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Food vendors at a railway station, 1927.
economic gain that cooking and serving Western food in late nineteenth
and early twentieth century Japan entailed. Pioneering endeavours of
people like Kusano Jōkichi and Watanabe Kamakichi, but also Caroline
Wicks, C. J. Huffnagel and Monsieur and Madame Begeux, were indispensable
in this process. While we may presume that these individuals were
highly passionate about their vocation and trade, their activities were in
the first place a means of earning a living and often a way of making a
fortune.
Politics and profit were the crucial lubricants that set the emergence
of multicultural Japanese gastronomy into motion. This, in turn, was the
first step towards the construction of the homogenized, national cuisine.
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