Changing Food Habits of the Japanese in Hawaii

Abstract

T O THE savage as to the civilized man, there is nothing more important than what he eats and how he eats. In his effort best to satisfy his hunger, man everywhere and at all times finds himself caught in a complex of cultural and institutional imperatives. Furthermore, he is everywhere habituated to his customary food and the usual mode of satisfying his hunger. It is this subjective force of habits, together with the inertia of social institutions, that gives to food habits a measure of permanence. However, under certain conditions of human group life, man's food habits do change. The introduction of a new mode of eating and production of food as well as an impact of commercialized foodstuffs and new modes of cultural life, all function to modify man's pre-established food habits. In every instance the change is wrought by such external and impersonal forces as trade, rise in income, and the availability of different kinds of food, and by such subjective and personal forces as change in food tastes and in conceptions of social status. By far the most important factor to be reckoned with is the disorganization of the traditional institutions as an incident to culture contacts and change; it unfastens, so to speak, the traditional and customary control over what man eats and how he eats. A study of changing food habits is more than a problem in the field of nutrition, health, household economy and economics; it is a sociological problem as well. Indeed, so complex is this phenomenon of changing food habits and so manifold are the problems associated with it, that its study by any highly abstract discipline reveals very little of its true significance. The crux of the problem from a broader point of view seems to be to ascertain what has been the prevailing food complex of a given society and how this complex was maintained, to describe the processes through which changes have taken place in the traditional food complex, and to isolate the factors giving rise to the new food complex and food habits. So conceived, the problem falls within the wider problem of culture change and the assimilation of people into the culture complex of a new society. Within the framework of 'the dynamics of culture change, the present paper attempts to describe and analyze the changing food habits of the Japanese people in Hawaii. In other words, the process of culture contact and change is the primary interest of the study.1