2 - Butter Chicken Curry and Naan–Nepalese Immigration and the making of the most popular dish in Japan

While originally brought in from India, curry has long lost its association with Indianness among the Japanese population. There is curry, and there is Indian curry. The former is perhaps the most popular household dish in Japan and one of the most common restaurant foods. However, in recent two decades, Indian curry has experienced a comeback. The star of the Indian curry is the butter chicken curry. From Hokkaido to Okinawa, thousands of Indian restaurants serve this dish–a sweetish northern Indian curry with chicken stewed in tomato, heavy cream, yogurt, and butter. Indeed, this global “Indian” dish has become popular around the world, including India itself. In Japan, it is usually accompanied by naan–either buttered or cheesy, and often all-you-can-eat. According to Curry Mania (https://food-mania.jp/butterchickencurry-toha/), a Japanese web food blog, this dish became popular only in the second half of the 2010s, coinciding with the surge of Nepali migrants entering Japan on cook visas. Though a popular food item and every restaurant offers it, it is a dish rarely found in Nepal, and most Nepalese cooks don’t eat it or even like it themselves. Why is it offered in Nepalese restaurants? Why has it become so popular in Japan? Through interviews with thirty Nepalese restaurant owners and cooks, this paper reveals that behind the ubiquitization of butter chicken curry in Japan is a story of labor migration, ethnic entrepreneurial aspiration, and stalled culinary creativity under legal and institutional constraints.