Nancy Stalker is the Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Professor of Traditional Japanese Culture and History at University of Hawai'i at Manoa. She is author of numerous articles and books on Japanese history and culture, including Japan: History and Culture from Classical to Cool. She loves to eat and cook foods of all kinds.

Ken Albala--University of the Pacific
Theodore C. Bestor--Harvard University
Lorie Brau--University of New Mexico
Greg de St. Maurice--University of Pittsburgh
Noriko J. Horiguchi--University of Tennessee
Faye Yuan Kleeman--University of Colorado
Mire Koikari--University of Hawaii at Manoa
Susan Napier--Tufts University
Yoshimi Osawa--Kyoto University and Kyoto University ASEAN Center, Bangkok
Eric C. Rath--University of Kansas
Eiko Maruko Siniawer--Williams College
Amanda Seaman--University of Massachusetts Amherst
Nancy K. Stalker--University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Dick Stegewerns--University of Oslo
Bruce Suttmeier--Lewis & Clark College
Ayumi Takenaka--Aston University
J. Keith Vincent--Boston University
Takeshi Watanabe--Wesleyan University

"Devouring Japan offers radical new insights into the complex and fascinating world of Japanese food. It is a timely reminder of how important the paradoxical Japanese model of simplicity along with media celebrity has become to the new post-Francophone gastronomy. It is peppered with insightful chapters on the propaganda value of umami and washoku that allowed Japanese cuisine to enter the great council of good taste in a new global hierarchy. A much needed intervention in the politics and poetics of good taste in the 21st century."--Krishnendu Ray, author of The Ethnic Restaurateur

"This volume contains a world of wisdom about Japanese food from scholars of literature, history, and social sciences. Its strength lies in the geographical and cultural diversity of its writers and themes and its importance is in setting Japanese food in multiple frames of meaning--not only as it has been 'inscribed' with national, spiritual, cultural, and aesthetic value but also as it has been, more importantly for its global audiences, given worth and value in food trucks, in street stalls, and in outlier interpreters of its essences. Far from the sanctity of culinary gods and 'authenticity' altars, the book encourages us to slurp and chew--and learn."--Merry White, author of Coffee Life in Japan

"A lavish panoply of predominantly modern Japanese food culture. Interdisciplinary in approach, it is a quick read for a volume of its size...and the chapters are uniformly well-written...A valuable resource to foodways scholars. As the subtitle suggests, the book speaks to greater issues of Japanese identity, nationalism, and globalization."--Choice