Different Cultures

Before I was enrolled in the class of Anthropology of Food I had no idea what a bento box was and what it consisted of. After reading the article by Anne Allison, I was able to learn about the Japanese culture and compare it to American society. In Japan, mothers create bento boxes for their children that are entering nursery school. These boxes can consist of anything such as rice, fish, cucumbers, fruits, vegetables, and other traditional Japanese foods. Bento boxes are very important to the Japanese culture because they believe that nursery school is what shapes the person as they become older in life. Children have to completely finish their bento box and it is recommended to finish it in a timely matter. Japanese mothers will spend hours before the child will go off to school to make the bento boxes ornate and beautiful. There is competition between the mothers of the children of who can make the best bento box and the mother and the child are judged and evaluated upon the beauty and design of the bento box. There are even magazines and books written about bento boxes to help make the process a little less intimating to Japanese mothers.
This Japanese tradition compared to American society shows how different the world is. When a child is sent to nursery school in America the child is judged on what child has the best chips and the best cookie. One is judged differently if they do not have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and if a child does not want to eat their chips they are not looked down upon it. Mothers in America throw a sandwich, a bag of chips, and maybe a Chips-Ahoy chocolate chip cookie into a brown bag and then send the child off to school. A mother and child are not judged in America of who can cut off the sandwich crust the best. I think that a bento box is very interesting and it is something unique to the Japanese culture and I was happy that I was able to learn something new in class.


This is a picture of the bento box that I made in class.