Mioko Hatanaka (born 1958) is a Japanese editor and food culture researcher. Formerly editor-in-chief of “Chef Series” and “Kurashi no Sekkei,” she has worked on publications ranging from technical books for professional cooks to recipe collections for beginners. Drawing on this editorial experience, she studies the relationship between food trends, media, and social change in modern Japan. In “Fashion Food, Arimasu.” (roughly, “Fashion Food Is Here”), she traces successive waves of enthusiasm for fast food, international cuisines, café meals, and regional comfort foods. Examining women’s magazines and food events, she explores how foods are consumed for their novelty, imagery, and associated lifestyles as well as their taste. The book places food trends from the 1970s through the 2000s within the history of consumer culture and the media. In “Gokatei no Aji 150-nen Kuronikuru” (a 150-year chronicle of home cooking), she investigates how cookbooks, women’s magazines, and national nutrition policies helped Japanese households incorporate Japanese, Western, Chinese, and other cuisines into everyday meals. She also examines how expectations of varied, carefully prepared meals became a responsibility assigned to housewives, increasing women’s domestic workload. Hatanaka received the journalism category’s top honor at the third Food Lifestyle Journalist Awards. Her work uses fashionable foods and everyday menus to investigate the advertising, policies, and divisions of household labor that shape what people eat.
