Memories, relationships and identity: food-related narratives and memory among Japanese descendants in Broome, Western Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article addresses how food cooked by Japanese first-generation migrants, both its making and meaning, is remembered and re-interpreted by their descendants in the remote coastal town of Broome, northern Western Australia. From the 1880s to the 1960s Japanese migrants flowed into Broome for its pearl-shelling industry and related businesses. Some, mostly men, intermarried with local Indigenous people, resulting in mixed heritage descendants who now live dispersed among their non-Japanese family members, seemingly assimilated into the multicultural society that constitutes Broome. In conversations with these Japanese descendants, memories related to food cooked at home by their Japanese first-generation ancestors often surfaced despite these foods being rarely eaten. Though these memories are not of the food itself, but of the family meals and social relations accompanying them, mentioning “food” helps them express their diverse relationships with their Japanese ancestors, support their nuanced identification with Japanese heritage, as well as respond to various images of “Japanese-ness” they encounter in the globalized world. A key finding of the research is that these Japanese descendants utilized food-related memories to articulate and position themselves in different contexts, despite not exhibiting strong Japanese cultural traits, including eating or cooking the aforementioned “food.”