Rosaley Gai

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

My research focuses on depictions of food and eating in modern and contemporary Japanese literature and media. My dissertation, tentatively titled "Hen-shoku: Eating Strange and Transformative Foods in Modern Japanese Literature," considers first, the discursive resemblance between eating and reading, and second, how the material nature of foods as written about in Japanese fiction, particularly when non-normative appetites are under examination, dictate writing and reading. The dissertation covers five short stories and novellas published over roughly a century: Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's "Bishoku kurabu" (1919), Okamoto Kanoko's "Sushi" (1939), Kanai Mieko's "Usagi" (1972), and Murata Sayaka's "Seimeishiki" (2013).

Aside from my current dissertation, my work includes projects on the promulgation of meat-eating in modern Japan, transpacific narratives of "fusion" food between Northeast Asia and the Americas, industrial processing in the food industries of Japan and the U.S., and the history of sweets-making in Japan in relation to tea practice. Practices of making are critical to my research; I believe an engagement and understanding of "things" with complex historical lineages, particular material qualities, and strong ideological valences can aid in reading literature in a new light.