“Ethnic foods” in modern Japanese society – A view in Vietnamese foods and Indonesian foods in Kobe city

The term ethnic foods is ambiguous. In a narrow sense, ethnic foods is defined as foods originating from a heritage and culture of an ethnic group who use their knowledge of local ingredients of plants and/or animal sources. Putting that aside, ethnic foods, in a broader sense, can be defined as foods that are consumed by people whose religion background, ethnicity, and culture do not share the same root from where the dish was originated; it can be further expanded into the cultural and social aspect as consumers deemed this category to be fit within their norm. Since the 1990s, “ethnic foods” has been widely used even in daily life of Japanese people, and its meaning partially overlapses as well as partially deviates from the aforementioned definition of ethnic foods. This paper aims to further illustrate the meaning of “ethnic foods” and it will use Vietnamese and Indonesian cuisines in Kobe city as prime examples for this category to provide a view about “ethnic foods” that is being perceived within the Japanese society.