My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki Page A

kudzu-based crispy chicken batter.
    “They’ll never believe it, Gracie,” he crowed. “When I win and then tell them my secret ingredient, they’ll just never believe it!”
    With a little ingenuity and a few pointers from the Orient, Vern was certain he could find a way to turn this old weed into a solid cash crop. It just goes to show, Gracie thought, sitting up in bed. Sometimes you had to look at things from another angle.

5.
    The Rice-Sprouting Month
    SHŌNAGON
    Times When One Should Be on One’s Guard
    The sea is a frightening thing at the best of times. How much more terrifying must it be for those poor women divers who have to plunge into its depths for their livelihood! One wonders what would happen to them if the cord round their waist were to break. I can imagine men doing this sort of work, but for a woman it must take remarkable courage. After the woman has been lowered into the water, the men sit comfortably in their boats, heartily singing songs as they keep an eye on the mulberry-bark cord that floats on the surface. It is an amazing sight, for they do not show the slightest concern about the risks the woman is taking. When finally she wants to come up, she gives a tug on her cord and the men haul her out of the water with a speed that I can well understand. Soon she is clinging to the side of the boat, her breath coming in painful gasps. The sight is enough to make even an outsider feel the brine dripping. I can hardly imagine this is a job that anyone would covet.

JANE
SUPERMARKETS TO INTRODUCE VENDING MACHINES FOR MEAT
    The modern Japanese housewife finds the human interaction necessary to purchase meat distasteful.
    This is the conclusion of a market survey conducted by the Super Marushin Grocery chain, which claims that Japanese housewives between the ages of 20 and 65 find it embarrassing to say the names of meat cuts out loud. The wives also complain that too much conversation is needed to conclude a purchase, and that the human contact at the butcher shop is too personal.
    The majority of housewives say they would prefer to buy meat from vending machines, where they would not be called upon to make conversation about the weather or answer questions like “How are you today?”
    “The modern Japanese housewife, living a hermetic existence, increasingly cut off from contact with the world, is literally losing her voice. Is it any wonder she prefers to interact with a machine?” asks Dr. Yoko Horii, of Tokyo University. Dr. Horii studies eating disorders, depression, substance abuse, suicide, and other dysfunctional behaviors among Japanese housewives.
    These new findings may be a cause of concern to sociologists
like Dr. Horii, but the challenge for meat marketers is
clearly how to “de-humanize” meat.
    — Asahi Gazetteer (English translation)
     
    I read this article in a Tokyo newspaper and found the market trend toward dehumanized meat quite interesting. After my year, I have my own thoughts on the matter.
    A sixteen-year-old high school exchange student from Japan named Yoshihiro Hattori was shot to death in Louisiana. Rodney Dwayne Peairs, the man who shot him, worked at a Winn Dixie supermarket as a meat packer. Hattori had rung Peairs’s bell to ask for directions, and Peairs shot the boy in the chest with his .44 magnum. He had yelled “Freeze” before he fired. The case went to court, and Peairs was acquitted by the jury of manslaughter, on the grounds that he had acted in a reasonable way to defend his home.
    Japan was shocked at the verdict. It was murder, or at the very least it was an act of wanton and reckless manslaughter, and the Japanese media went into overdrive, trying to explain what was so clearly a miscarriage of justice. On TV talk shows, professors from Tokyo University who were experts on U.S. culture discussed the profound feelings Americans have for their guns. Japanese news crews brought cameras into gas stations and 7-Elevens to show viewers the vast array