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The Ingredients of Culture: A Study on Cultural Identity and Cultural Belinging in Relation to Food in Hiromi Goto's Chorus of Mushrooms
Jönköping University, School of Education and Communication, HLK, Disciplinary Research.
2020 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (professional degree), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Food is something every human consumes in order to survive. However, cuisine and culinary practices hold more power than the basic biological need. Food can be used as a tool to express cultural identity and cultural belonging. Culinary practices and traditions make crossing cultural borders entirely possible on an everyday basis. A fictional novel which explores the symbolic meaning of food in connection to cultural identity and cultural belonging is Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms (1994). In order to analyse the way that Goto portrays the characters Naoe, Keiko, and Muriel in relation to food and how they use food as a tool to construct their cultural identities, and define their cultural belonging, a close-reading analysis of the three female characters was conducted. The results of the study show the difficulties of completely excluding oneself from certain cultures which the individual comes in contact with on a regular basis. Naoe, trying to maintain a Japanese lifestyle in Canada, is determined to only consume Japanese food with the intention on sustaining her cultural identity and cultural belonging. Keiko, Naoe’s daughter, completely casts her Japanese heritage away and tries to adapt to the new influences of culture in Canada, only cooking Canadian food. Caught between Naoe’s and Keiko’s radical principles, Muriel, the granddaughter of Naoe and daughter of Keiko, is left to search for her own cultural identity and cultural belonging. Using food, Muriel combines both Japanese and Canadian culinary traditions in order to embrace her cultural in-betweenness and replace the uncertainty she feels by embracing a cultural hybridity.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020. , p. 21
Keywords [en]
cultural identity, cultural belonging, food, chorus of mushrooms, Hiromi Goto
National Category
Specific Literatures
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-47804ISRN: JU-HLK-ENA-1-20200021OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hj-47804DiVA, id: diva2:1393786
Subject / course
HLK, English
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Available from: 2020-02-17 Created: 2020-02-17 Last updated: 2025-10-13Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
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