Research Associates, TUFS Field Science Commons(TUFiSco), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Part-time lecturer of Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin
Cultural Anthropology, Contemporary Cuisine, Food, Art, Visual Anthropology
I am researching contemporary cuisine from the perspective of cultural anthropology. Contemporary cuisine is a style of cooking that is based on Western haute cuisine but goes beyond it, attempting an avant-garde interpretation of the nature and culture of the place where the restaurant is located. For example, at Central, a contemporary cuisine restaurant in Peru, the colourful native varieties of corn grown in one region of the Andes are cooked individually and combined in a dish that evokes the Andean landscape during the harvest season. By intersecting the results of my research with studies in the anthropology of food, the anthropology of art, and the anthropology of science and technology, my research aims to answer questions such as what kind of action is cooking and what is art.
Alongside the research on cuisine, we are also practising ‘provocative film and ‘prococative compsition of photography’, a method of editing video and photographs taken during fieldwork in a way that draws out the potential relationships between them, and workshops (Let's Learn Fieldwork Through Video Editing) and exhibitions (Doing Fieldwork through an Exhibition) based on these ideas.
Some examples of provocative images can be found on this page.
2025. Ethnography of a Peruvian Contemporary Cuisine Restaurant, or Anthropology of Cooking. Doctoral Theses granted in Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo. [originally written in Japanese, but rough English translation is available. Please contact to the author.]
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 rough English translation is available. Please contact to the author.]
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]
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.
2017 "Tim ingold Making: Anthropology, Archeology, Art and Architecture, 2013" Journal of Cultural Anthropology(Bunkajinruigaku Kenkyu) 17: 108-109.
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.
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]
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]
Provocative images are ones that aim to reorder multiple images taken during fieldwork in order to draw out the potential relationships between them and to evoke an understanding of the field specific to the images. At first glance, they are nothing more than a disorganised sequence of images of seemingly trivial events. However, if we carefully trace the images, their moods and their relationships to the other images, we will be able to understand the field in a way that is not revealed by simply looking at each image.
And we believe that anthropological fieldwork is surely also about connecting the myriad images we encounter in the field and creating thoughts that are only possible from them.
Therefore, as well as working on the production of such images, we also run provoking Image editing workshops as a way of learning how to do anthropological thinking. This is a project that is being carried out as a counterpart to ‘Evocative Assemblage Photography’.
Dancing Togethr Jun. 2022
Cinematography: Daisaku Hashizume Editid by：Shu Fujita
What dosen't pass you by Sep. 2021
Cinematography, Edited by: Shu Fujita Subtitle: Hiroshi Homura Syndicate(Shinjiketo),1990.
Losing the light Jun. 2021
Cinematography, Edited by: Shu Fujita
Sep. 2016 Preliminary research at Lima, Peru
Nov. 2016- Aug. 2017 Fieldwork at a Contemporary Cuisine Restaurant in Tokyo, Japan
Sep.-Nov. 2017 Fieldwork at a Contemporary Cuisine Restaurant in Lima,Peru
Jul. 2018-Apr. 2020 Fieldwork at Contemporary Cuisine Restaurants in Lima and Cusco,Peru
Apr. 2018-Apr. 2020 Research Associate at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru
Apr. 2020-Aug. 2022 Research Fellowship for Young Scientists, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Sep. 2022-Present Research Associates, Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Oct. 2022-Present Research Associates, TUFS Field Science Commons, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
amanefjt "at" gmail.com