Tampopo
Jûzô Itami,
1985,
114’
A truck driver stops at a small family-run noodle shop and decides to help its fledgling business. The story is intertwined with various vignettes about the relationship of love and food.
EN
“Rather than accepting a governmentally sanctioned metanarrative of Japanese identity proven through hyperconsumerism of foreign products, Tampopo does not allow its audience complacency in the act of consumption: with the increasing presence of foreign goods in Japan, the very identity of Japan becomes open to commodification as well, and to scepticism. In Tampopo, this commodification is not at all negative; rather, it recreates Japan as relative to the rest of the world, a margin able to revel in its own marginality.”
Timothy Iles1
- 1Timothy Iles, “Tampopo: Food and the Postmodern in the Work of Itami Jûzô,” Japanstudien 12, no. 1 (2001).
