日本語での反省はこちらです。

UPDATE (3/26)（日本語でも書いた更新）

Oh, Searchina. About a year ago, one of my articles got picked up by their “American blog” series and translated into Japanese. I was particularly annoyed, as I wrote, because the translators assumed I was a male tourist and wrote about how “moved” I was by Japanese food. (I’m not the only one whose identity was grossly mistaken, either–it seems to be pretty rough across the board for the other bloggers they translate.)

Anyway, Searchina and MSN picked up my piece “A Bento is Not as Big as the World,”

 

and while I got to be mercifully androgynous this time, the translators really missed the point.

 

The Japanese and my translation (my translation of a translation…brilliant) are below. Mainly, I’m disappointed that they did not include anything about the Matchar piece “Betty Friedan Did Not Kill Home Cooking” as that was the crux of my argument. In fact, the entire last paragraph is just gone.

Translation by paragraph; my comments in italics. More discussion after.

【米国ブログ】日本の弁当に注目「肥満に効果も、作るのが大変」

American Blogs: “Observations on Japan’s Bento: ‘Difficult to [say whether they can] Combat Obesity and to Make”

I don’t even know what this title is. It’s very hard to translate, but the just is that bento is not effective in stopping obesity (true to what I said) and is hard to make (not really what I said).

【社会ニュース】 2013/03/24(日) 09:37

食に関する情報を発信するブログ「ｉｌｌｍａｋｅｉｔｍｙｓｅｌｆ」では、日本の弁当について語っている。

There is a discussion of Japanese bento on the food blog “illmakeitmyself.”

筆者によると、最近米国のメディアで弁当が紹介され、話題になったという。記事では、「かわいくて食べるのがもったいない」などとして、日本のキャラ弁（きゃらべん）が紹介された。キャラ弁とは、弁当の中身を漫画のキャラクターなどに模したものだ。キャラ弁に関しては、「視覚に訴える盛りつけをする日本の食文化」と解説されたが、「食物を擬人化する必要があるのか」といった見方もあったという。

According to the author, the topic of bento has recently been introduced in American media. In an [the?] article, Japanese kyaraben  [character bento] are introduced as “too cute to eat.” A kyaraben is a bento in which the contents are made to look like a manga character, etc. The author explains that kyaraben is part of “Japan’s food culture, which is attentive to visual details in food,” but says that there’s another view about whether anthropomorphizing food is really necessary.

I sincerely hope they understood that “Too Cute to Eat” is the title of the NPR article which was linked. It’s not linked in the Searchina piece, and there’s no mention that it’s actually an article from another source.

米国では子供たちの不健康な食習慣が問題になっている。そこで、日本の弁当などを参考にして、子供の肥満率を下げた方が良いのではないかと議論されることがあると述べた。ただ、働く女性が夫より家事や育児の負担も大きいこともあり、誰が弁当を作るかが問題になると指摘した。

In the US, children’s unhealthy eating habits have become a problem. The author mentions that Japanese bento are being discussed as a way to reduce obesity rates in children. However, [she] points out that working women shoulder the burden of housework and children more than their husbands and that who makes the bento is an issue.

This is all pretty accurate.

一方で、日本では母親が子供の入園のために準備しなければならないことがたくさんあると紹介。例えば米国にはない例として、「子供の衣類や文具にすべて名前を書く」、「弁当のカバーや手さげを手縫いする」などを挙げた。「なかでも母親の手作り弁当は日本特有」と伝えた。

On one hand, [she] introduces a large number of things that mothers in Japan have to prepare for their children to enter preschool. For example, the author brings up “writing the child’s name on all the child’s garments and school supplies” and “making the bento cover [bag] by hand” as examples that are not the custom in the US.

The first line refers to my discussions of Peak and Allison’s research. Also, parents in the US do have to help their children prepare for school by writing their names on school supplies, etc., but it is nowhere near the level of handmade that the school system in Japan prefers.

筆者はまた、弁当は日本では、子供だけではなく、大人になっても食べるものだと説明。インターネット上の人気料理レシピサイト「クックパッド」には、「旦那弁当」が2000件以上掲載されているのに目を疑ったという。「旦那弁当とは、結婚した妻が夫のために作る弁当のこと」と解説。ほかには、遠足や運動会に作る母親弁当もあると伝えた。

The author also explains that bento in Japan are not just for children but also for adults. [She] could not believe her eyes when she saw over 2000 published recipes for danna bento [husband bento] on the popular recipe site Cookpad. “A danna bento is a bento that a wife makes for her husband,” [she] explains. In addition, [she] mentions bento for field trips and sports days.

They completely missed the point of this paragraph. If a papa bento is bento made for “dad” and danna bento is made for the husband, why aren’t mama bento or “wife bento” made FOR mothers and wives, respectively, instead of made BY mothers and wives?

弁当作りは確かに想像力をかき立て、もっとおいしいものを作りたい、見た目を良くしたいと創造的な料理の幅を広げる。そして「子供のために見た目の良い弁当を作るのは間違っていないと思う」と語る。しかし米国では、弁当作りが女性の仕事や役割といったことを考えると、問題が生じることがあるという問題点も指摘した。

Making bento stimulates the imagination and wanting to make meals more delicious and visually appealing widens the scope of creative cooking. Thus, [she] says, “Making attractive bento for children is not wrong.” However, in America, if one thinks that making bento is women’s work in the division of labor, that could breed problems.

Because they failed to address the Cookpad findings, this paragraph makes it seem like Americans are especially sexist, when this is a problem in both countries.* Tied to my prior commentary about Japanese bento and housework, it made more sense.

日本食は健康的な食事として米国でも定着している。日本の弁当や給食を食べることによって、食への興味を持たせるとともに、子供の肥満率が低下するのではないかと期待されているようだ。（編集担当：田島波留・山口幸治）

Japanese food is established as healthy food even in America. By eating Japanese bento and school lunches, along with getting [children] interested in food, it seems we can expect children’s obesity levels to decrease.

 

 

My argument was actually that American news sources were oversimplifying school lunches and bento as a panacea for America’s obesity problem. In the school lunch piece, I criticized the lack of discussion of the non-uniformity of the quality of school lunch in places other than the featured Tokyo school. In the bento piece, I pointed out that 1. not all bento are kyaraben and not all are for children; 2. both Japan and the US have serious gender discrepancies in who does housework and childcare, which carries over to foodwork and bento; 3. when we consider the bento as a means to help children eat better, we need to acknowledge and reject gender stereotypes with foodwork–not just Japanese ones, but American ones.

Here’s the last section again, in case I’m not being clear enough (emphasis added):

“Japanese food” is not a panacea for America’s obesity problem. Although bento are a great way to reconsider healthy eating and to create visual appeal for food, but they don’t have to be labor intensive, or cute, just for kids, or made by women. The association in Japan of cooking as the duty of wives and mothers is highly problematic, as are the terms in which bento for (adult) men and women are falsed dichotomized: big vs. dainty, meat vs. diet, not-cute vs. cute.  Even if we Americans adopt new foodways regarding school lunches and packed lunches based on Japanese culture, we do not also have to adopt the sexist attitude that food is women’s work; in fact, we should outright reject it.

In reality, the only thing gendered about the act of cooking and feeding others is the gendered meaning that society, and, by extension, individuals, assign to it. As I have argued time and time again, there is nothing particularly feminine or masculine about consuming quiche, drinking beer, or cooking from scratch. It is, shockingly, possible to pack a lunch without oppressing anyone.

It’s also possible to translate articles without missing the entire point. I appreciate the bump in viewers, but you’ve made thousands of Japanese readers think I think that American men are incapable of housework and that Japanese bentos are a cure for fat Americans. Bravo.

Notes

*See Tsuya 2004 and Table 5 for details, but in short, in Japan, “Husbands’ share of housework increased from 7 percent in 1994 to 10  percent in 2000, but it was due primarily to wives’ cutting their housework time (from 33  hours to 29 hours per week on average), as the average housework time of husbands remained at around 3 hours per week” not including childcare (11-12).

In the US, “Analyses of pooled data from the American Time Use Survey of 2003 to 2011 indicate that on average, men spend about 10 hours more than women per week in paid work, although women spend about six hours more than men in household work and about three additional hours in child care, bringing the total work time to 45.6 hours per week for men and 45.2 hours for women”–including childcare (Parker & Wang, 2013 [Pew Research]).