Finding Umami: The Rise of Japan’s Fifth Taste

Join the Center for Asia Pacific Studies for a lecture that will deconstruct how corporations and chefs in Japan and abroad combine umami research with existing cultural concepts of deliciousness to build a new taste category. Japanese cuisine’s success outside of Japan has helped legitimize umami as a Japanese flavor that now belongs to the world. Umami operates on many levels, creating both a criterion of deliciousness that is also an element of cultural nationalism.

This event is free and open to the public.

About the Speaker

Christopher Laurent is a postdoctoral fellow at the USF Center for Asia Pacific Studies for the 2019-2020 academic year. A cultural anthropologist who specializes in regional cuisine in rural Japan, Dr. Laurent’s current research project examines the discrimination of ethnic Koreans living in Japan and the appropriation of their cuisine.