Language can have a colorful relationship with food. This informative, well-researched book offers an in-depth examination of how language characterizes and fosters modern Japanese food culture. Drawing on her extensive experience in research and teaching the Japanese language, Tsujimura investigates the relationship between food and language in a variety of ways. She divides the book into two sections, "Language of Food from Within" and "Language of Food in Society," offering illuminating examples of Japanese vocabularies and phrases used to present food, describing the cooking experience, and explaining recipes and cookbooks…. Though the book seems technical and narrow, it is widely applicable and an interesting and enlightening read. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews

This book makes an invaluable contribution to the study of the language of food in Japanese, adding an engaging array of topics, from the vocabulary of food preparation to the significance of changing social and gender identity reflected in the language use by cookbook authors. Food, Language, and Society is an informative and insightful read for researchers, educators, and students, including L2-Japanese learners.

Kiyoko Toratani, York University

Drawing from sources like menus and cookbooks, Tsujimura is the first to explain the language of Japanese cooking. Readers of food studies and Japan will be enriched by this engrossing study that blends linguistic and sociocultural approaches to unpack the power of culinary terms for a society that loves food.

Eric C. Rath, University of Kansas; author of Oishii: The History of Sushi

In this detailed study of Japanese, Prof. Tsujimura presents insights into our personal and social experiences of food and our cultural assumptions and expectations about food, taste, and culinary practices. Through careful linguistic analysis she uncovers how language provides and creates resources to describe food and our experience of both taste and preparation. She also shows how attitudes toward food and cooking have changed over time and vary across cultures.

Peter Sells, University of York

A rich and engaging account of how the experience of preparing, consuming, and marketing food in Japanese society shapes and is shaped by the Japanese language, a work at once rigorous in its theoretical understanding of language and vividly personal in its depiction of the lived experience of food and language by Japanese today and in the past, and across differences in age, gender, and geographic identity.

Wesley M. Jacobsen, Harvard University