Nick Davie: For our Living Room Chats this month, we discuss Juzo Itami‘s 1985 classic Tampopo. The wonderfully crafted food-based epic Tampopo champions the craft of cooking and aims to tear down establishment bias towards the amateur chef. Itami cleverly comments on establishment snobbery in Japanese culture whilst parodying the Western genre to create the first Japanese Noodle western. The film follows the widow Tampopo struggling to appease customers at her local fast food restaurant with her inadequate cooking until two truck drivers decide to stick around and help her learn the ways of ramen cooking. The lead truck driver Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) takes Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto) under his wing in this endearing championing of the amateur, teaching her the methods and techniques to improving her skill set. A strangely unique film, Tampopo is best watched on an empty stomach; in my opinion, this can result in the desire for a sumptuous feast of ramen and such afterwards. Discussing this with my colleague Eugene Kang, I would love to hear about your experience with Tampopo and other ‘food porn’ cinema.
Eugene Kang: Even if you were to go in with a full stomach to watch this film, there is no way that you would not crave at least one of the dishes that are seen onscreen. The plot of the men helping Tampopo with her ramen is actually about half of the movie whereas the rest is designated to mostly unrelated vignettes that center around food. It is in these vignettes that Itami treats us to a visual smorgasbord, from ramen to fine seafood to a simple ice cream cone. While I think a lot of ‘food porn’ focuses on the visual appeal of food and the vicarious enjoyment we get of seeing someone eat it, I think the genius of Tampopo is that Itami explores the culture around food and the rituals we have created in order to prepare it and eat it. One of the first scenes is between Gun (Ken Watanabe) and a ramen master (Ryutaro Otomo). The ramen master is a master not because he knows how to make the best ramen, but because he ‘knows’ how to eat ramen in the best way. You must put the pork to the right, you must stroke the naruto three times, etc. Itami and Otomo make it clear through dialogue and performance that it is absurd that anyone things there is a right way to eat ramen, but the ramen master takes is so seriously that Gun has to respect the master’s dedication. Not only is this a funny scene, but it is a clever way to introduce ramen as a dish that deserves respect in its preparation and consumption. Also the idea that ritual and tradition are just as important to the enjoyment of food, no matter how ridiculous your rituals are, will be a running theme throughout the film.
What do you make of the different rituals that you saw around the preparation and consumption of food in Tampopo? Do you have a particular vignette that you really enjoyed?
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