My Year of Meats...

Image from Amy Wagliardo on Flickr.

In My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki, the show My American Wife was meant to depict the true American experience through meat to the Japanese audience.  In a memo, the Tokyo office gives the staff for the show a list of desirable qualities which included qualities like attractiveness, a warm personality, obedient children, and attractive friends and neighbors (Ozeki 4).  The memo also goes into detail about undesirable things like obesity and second class people (Ozeki 4).  This memo shows that the concept of being “American” is interpreted differently in the eyes of the Japanese.  This concept of what is desirable and undesirable to show to the Japanese audience is a reflection of the Japanese culture.  Jane is asked to find families throughout the US that fit the specifics that the Tokyo office desires.  In these families, the woman is the one who prepares and cooks the meals for the family and when Jane finds a Mexican man named Bert who prepares the meals, the office shuts the idea down.  This moment is important in showing the difference in how the Japanese think being an American means along with the what it means to be a mother and how Jane sees being an American through the eyes of being an American personally.  The office has a strict view of what it means to be American while Jane is open to the variability and freedom of choices that comes with the American culture.  Being from America, Jane knows that American families are not cookie cutters of each other.  The Japanese culture is known to be strict as described the writings of Allison when she describes obentos.  From the writings of Allison, it can be concluded that in Japan obedience is a highly important quality along with tradition (Allison 81).  In Japan, the preparation of the obento is a symbol of her love for the child which in My American Wife is translated through the mother providing nourishment for the family through the consumption of meats.  As discussed in both My Year of Meats and in Allison’s writing on obentos, in the Japanese culture the men are typically not present which is why in My American Wife there is a strong emphasis on showing that the husband is kind and helpful around the house (Allison 81).  For me, this description of what the office was looking for reminded me of our own cooking shows in America.  In an array of cooking shows, the woman is cooking and the atmosphere is happy and in many of the shows there is an emphasis on old-fashioned cooking.  On a show called the Pioneer Woman, the host, Ree Drummond, has an emphasis on how the recipes make me family happy along with emphasizing how hard her husband works.  The show depicts the family as happy and constantly shows scenes of the family smiling and laughing which is the same concept that My American Wife attempted to get at.  I think it is interesting to point out how the American culture is portrayed in a way that a wife cooks in order to maintain her family’s happiness.  This concept shows how even though in most American families do not fit the cookie cutter role that is portrayed, shows depict this middle-class family in a similar fashion even across cultural lines.