The Plastic Food Edition

Colin here. It has been almost three years since I’ve last been to Japan and it is a place that I sorely miss. The other day, I went to a charming set of food stalls nestled within a Japanese grocery store on the west coast: if you squinted, you were back in Japan, if only a smaller town mall in the middle of the country. What also brought my mind back to the country was not only the food hall style stalls, but also the plastic models of the dishes they served. Most restaurants you visit in Japan feature small models of the actual meals. It is a weird quirk, but quite helpful for those not fluent in the language. 

Why is this interesting? 

Turns out these plastic food models are a huge business! Yahoo explains: 

Replica food has been around since the 1920s, but Takizo Iwasaki, also known as “The Father of Fake Food,” was the first person who created hyperrealistic versions. Legend has it that Iwasaki, an artisan from Gujo Hachiman, created a replica omelet after observing melted drops of candle wax. His wife couldn’t tell the difference between the wax model and a real omelet, so he continued creating different fake food products. In 1932, after his replica omelet appeared at a department store in Osaka, he founded Iwasaki Be-I, one of Japan’s largest fake food manufacturers and a pioneer of a $90 million industry. 

As weird as the concept may seem, the figures actually serve a purpose. Japan is still a place where English or other language translations aren’t prevalent. So the plastic versions of dishes can convey what is on offer: you get the idea of tempura, curry, and so on. In the beginning it was soldiers during World War II and now a mass rush of tourists have an easy way to identify and also point to what they were after. 

The painstaking level of detail in the models comes at a price. Your sample ramen dish goes for around $100 to make, where that tasty IRL bowl is around $6 or $7. Restaurants generally spend thousands of dollars for their entire menu, displayed out front for all to see. 

But the food models have transcended utility: they are something that is so prevalent and so tied to eating out in Japan that it is a cultural icon of sorts. And when presented with it in another context like I was in the American mall, allowed for a gush of memories flooding back from my aggregated time in the country. (CJN) 

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)

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