Italy-Japan: Dialogues on Food

Abstract

In the last twenty years, Food Studies have fortunately become increasingly widespread and reflected in important academic and business institutions, as well as closely connected to popular media. They offer multidisciplinary perspectives of the relationship between food and the different components of the societies to which they are linked, in particular; science, culture, communication, economics, finance, and environmental sustainability. The approach to the subject, precisely because of its broad spectrum, allows a wide range of scholars and experts from different sectors to study the relationship with their respective disciplines in progressively dynamic and transversal ways. The Food+ Symposium, organised by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in collaboration with the Consulate General of Japan in Milan, hosted some of the most prestigious names in different fields, with particular reference to the specificities of two of the countries where food has traditionally had greater symbolic value: Italy and Japan. These two culinary realities are now exported all over the world and have been for a long time representative of lifestyles, social and economic dynamics, in many cases similar all along their respective histories. This volume, therefore, presents the result of the contributions offered by the main exponents of the Italian-Japanese economic-cultural scene, intended as a starting point for further investigations.The participation of authorities and guests, managers, experts, journalists and scholars from Japan and Italy to the Symposium, gave a chance to achieve a great overview into Food Studies. Our guests have presented a great number of implications of the cultural representations of Food Culture analysed in a multi-perspective approach, underlying the value of Food and cuisine in Japan and Italy nowadays as in the past, through a considerable transition between tradition and modernity.