How Sushi Went Global Analysis

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Recently, the world has seen an increase in uprisings against what many westerners view as “wrong.” While the concept of “wrong” is subjunctive and dependent upon which culture one was raised, there is no denying that the western influences have had a hand in several of these protests. For example, in the past month, we have seen Hong Kong students rise against, what they call, the unfairness of the Chinese government. China’s refusal to allow Hong Kong to be autonomous in deciding its leaders has sparked outrage against many young citizens. While in this case, Western powers have not had direct influence over the commotion, we have seen Western powers join together and directly influence the outcome of another issue – the Islamic State in …show more content…
Theodore C. Bestor writes “Japan’s emergence on the global economic scene in the 1970s as the business destination du jour, coupled with a rejection of, hearty, redmeat American fare… and the appeal of the high-concept aesthetics of Japanese design all prepared the world for a sushi fad.” In “How Sushi Went Global,” Bestor describes the spread of sushi in the United States starting from the 1970s. He goes on to chronicle how a food product that was a staple in Japan for centuries, became globalized and has maintained its position as a favorite in western cultures. He then states that this new food fad became so engrained in western culture that the American demand for fish typically used in sushi, like Bluefin tuna, was able to save that fishing industry even as Japan’s economy took a dive in the early …show more content…
S. Hodgson argues that our current view of the world is distorted by the ethnocentrism of the west. He uses as evidence the idea of the interrelations of societies throughout the world. What happened in the west is not only their creation, but rather the history of other peoples built together. The same argument stands here. Japan becoming an established superpower in economic terms as well as technological terms is just as important as the spread of capitalism. Many of the changes that happened in Eastern Asia as well as India helped mold the world into what it is today. While the major events in 20th century world history related to western ideologies and wars, it is unfair to accept the notion that the entirety of it was

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