RYORI AND BENTO DANSHI: SPICING UP MASCULINITY IN JAPAN

Abstract

In late 2008, the Ryori and Bento Danshi [cooking and lunchbox men] boom that emerged and caught attention in the Japanese society apparently debunks the entrenched age-old saying of danshi chubo hairu bekarazu [men should not enter the kitchen]. While the cooking men discourse in Japan had always associated cooking men with the masculine professional realm or exhibiting masculine traits such as extravagant cooking in a domestic setting, contemporary Ryori and Bento Danshi who are conjuring simple meals or engaging in the feminine work of bento preparation in their domestic kitchen seems to suggest a feminization of men and their cookery. However, can such assertions be made without a more in-depth and detailed analysis of the phenomenon? In this paper, through dissecting the Ryori and Bento Danshi boom from a variety of perspectives - the macro environment (economic and marriage scene], actual characteristics of men's cooking and content analysis of maleoriented and themed recipe books - I argue that notwithstanding the growing ventures of Japanese men into the domestic cookery sphere, the boom does not translate to the feminization of men. Moreover, when discussing the phenomenon from the female's perspective, Ryori and Bento Danshi in fact epitomize a new model of alternative ideal masculine figure and in turn reflects a broadening process of the masculinity discourse which has been on its way in Japan since the 1990s.