The Japanese Restaurant (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series)

This book explores the growth and operations of the Japanese restaurant in Australia since the early 2000s from perspectives of both restaurant workers and consumers.

Through first-hand testimonies, collected from chefs, restaurateurs, gourmets and casual diners, it demonstrates how Japanese restaurants act as cultural hubs, connecting a diverse community of migrants, Australian citizens and international tourists, while also disseminating knowledge of Japanese culinary cultures. The ethnographic evidence presented challenges the colonialist and essentialist understandings of the ‘exotic’ and ‘Japaneseness’ as the ‘inferior other’ to the West. In so doing, the book highlights the complex manifestations of cross-cultural desires, translating practices and the performative racial-ethnic mimesis of Japanese ethnicity.

Featuring critical investigation into the fixed notions of otherness, race, ethnicity and authenticity, this book will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of Japanese society and culture, particularly Japanese food culture.

Iori Hamada is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Monash University, Australia. Much of her work to date has been concerned with making sense of how shared systems of ideas shape people’s transnational experiences, which vary by culture, race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, social status, geographical location and other variables. In 2019, Iori was awarded the Institute of Social Science and Oxford University Press Prize for her co-authored journal article titled ‘Silent Exits: Risk and Post-3.11 Skilled Migration from Japan to Australia’. In 2021, she was also awarded a Higher Education Academy Fellowship by Advance HE, United Kingdom.