Izakaya Culture in Japanese Society: A Case Study of Midnight Diner
Abstract
The izakaya, however, is not only a place to drink and eat but also take root in Japanese society and people’s everyday life. In this article, I take the Midnight Diner as a sample and apply the research design of qualitative case study for discussing how izakayas express themselves and their impacts on Japanese society at large. dings suggest that, in real-life contexts, izakaya perform a dual role: they function both as a “buffer zone” that alleviates social pressure and as a “social lubricant” that facilitates interpersonalinteraction, while simultaneously serving as an important site for cultural continuity and transmission. Beyond providing wage earners with an opportunity for shedding of social masks, and reestablishing transitory intimacy under relaxed conditions, the izakaya is thus not only a place to preserve generational food memory but also an important site for maintaining regional identity by creating a bridge from past Japanese traditions to contemporary city living. This research could also be regarded as an alternative approach to analyzing the socio-cultural aspects in Japanese society, but it can also serve as a case study to examine how certain eating formats are inter-related with larger social systems, contributing to knowledge related to maintaining and developing local food culture in a time of globalization.
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