Concept behind the "Japanize!" Series
Japan is surrounded on four sides by bodies of water and had a long history of isolationism. Even today, the mentality of being a solitary island nation persists. The Japanese understanding of religion, nationality, and ethnicity remains dim; for example, there remain deep-seated and facile misunderstandings that Islam = danger, Africa = poverty, and America = Caucasian. Amidst today’s globalization across numerous sectors and the inevitable question of Japan's place in that world, this misapprehension is nothing short of a risk.
This series looks at this deep-seated "island nation" thinking (dogma, bias, and preconception) among Japanese and attempts to visualize it through the vector of food, which plays a pivotal role in the formation of a culture of thought in various countries and peoples. The foods and ingredients of various countries are pressed into shape in this rounded form and arranged on a base ground in the same proportions as the flag of Japan. In other words, these foods are "Japanized."
