Fermenting for the Future: Japanese Pickles and Microbial Foodways

Fermenting for the Future reveals the fascinating story of tsukemono, the rich variety of pickles that have been an integral part of the Japanese diet for over a thousand years. Today, industrial pasteurization and declining agrodiversity have led to the disappearance of many of the hundreds of traditional tsukemono along with their benefits to human health. While fermenting vegetables and fruit was once a task of domestic drudgery, Aya Hirata Kimura shows how the art of tsukemono can now be appreciated as a catalyst for sociocultural change amid a growing awareness of the drawbacks of antibiotic modernity. By examining the complex socio‑environmental facets of tsukemono, Kimura deepens our understanding of how the modernization of food and agriculture transform not only human relationships to plants and the land but also the microbial diversity in our food systems and bodies.

“Fermenting for the Future shines as a stunning example of what Aya Kimura does best: take an everyday food item (here, Japanese pickles), chew through its microbial histories, and finally reassemble, raising questions we didn't even know to ask. Astonishing.”―Christine R. Yano, author of Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific

"In this fascinating account of tsukemono's commercialization and contemporary efforts to recover its probiotic capacities, Kimura reveals a good deal of indeterminacy, much like outcomes of fermentation itself."―Julie Guthman, author of The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can't Hack the Future of Food

"With clear and crisp prose, Kimura takes us into the intricate world of tsukemono―modest yet essential to Japanese food culture. An amazing read that traces microbial, social, and political entanglements and enriches our sense of human existence as entangled with food and the environment."―Shiho Satsuka, author of Nature in Translation: Japanese Tourism Encounters the Canadian Rockies

"Fermenting for the Future will help scholars across disciplines understand the importance of microbial diversity in agriculture, food manufacturing and retailing, environment, and human health."―Keiko Tanaka, Professor of Rural Sociology, University of Kentucky

"A conceptually rich and engaging account of the many lives and aliveness of fermented vegetables in Japanese cuisine. Kimura carefully traces the connections between the microbial cultures within tsukemono and the culinary, sensual, ecological and political dynamics of tsukemono production, retailing, and consumption."―Gyorgy Scrinis, author of Nutritionism: The Science and Politics of Dietary Advice