The Aesthetics Of The Japanese Lunchbox

Lunchbox philosophy, or the world according to the Japanese lunchbox: how an object of sublime beauty offers a key to understanding Japanese aesthetics, design, and culture. The Makunouchi Bento, or traditional Japanese lunchbox, is a highly lacquered wooden box divided into quadrants, each of which contains different delicacies. It is also one of the most familiar images of Japan's domestic environment. When presented to the diner, the Japanese lunchbox seems straightforward enough; each of four food portions resides in its own compartment, apparently obeying a strict lunchbox geometry. So far, just food. But Kenji Ekuan reveals that a much deeper reading is possible, one that sees the lunchbox as nothing less than a key to an understanding of Japanese civilization, the spirit of form, and the aesthetic ideal in which the many are reduced to one. Ekuan reads the Japanese lunchbox as both object and metaphor. It is one of this book's many charms that he is able to see it as both simultaneously. He compares the visual pleasures of the Zen lunchbox to an aerial view of the Japanese archipelago; he invites us to savor its quadripartite structure as we savor the four seasons. In so doing, he unlocks the secrets of ancient Japanese rituals, celebrates the aesthetics of Japanese design, explores the contours of Japanese landscapes and technology, and delineates the forty-eight rules of the etiquette of Japanese form. With an agility more characteristic of poetry than of design criticism, he connects everything from food, television, motorcycles, package tours, and department stores to landscape, ecology, computers, and radios, all the while keeping his eye on his subject. In this book of magical transformations, nothing is what it first appears, but everything is deepened by "lunchbox theory." Consider the influence of the lunchbox on TV viewing, for example: chopsticks are used to stroll through a meal, just as remote control devices are used to browse TV channels. This book reveals a world of secret connections between its covers, in the spirit of the lunchbox itself.

Dating back several hundred years, the Japanese bento box is as integral a part of the country's culinary identity as sushi. Today, a contemporary version of the bento box exists, inspired by the rampant popularity of movies, television shows and manga. These charaben, made by parents (mostly mothers) eager to bring attention to their children's lunch boxes, comprise food crafted into visually creative, appealing and recognizable forms, and are as much about planning and preparation as nutrition. What better way to make children eat than to turn their midday meals into cartoon characters and video games? With Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes, writer and designer Christopher D Salyers documents the very real phenomenon of how rice, seaweed, mushrooms, tofu, hot dogs, fish cakes and just about any other edible delight you can imagine are shaped into the likes of Pikachu, Daraemon and Cinderella, bringing health, heart and imagination to the bento box, not to mention a bit of one-upmanship. A brief how-to guide, ingredient lists and interviews with charabenenthusiasts illuminate the many dynamic reasons behind this wholly Japanese pursuit. As Salyers writes: "There is something marvelous and enchanting incharaben, a something we should all look to find within ourselves - a convalescence of youth. For all of you who have ever eaten or prepared a slap-dash PB&J sandwich, or have been victim of school cafeterias, I offer up these pages as proof that when you show this much dedication to what you or your child eats, the end result will be nothing short of astounding." If you have never seen or tasted charaben, Face Food will open a whole new world to you, proving once again how the visual can say so much about a culture and its practices.

Rethinking Aesthetics is the first book to bring together prominent voices in the fields of architecture, philosophy, aesthetics, and cognitive sciences to radically rethink the relationship between body and design. These essays argue that aesthetic experiences can be nurtured at any moment in everyday life, thanks to recent discoveries by researchers in neuroscience, phenomenology, somatics, and analytic philosophy of the mind, who have made the correlations between aesthetic cognition, the human body, and everyday life much clearer. The essays, by Yuriko Saito, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Richard Shusterman, among others, range from an integrated mind-body approach to chair design, to Zen Buddhist notions of mindfulness, to theoretical accounts of existential relationships with buildings, to present a full spectrum of possible inquiries. By placing the body in the center of design, Rethinking Aesthetics opens new directions for rethinking the limits of both essentialism and skepticism.

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the past few centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. In a ground-breaking new study, Yuriko Saito provides a detailed investigation into our everyday aesthetic experiences, and reveals how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments can exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and our quality of life. By analysing a wide range of examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, everyday objects, and Japanese culture, Saito illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. She discusses the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characters of objects or phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic expression of moral values; and she examines the moral, political, existential, and environmental implications of these and other issues.

Japanese food is definitely delicious and healthy to boot. Their bento box dishes are also artistic and epitomize eye candy. With this bento box book recipe, you will get to learn how to pack, mix and match Japanese recipes for your hubby's, kids or your lunch box!

Modern Asian Design provides a comprehensive introduction to the development of Asian design in the modern period, both tracing historical threads and offering a theoretical framework within which to chart the history of design in Asia. Rather than a singular “Asian history”, this book presents a series of studies centred on trade routes, colonial relationships, regional networks and cross-cultural exchanges. Modern Asian Design builds on existing resources beyond design history in an effort to map the field, focusing particularly on relations between Asia and the West and also across Asian design cultures. Opening with a brief overview of trade and exchange networks in the 17th and 18th centuries, the bulk of this study comprises analysis of the development of modern design in Asia during the later 19th and early 20th centuries, a period of rapid modernisation. The book's final two chapters bring these central ideas into a contemporary and highly relevant context.

This study addresses the relationship between Japanese aesthetics, a field steeped in philosophy and traditional knowledge, and anime, a prominent part of contemporary popular culture. There are three premises: (1) the abstract concepts promoted by Japanese aesthetics find concrete expression at the most disparate levels of everyday life; (2) the abstract and the concrete coalesce in the visual domain, attesting to the visual nature of Japanese culture at large; and (3) anime can help us appreciate many aspects of Japan's aesthetic legacy, in terms of both its theoretical propositions and its visual, even tangible, aspects.

Illustrates how to connect with and incorporate Japanese design traditions into western homes. Adept at compact living and masters of elegant simplicity, the Japanese embody the principle of doing more with less.

This collection presents twenty-seven new essays in Japanese aesthetics by leading experts in the field. Beginning with an extended foreword by the renowned scholar and artist Stephen Addiss and a comprehensive introduction that surveys the history of Japanese aesthetics and the ways in which it is similar to and different from Western aesthetics, this groundbreaking work brings together a large variety of disciplinary perspectives—including philosophy, literature, and cultural politics—to shed light on the artistic and aesthetic traditions of Japan and the central themes in Japanese art and aesthetics. Contributors explore topics from the philosophical groundings for Japanese aesthetics and the Japanese aesthetics of imperfection and insufficiency to the Japanese love of and respect for nature and the paradoxical ability of Japanese art and culture to absorb enormous amounts of foreign influence and yet maintain its own unique identity. New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics will appeal not only to a wide range of humanities scholars but also to graduate and undergraduate students of Japanese aesthetics, art, philosophy, literature, culture, and civilization. Masterfully articulating the contributors’ Japanese-aesthetical concerns and their application to Japanese arts (including literature, theater, film, drawing, painting, calligraphy, ceramics, crafts, music, fashion, comics, cooking, packaging, gardening, landscape architecture, flower arrangement, the martial arts, and the tea ceremony), these engaging and penetrating essays will also appealto nonacademic professionals and general audiences. This seminal work will be essential reading for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of Japanese aesthetics.