Shu FUJITA
Cultural Anthropology of Contemporary Cuisine

Academic works

Journal Article

2024. "Exploring the Thought, Work, and Material Flow in Making: A Study of Culinary Processes in a Peruvian Contemporary Restaurant" Interdisciplinary cultural studies 28: 75-94.[originally written in Japanese. Please contact to the author.]

2023. "Toward A Potential Dimension of Cooking: Creation Of "New Dishes" and Exploration of "Deliciousness" in a Contemporary Peruvian Restaurant". Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology 88(2): 195-214. [originally written in Japanese, but English translation is available. Please contact to the author.]

Conference Presentation

2023 "The Pursuit of the Local by the Global in Peruvian Contemporary Cuisine" International Workshop: Food as a Window to the Past: Africa, Asia and the Pacific at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

2023  “Methods and Reflections on the Workshop ‘Learning Fieldwork through Video Editing’”.  Commons Cafe at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies  [in Japanese]

2022 (Video work and discussion) Second Life in Peru/What dosen't pass you by. 56th Annual Conference of Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology at Meiji University [in Japanese]

2022 How is "Expression" through Cuisine Possible? Cues for Expression of Thinking in Culinary Expression in a Contemporary Peruvian Restaurant. 56th Annual Conference of Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology at Meiji University [in Japanese]

2022 "Global Pursuit of the Local: Ideas and Contradictions in the Peruvian Contemporary Cuisine"  Contemporary Anthropology Workshop at the University of Tokyo [in Japanese]

2021 "Creation as Expression of Ingredients: The Theory of Creation in the Peruvian Restaurant of Contemporary Cuisine". 920th Workshop of Social Anthropology in Tokyo Metropolitan University, online [in Japanese]

2021 "When a Cultural Anthropologist becomes a "Cook": Participation and its complexity in Peruvian Contemporary Cuisine" 56th Annual Conference of Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology, online [in Japanese]

2019 "The Gap Between the Modern History of Modern Gastronomy and One Day of a Restaurant"  Food as a intersection of culture and a body (supported by Grant for Collaborative Research in Humanities and Social Sciences 2018 by Suntory Foundation) at  the University of Tokyo. [in Japanese]

2018 "Making Deliciousness: from the Process of Cooking in a Japanese Modern Gastronomy Restaurant". Contemporary Anthropology Workshop at the University of Tokyo [in Japanese]

2017 "Reading Multi-Shikohins of as the Degree Zero of Cultural Anthropology: On Modern Gastronomy".  Workshop for Anthropology of Shikohin(the Japaneses Society of Cultural Anthropology) at the University of Tokyo  [in Japanese]

2017 "Cooking as the Production of Facts: the Production of Facts and Discourses in Modern Gastronomy"  52th Annual Conference of Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology at Kobe University [in Japanese]

2016 "Taboos Based on Classification Systems and Ones Not: Cultural Anthropological Inquiry on Modern Gastronomy".  Area Studies Forum for Young Scholars at the University of Tokyo  [in Japanese] 

2016.3 "What Discourses Condition the Production of Arts: Anthropological Inquiry"  Presentation of doctoral and master's thesis, the Japaneses Society of Cultural Anthropology, at Tsukuba University  [in Japanese]

Workshop

2023.7  Learning Fieldwork through Video Editing: From Melanesian image. TUFiSCo Workshop at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. 

2023.2 Learning Fieldwork through Video Editing. TUFiSCo Workshop at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. 

Book Review

2017 "Tim ingold Making: Anthropology, Archeology, Art and Architecture, 2013" Journal of Cultural Anthropology(Bunkajinruigaku Kenkyu) 17: 108-109.

Translation

2017 Casper Bruun Jensen "Thinking the Earth: New Disciplinary Alliances in the Anthropocene" translated at Revue de la Pensee d'Aujourd' Hui(gendai shiso), 45(22) 46-57.

2017 Anna L. Tsing "Blasted Landscapes (And the Gentle Art of Mushroom Picking)". translated at Revue de la Pensee d'Aujourd' Hui(gendai shiso), 45(4) 128-150.

2017 (Edit of interview &Translation) Anna L. Tsing "Following the Entanglement which Composes Nature and Culture” translated at ER 6 :16-19.

For Genaral Public

Interviewed 

2023  "A Framework for Loving Cultures, thougnt from Contemporary Culinary Restaurants" Shincho July, 2023: 226-7. [in Japanese]

2023　（Interviewed by Junya Shinohara）Innovative Creations in Cuisine, and Other Lessons from Working in Peru’s Globally Acclaimed Restaurant. Interview with Cultural Anthropologist Shu Fujita. DIG THE TEA

2022 (Interviewed by Junichi Kobayashi) "Asking to a Cultural Anthropologist the Methods for Decoding 'Unknown Food Culture'". Professional Cooking(senmon ryori) 58(1):79-83.   [in Japanese]

2022 (Interviewed by Saikiko Hirano) "Where Contemporary Cuisine is Going?: Thinking Future of Food and Society". RiCE May 2022:115-119.   [in Japanese]

Essay

2023　Noma Kyoto (Part 2) - The Second Half of the Course at the Kyoto Pop-up and Comparison with Central in Peru. Tokyo Art Beat. [originally written in Japanese and translated]

2023　Noma Kyoto (Part 1) - The First Half of the Course at the Kyoto Pop-up. Tokyo Art Beat. [originally written in Japanese and translated]

2023 To Begin a Cultural Critique of Food: Contemporary Cuisine and the Fiction of Dichotomy. Slow Internet (Osoi-internet) [in Japanese]

2022 Dreaming of Becoming  a Worldwide Drink: Chicha de jora in Peru" Ethnology Quarterly(Kikan-minzokugaku). 180: 16-19  [in Japanese] 

2022 Food and Art: To Enjoy Contemporary Cuisine as a Art Tokyo Art Beat  [in Japanese])

2017 Why Everything Cannot be Called "Natural"?: On Modern Gastronomy. ER 6:32-33.[in Japanese])

Presentation

2022 "The Process and Theory of Culinary Creation in Peru's Contemporary Cuisine Restaurant Central: How Chefs Create Cuisine" Delicious Future Institute at Good Eat Village  [in Japanese]

2019.6 "Is Central Restaurante a Place to Enjoy Deliciousness?: a Cultural Anthropological Analysis". Sansuikai (Association of Japanese companies in Peru), JETRO in Peru.   [in Japanese]

Thought-Provoking Image

According to Tadashi Yanai's "The Adventure of Cinematic Thinking," "cinematic thinking" is a way of thinking that confronts the world in which we live, captures its essence, and presents an image of the world in which we should live, in a way that is unique to film. In his argument, he refers mainly to films produced as fiction, but non-fiction films can also have such thoughts. We call nonfictional images that attempt to express such thoughts "thought-provoking images".

　Thought-provoking images are documentary images insofar as they are made from video materials that record what actually happened. However, while most documentary images are oriented toward bringing representations, that is, things that are real in the usual sense, into the images, the aim of thought-provoking images is different. The aim, as mentioned earlier, is to express thought. In other words, to capture concepts and impressions that can hardly be said to exist, or to evoke counterfactual and virtual images that cannot actually exist. To regard an image as an expression of thought, rather than as an expression of something.

　And we believe that such images are perhaps the counterpart of the practice that anthropology has had so far with texts. Anthropology should have aimed not to describe people's lives, but to provoke some thought through them.

　Therefore, together with my friends, I am working on the production of such images and on workshops to produce such images as an education in anthropological ways of thinking.