Someone already beat me to the “this is a bogus attempt to project a fringe local behavior onto the entirety of Japan” post, so I’m just going to post a link to the post Italian maggot-cheese (which I am surprised hasn’t already happened!) to make it clear that the idea of this as a “Japanese tradition” is as utterly absurd as calling that an “Italian tradition.”
For some reason, foreigners really love finding fringe activities in Japan, a country of more than 100 million people, and declaring these activities are “Japanese.” There is something fetishist and exploitative and weird about the relationship between foreign bloggers/YouTubers/journalists/etc and Japan that I find very disturbing.
FYI, this is called "orientalism" [1]. Most people would also be surprised to learn that the Swiss eat more cats and dogs per capita than China, and that Norway kills more whales per year than Japan (although there are some valid conservation arguments against Japan on the latter).
I implore any angry readers to do some Googling before flaming or instinctively downvoting: I don't plan on spending my weekend fighting some culture war, and I promise that there are reasonable sources for both claims just one Google search away.
Orientalism is presenting Eastern cultures as unnecessarily exotic, often in an ill-informed way. This article is all about presenting this tradition as reasonable and matter-of-fact. Moreover, it is pretty objective in its descriptive style, makes an attempt to present the custom from the point of view of the locals, and provides geographical context (Gifu is a landlocked prefecture, which makes it pretty unique food-sources wise). It is an absolute opposite of what Orientalism is supposed to be.
The GP’s sentiment is common in the comments. I absolutely understand the gut reaction–regional Eastern specialties are rarely presented with the warmth and openness that this article has. I feel like stepping around “Japanese” as a cultural description in this case would only serve to isolate the community in the reader’s mind. As the article says, there is more to Japanese cuisine than seafood. Why should this tradition not be included?
> Edible insects are often talked about as a possible "food of the future" - but what does insect eating actually look like in the here and now?
There's definitely an overlap with the 'weird Japan' clickbait, but the first sentence of the article says to me that this seems to be an attempt to normalize the eating of insects to westerners who are highly culturally opposed to it.
Skimming the article, the wasp eating seems to be done for a festival in one particular village. In my experience, even people from cultures who had insect delicacies bragged to me about eating insects like some kind of rite of passage. I have yet to meet a foreigner who brings a bag of insects in their lunchbox.
I personally won't eat insects ever. The oceans can turn to acid, black clouds of smoke can envelop the earth, and I will still not eat bugs. I could imagine that most of the people in Japan feel the same way, or I could be wrong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu
For some reason, foreigners really love finding fringe activities in Japan, a country of more than 100 million people, and declaring these activities are “Japanese.” There is something fetishist and exploitative and weird about the relationship between foreign bloggers/YouTubers/journalists/etc and Japan that I find very disturbing.