“Japanese People Eat Insects, Right?”—The Difference Between Food Culture and Being Told What to Do by Other Countries

The other day, I was listening to an English-language podcast when I heard this exchange:

“Japanese people eat locusts, right?”

No, we do not.

I could not help correcting them silently.

Japan certainly has a tradition of eating locusts. In the past, they were a valuable source of protein and were eaten as tsukudani, simmered in soy sauce and sugar.

But that does not mean Japanese people today regularly eat locusts.

I do not remember ever eating them myself, nor do I want to.

When foreigners hear that Japanese people eat locusts, they may imagine that people in Japan still routinely eat insects.

Well, that is how culture works. A custom that existed historically does not necessarily reflect the way people live today.

Horses Are Cute, So I Do Not Want to Eat Them

Come to think of it, a similar topic once came up during an English conversation lesson.

“People eat horse meat in Japan.”

When I explained this, my Filipino instructor was surprised. A British acquaintance had reacted the same way when I mentioned it before.

Eating horses is not common in either the United Kingdom or the Philippines.

As it happens, I am not particularly comfortable eating horse meat either.

The reason is simple.

Horses are cute.

I remember interacting with horses and trying horseback riding at amusement parks and tourist farms when I was a child.

I have no desire to go out of my way to eat an animal with those large eyes.

My wife, however, has no objection whatsoever to eating horse meat.

Even two people from the same country can feel that differently.

When you think about it, cows and pigs are cute animals too. Yet I eat them without hesitation.

In the end, our aversion to particular foods is heavily shaped by the environment in which we grew up and by our personal experiences.

When we try to explain it logically, the reasoning is surprisingly inconsistent.

I Do Not Eat Whale, but Being Told Not to Makes Me Angry

This brings to mind the controversy over whaling in Japan.

Very few people in Japan today eat whale meat regularly.

I have no particular desire to eat it myself.

If whale meat disappeared from stores tomorrow, it would have no effect on my life.

And yet, when Western countries tell Japan not to hunt or eat whales, it somehow does not sit right with me.

Why?

The answer is simple.

Choosing not to eat something yourself and being ordered by someone else not to eat it are entirely different things.

Moreover, Western countries once hunted whales in enormous numbers themselves.

They hunted whales for oil and sometimes made little use of the meat.

Then, as times changed, they stopped whaling and began criticizing countries that continued the practice.

They no longer need it, so they tell other countries to stop as well.

That sounds remarkably convenient.

Decisions about whaling should be based on scientific assessments of population levels and the impact on ecosystems.

But it is another matter to reject another country’s food culture on emotional grounds such as “whales are intelligent” or “whales are cute.”

If cute animals must not be eaten, what about cows and pigs?

At least to me, horses are certainly cute.

That is why I do not eat them.

But I do not tell my wife that she must not eat them either.

That is all there is to it.

Who Owns a Food Culture?

Let us return to the original example of locusts.

Most Japanese people today do not eat them.

But how would I react if another country said, “Eating insects is barbaric. Japan should ban the consumption of locusts”?

I would probably object.

Even though I do not eat them myself.

But there is no contradiction in that.

Whether to eat something is a decision for the individual, and whether to preserve a food tradition is, in principle, a decision for the society to which it belongs.

People are free to be surprised by the food cultures of other countries.

They are free to find them disgusting or cruel.

But the situation changes when someone turns their own values into universal justice and begins imposing them on other countries.

Do not deny other people the freedom to eat something merely because you do not want to eat it yourself.

That, I think, is what it means to respect a food culture.

But after thinking this far, I ran into a rather difficult problem.

Suppose there were still a community somewhere with a tradition of eating human flesh.

What if we criticized them by saying, “Eating human beings is unacceptable,” and they replied:

“This is our traditional culture. You have no right to tell us what to do.”

How should we answer?

Until that moment, I had been arguing that people should not interfere in another country’s food culture.

But when it comes to cannibalism, surely we cannot simply look the other way.

If it involved killing someone without their consent, I would obviously object. But what if the custom involved eating people who had already died?

There must be limits to cultural respect, but who gets to draw the line?

In the end, perhaps we cannot completely abandon our own values when respecting another culture.

When told not to eat whales, we protest, “Do not interfere with our culture.”

But when we become the ones saying that people must not eat humans, they can turn around and tell us, “Do not interfere with our culture.”

It is a difficult problem.

Before debating where to draw the boundaries of food culture around the world, however, I have a more immediate problem at home.

I cannot eat horses because I find them cute. My wife has no problem eating them.

It seems the grand ideal of respecting cultural differences must begin at the dinner table shared by two people.