Turkish anime viewers’ approach to Japanese cuisine culture

Abstract

It is seen that anime, which is a Japanese animation type, with the food scenes in it, cause the curiosity and interest of the anime viewers from different cultures towards Japanese cuisine. It is thought to contribute to Japan in terms of gastronomy. Accordingly, although there are many promotional and marketing tools to spread the products of Japanese cuisine culture to the world, the idea that anime with a large global viewers also have a share in this promotion is the starting point of this study. Within this context, in this study, it was aimed to research how animes affect the perception of Japanese cuisine culture in individuals. At the same time, informations about the foods they prefer belonging to this culture have been obtained. Interview technique which is one of the qualitative research methods was used for data collection. The interview questions were sent to 31 anime viewers by selecting the snowball sample method, through Google Forms, and the answers were collected between 2 February 2021 and 16 February 2021. Descriptive and content analysis was applied to the obtained data. According to the results of the research, it is seen that animes have a serious contribution to the reflection of the Japanese cuisine culture. While the interesting scenes in the food-themed animes enable the viewers to try Japanese food, it has been determined that they encourage to buy Japanese cuisine products and use them at home. In general, it was observed that animes made nearly half of the participants curious about Japanese cuisine and animes directed them to experience it.