Tine Walravens

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Copenhagen Business School

The Fukushima nuclear disaster posed food safety risks on an unprecedented scale in Japan. In its immediate aftermath, information on the scale and the extent of the contamination of the food chain was scarce. Facing an anxious public, the government was tasked with defining and ensuring food safety amidst uncertainty. Via three case studies spanni...

In 2008, a case of intentional food poisoning involving Chinese imported dumplings resulted in mass panic in Japan. Within a context of sensitive bilateral relations and Japanese agriculture in decline, the media were key to the enhanced risk perception among the public. To shed light on the concrete ways of risk recalibration by the media, the art...

This edited collection explores the historical dimensions, cultural practices, socio-economic mechanisms and political agendas that shape the notion of a national cuisine inside and outside of Japan. Japanese food is often perceived as pure, natural, healthy and timeless, and these words not only fuel a hype surrounding Japanese food and lifestyle...

In December 2013, washoku was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list of the United Nations, and Japanese cuisine was thereby acknowledged as a social practice that provides the Japanese people with a sense of identity. Starting from this perception of Japanese cuisine, this introduction shows that food not only contributes to a perso...

Stating that imported Chinese food has a negative image in Japan is neither new nor surprising. Conventional explanations of this phenomenon focus on the litany of food scandals associated with imported Chinese food, together with a near-constant wave of scandals in China itself, which have been subject to saturation media coverage in Japan since t...

The discovery of the first BSE case in Japan in 2001 triggered far-reaching changes in the regulatory framework of food safety. This article focuses on three major institutional developments since that first mad cow, namely the establishment of the Food Safety Commission (2003), the Shokuiku or Food Education program (2005), and the Consumer Affair...

Rogers Brubaker remarks that “as a category of practice, ‘diaspora’ is used to make claims, to articulate projects, to formulate expectations, to mobilize energies, to appeal to loyal- ties.” It is in times of crisis and trauma, we will argue in this paper, that these practices con- struct and intensify an awareness of community, generated by emoti...

The idea of a dangerous China is omnipresent in the articulation of Japanese national identity, manifest in the daily media and public opinion, as well as among the policy elite. On 26 July 2013, the Japanese Ministry of Defense released an interim report on its defense posture, calling for an increase in the country’s military capabilities and a m...