Kare'e and Kari'i: Indian Cuisine and Pan-Asianism in Interwar Japan

The talk will address the introduction, production, and consumption of haute Indian cuisine in Japan between the 1910s and 1930s, and its connection to the rise of pan-Asianism as a political force. The study is centered on the lives of Rash Behari Bose and A.M. Nair, two Indian independence activists who used Japan as their base to fight for Indian independence from Britain. Both Bose and Nair worked as cooks while hiding in two of Tokyo’s pioneering Indian restaurants to avoid extradition, and Bose in particular viewed food as a key avenue by which to recover native India from its British representation abroad. The role of these two figures in popularizing haute Indian cuisine in Japan, and in building alliances between Indian and Japanese pan-Asianists, will be considered.