Obentos - revised

After attempting to make a bento in class today, I decided I wouldn't be cut out for life as a Japanese mom. My messy excuse for a bento was, in comparison to everything I've heard and seen about the real thing, a complete failure. My patterns were messy and indistinct. The colors blurred together in an incoherent mishmash. There was no contrast to speak of, nothing to strike the eye, nothing to tie it all together. Much easier to layer meat with cheese, to spread mayonnaise carefully across evenly textured wheat bread, to add a ruffle of green lettuce and then cut off the crusts. I can release my creativity on the foods I've grown up eating, and I can even see myself waking up early to pack a lunch with love and care, just like my own mom did for 15 years. I can't express my dedication effectively through a bento, but I can do it my own way, confidently even, as long as I stay within my comfort zone: good old American simplicity.

My parents both have creative sides, and would enjoy the challenge of bento-making. In the end, though, Dad doesn't have the time to make daily bentos, and my Mom doesn't have the patience to do it everyday. It's too hard, too demanding to begin every day with the pressure of pleasing someone else, to be tested each day on your ability to provide variety and creativity while anticipating needs and wants, to serve perfection on a plate to your own children. I guess that's something you get used to, as a Japanese mom.

The bento tradition may be difficult to identify with for an American, but it is a powerful force that cannot be boxed into limiting terms of good or bad. The obento can be an opportunity, rather than a cultural constraint. It's a fresh start each day, a way to prove yourself without showing up to PTA meetings; it may be relaxingly meditative, and it is a bonding ritual, never dull and consistently healthful. Mothers and their children can identify with this culinary tradition, whose roots run deep in the history and culture of Japan.

In America, there is mixed ideology surrounding whether or not to supply your child with a bagged lunch. From the child's perspective, it would be far more delicious to eat a hot lunch every day. But underneath the jealousy might lie appreciation for parents with time for health - although marketing is more powerful than nutrition in shaping childhood desires. A healthy sack lunch might indicate a lack of family funds, but as with the bento it demonstrates a loving family support system. An unhealthy sack lunch is not taboo, but only parents who are strapped of time and care little for nutrition supply their children with a daily dose of Lunchables.

Bagged lunches are reminiscent of children's toys: parts sold separately, little assembly required. The nutritional ideologies behind American bagged lunches are guided by "official" prescriptions of health, rather than by a deeply entrenched cultural traditions. The sandwich, yogurt, fruit, juicebox and snack (a few cookies, for example) found in many bagged lunches are efforts to replicate the food pyramid. Carbohydrate, dairy, fruit, vegetable, and protein: typically most of the food groups are represented. Assessment of "health" stops at the nutrition label; if a juicebox says it provides a serving of fruit, then it provides a serving of fruit. Then comes dessert, a concession to the aisles of snack foods beckoning from every grocery store.

In "Rice Ball Rivalries", Whitelaw described the Onigiri as a traditional food that retained its popularity by adapting to the era of fast food. In Japan, foods with ancient roots evolved alongside industry, preserving the essence of traditional foods and shaping modes of fast food production. But to say that Americans should be envious of other that historical depth, to say our lunchtime traditions are shallow and culturally empty, seems jaded and pointless. It doesn't make us, as people, less complex or even less capable of establishing our own identities. Does it strip us of our ability to feel national pride, because our food traditions have shallow and wide-spread roots? Is it problematic that we borrow other food traditions, that we mix-and-match - and is it wrong to say disparagingly that we do so because we lack our own culture? I've heard people say this - American and otherwise. But I think our "culture" has something very unique to say, and I think it's worth listening to. If we listen to it maybe we'll figure something out about why we put such stock in culture.