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Pickles and agrobiodiversity: a foodway and traditional vegetable varieties in Japan

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Abstract

Foodways are important in understanding the bio-cultural dynamics of crop diversity. This paper examines the example of tsukemono (Japanese pickles) and their importance for heirloom vegetables. Social histories of heirlooms and tsukemono were difficult to obtain, so various sources from archives, published reports, to interviews were used to stitch together the stories of the tsukemono-heirloom relationships. The paper finds that tsukemono has provided different opportunities for heirlooms. Tsukemono can enhance the taste and flavors of heirlooms. Pickling can make the best of heirloom’s unique tastes even when they are not suited for other uses. Moreover, certain tsukemono has historically been associated with important social customs like gift-giving and seasonal events. The theoretical contribution of this study is to analyze the foodway-heirloom relationships from the vantage point of the political economy of agrofood systems. It is not enough to say a particular foodway is important for heirlooms. The paper reveals the necessity of analyses that situate the heirloom- foodway relationships in the modern agrofood systems. Changes not only in agriculture but also in consumption, retail, and processing are crucial in understanding the heirloom-foodway relationship.

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Notes

  1. Tsukemono could be based on meat and fish but they are outside of the scope of my research.

  2. To compare the sizes of different industries, I turned to the government's Census of Manufacturers. The value of manufactured goods shipment for establishments with more than 4 people for the tsukemono industry in 2017 was 385 billion yen, whereas miso industry was 127 billion and soy sauce/amino acid manufacturing 182 billion. The non-alcoholic beverages (but excludes dairy) industry was 2.2 trillion yen. In terms of the scale of employment, I used "the number of people engaged in the industry" in this Census which shows the tsukemono industry had 24,729 people in 2017. The "number of people engaged in the industry" includes both full-time and part-time workers but might not capture seasonal workers as it asks the number of "persons engaged" on a particular date. It also only includes establishments with more than four people so particularly small picklers are not included (https://www.meti.go.jp/statistics/tyo/kougyo/result-2/h29/gaiyo/pdf/2017-k1-riyou.pdf).

  3. Japan Seed Trade Association has about 900 member companies and is the only ordinary member from Japan to the International Seed Federation.

  4. Kamigamo Shrine is one of the oldest shrines in Kyoto and was considered the protector of the imperial court since the eighth century. It has been designated as UNESCO's world heritage site.

  5. Heirloom daikon in Nara prefecture is also called iwai daikon. I thank the anonymous reviewer for this insight.

  6. The farming area is derived from statistics on Kadono County in 1916. It has data on Katsura village which had rice paddies (170.40 cho) and land for wheat (145 cho), totaling 313 hectares.

  7. The data is from the Census of Agriculture and Forestry in 2015. The average age is for "principal farmers" (kikanteki nogyo jyujisha: people whose primary work is farming). Data is available at https://www.e-stat.go.jp/.

  8. As noted above, “improved” shōgoin kabu is now produced beyond the city of Kyoto which is not included in this data.

  9. Unfortunately, since gourds are no longer a major vegetable crop, there is no equivalent data.

  10. This data is taken from the Census of Agriculture and Forestry 2015 (Table 5.1). The ways that the data was compiled has shifted over the years since 1904 to the present, but roughly equivalent. The number of farming families includes both types of farmers who are farming mainly for family consumption as well as those that are farming commercial sales.

  11. See A. Imaizumi and Hisano (2013) for more discussion on divergent policies at the prefectural and city levels in Kyoto.

Abbreviations

F1:

First filial

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the interviewees who kindly shared their stories. Anonymous reviewers, Krisna Suryanata, and Benjamin Schrager provided helpful comments. She also thanks Kyoto University for hosting her as a visiting scholar. This research was assisted by a grant from the Abe Fellowship Program administered by the Social Science Research Council in cooperation with and with funds provided by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Hawai`i-Manoa, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Aya H. Kimura

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Kimura, A.H. Pickles and agrobiodiversity: a foodway and traditional vegetable varieties in Japan. Agric Hum Values 38, 1079–1096 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10219-9

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