Tampopo: Food and the Postmodern in the Work of Itami Jûzô

Itami Jûzô's film Tampopo possesses a structure and thematic richness that make it a prime example of postmodern film-making. Its use of food as visual metaphor and narrative device works together with its structure to privilege a decentred approach to plot, character, and story-telling. At the same time, the film's subject matter and the series of vignettes which interfere with—while equally creating—its narrative flow reflect a cultural cosmopolitanism common in Japan by the time of the film's production. This paper will argue that Tampopo can be read as a rebuttal of certain political attitudes that seek to present Japan as culturally homogeneous, socially stable, and ethnically unified. The film achieves this objective by offering a theoretically aware vision of Japan as composed of infinite and equal fragments held together only by convention, a vision of Japan as postmodern.