What Does the Presence of Two Types of Chinese Foods in Japan Say about the Country's Road to Multiculturalism?

For many Japanese people, the first and probably the most common type of "foreign food" that they encounter and partake in their lives is Chinese food. Ever since the first Chinese migrants brought the cuisine to the Japanese masses in the pre-World War II era, Chinese food has been the go-to choice for those looking to fill their stomachs on the cheap. With the country's defeat in World War II, many Japanese residents on the Chinese mainland were uprooted and returned to Japan, where many eeked out a living by peddling foods of their previously adopted homelands.

The result of the waves of both Chinese and Japanese migrants has led to a prominent proliferation of Chinese foods in the country and beyond. Thousands of mom-and-pop shops serving Chinese foods popped up across the country, and as they strived to revise the tastes of China for the Japanese public, created timeless classics like ramen and gyoza that have in turn captured the world's attention. What used to be a purely foreign cuisine has evolved into a Japanese-style Chinese cuisine that is enjoyed the world over, and, as far as Japanese restaurant chains abroad is labeled as "a type of Japanese food" or at best "Japanese Chuka" rather than "Japanese Chinese food."

But the evolution of Chinese food in Japanese has not come to an endpoint, especially within Japan itself. The older generation of mom-and-pop Chinese restaurants that popularized Chinese cuisine in Japan is quickly dying out, as their owners age and can find no sons and daughters willing to take over the family business. Instead, they are being supplanted by a new generation of migrants from China itself seeking to make a living by peddling Chinese food in Japan. With little prior experience with Japan and Chinese food in Japan before coming to the country, the new Chinese migrants are wrapping their heads around how to sell Chinese food in a country that already has a long tradition and its own definition of Chinese food.

As new immigrants from China interact with decades-old Chinese food in Japan, a new evolution of Chinese food in the country is quietly taking place. The Japanese media, as it often does with matters related to foreigners, puts the matter in highly black-and-white terms. It calls the decades-old Chinese establishments machi Chuka (街中華, "street Chinese food") while the food peddled by new immigrants tairiku Chuka (大陸中華, "mainland Chinese food"), and describe them as two separate cuisines fighting for dominance of the changing tastes for Chinese food among the Japanese general public.

But even the Japanese media has come to realize the reality is much less black-and-white and much more nuanced. Many new Chinese migrants have, like their forefathers and migrants elsewhere, quickly came to realize the need to adjust the taste of their food to fit the palate of the potential customers. This need for adjustment is particularly true in Japan, where the average person has a long experience with eating Chinese food and has come to expect what Chinese food should look and taste like. As a result, many new migrants have come to learn the dishes of decades-old machi Chuka rather than introduce brand-new dishes.

Yet, the new immigrants' willingness to learn from machi Chuka does not mean that their restaurants are simply replicating older joints without innovation. Instead, many tairiku Chukas have quietly popularized new dishes not previously known in the history of Chinese cuisine in Japan even as they stick to the backbone of bestsellers found in machi Chuka. Hotpots (火鍋), knife-sliced noodles (刀削麺), and even lamb skewers (羊肉串) are introduced to cater to the Japanese general public's increasing taste for spicy foods, while xiaolongbao (小籠包), for instance, has come to represent Chinese food beyond those just suitable for the cheap masses.

The end is a hybrid Chinese cuisine that represents both a continuation of the past and acceptance of the completely new, not unlike the country's general dealings with anything foreign, beyond the confines of Chinese food. A foreign person, ideology, or product is expected to adjust to the host society's mainstream to be widely accepted. This is true in Japan as it is for anywhere else. But completely new ideas have plenty of space to be introduced alongside old ones. What are familiar and what are the foreign can meet in the middle, as long as the familiar remain front and center, with the foreign seen to supplement the familiar rather than to replace them.

But as Japan ages, this "keep familiar but add foreign on the side" model of multiculturalism can face increasing obstacles. An older populace tends to be a more conservative one, unwilling to accept changes even if the core remains the same. This is particularly true for frequent eaters of Chinese food, who tend to be male, older, and seeking "comfort foods" that they have known for decades. If they grow more vocal about the "purity" and "authenticity" of Chuka in Japan, new immigrants will face ever-less wiggle room to introduce new elements and be forced to keep more of the menu the same. Multiculturalism can be boxed in, becoming a source of stagnation rather than innovation.