities that indicated that they had studied and obtained certifications. It is also possible for Mixi members to disguise their true identity, but the difficulty of validating respondents’ claims would not exceed that in survey research.
I also conducted an interview with three members of Mixi who have one FEL food education certification. The interviewees belonged to a local group under the national organization of people who have this particular food education certification. The organization undertakes social events and study groups and refers its members to possible career opportunities. One of my respondents was the leader of the group, and all three were women. The interview was conducted in summer 2009, in Japanese. It lasted about 3 h at the home of one of the interviewees.
Broadly speaking, there are three categories of occupational certifications in Japan. “Government” certifications guarantee occupational prestige and include certifications such as accountant, medical doctor, architect, preschool teacher, and Business Information Administrator. The second category is “private” certifications issued by private organizations and companies. Examples include: stock analyst, jewelry analyst, and bookkeeping. Between these two levels is the third called “public” certifications whose certification criteria are approved by the related governmental agencies or are issued by quasi-public organizations such as the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Trade. This includes English, Secretarial Ability which are approved by the Ministry of Education, Consumer Life Adviser approved by the Ministry of Commerce, and Japanese dressmaking approved by the Chamber of Commerce (Aoshima 1997, pp. 22–23). Food education certifications are private certifications, while more traditional certifications such as registered dietician and licensed cook are government certifications.
An exception here is Food Education Leader which was founded with the support from a major health food and dietary supplement company, Miki Corporation.
Instead of listing the percentage of daily allowance, Japanese labels simply state a particular nutrient’s absolute amount. Some have criticized that this labeling makes it more difficult for consumers to understand how much is too much.
Complex Pollution was a book published in the 1970s that exposed the impacts of environmental pollution. It is widely read and influential.
Miki Corporation, which sells health food and dietary supplements, holds various workshops and seminars on the topic of food’s health impacts. Respondents who raised Miki as the factor for their interests in food education tended to link it with health awareness and appreciation of health issues. For example, one woman wrote “I learned from Miki that health depends upon food.”
By the bee problem, the respondent referred to the issue of ecological interdependence among insects and food crops that was discussed by one of the lecturers.
Private organizations can draw the lines because the government has not provided any concrete definition of “food education,” even in the Food Education Law.
Of course this view is not limited to individuals in Japan. Domestic food preparation has historically been a female responsibility in Euro-American societies (see Counihan 2004). In the US, a study of dual-earning couples in 1993 found that 87% of women and 18% of men said they took major responsibility for shopping; and 81% of women and 15% of men said they did so for cooking (cited in Kim 2009). Another study conducted in 2002 however found that among American dual-earner couples with children, 77% of women took greater responsibility for cooking (Bond et al. 2002). In their study of France, Norway, UK, the Netherlands, and the US, Warde et al. (2007) found that “while everywhere hugely disproportionate amounts of time are invested by women everywhere,” (p. 373) the gap is receding slowly.
This tendency is not limited to my survey respondents. For instance, a survey by the Kanagawa Prefectural government found that 93.3% of women were worried about food compared with 85.1% of men (Kanagawa Prefectural Government 2007).
“Shockers” is meant to be a pun of “shoku” (food) and the word “shock.”
According to Rose (1999), neoliberalism seeks to govern not through society but through the regulated choices of individual citizens. That is, neoliberal governmentality shifts the responsibility of caring about self from the public to the private realm. By putting the responsibility of food system reform on individuals rather than the government, a food literacy approach ought to be situated in the growth of such neoliberal subjectivity.
However, its common usage is still framed in terms of individual behavior and information use. For instance, in the US government report, Health People 2010, it is defined as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.” See http://nnlm.gov/outreach/consumer/hlthlit.html.
While readers might consider Japanese society to be much more patriarchal than the Western societies, the gendered assignment of food-related domestic tasks is nonetheless present in seemingly more the “gender conscious” West. See footnote 16.
Abbreviations
- FDA:
-
US Food and Drug Administration
- FEL:
-
Food Education Leader Program
- USDA:
-
US Department of Agriculture
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The author would like to thank staff and participants for the Food Education Leader seminars. I also thank the journal’s reviewers and its editor, Harvey James, for their useful comments.
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Kimura, A.H. Food education as food literacy: privatized and gendered food knowledge in contemporary Japan. Agric Hum Values 28, 465–482 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-010-9286-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-010-9286-6