A sultry evening in Tokyo found me at a JSS Media Event, which the organization holds periodically for journalists and sundry. The speaker was Associate Professor Yuki Hata from Meijo University, Nagoya. She was enthusiastically telling those assembled about Edo Period manga containing references to sake and food. The PowerPoint slides featured woodblock prints depicting different varieties of nihon-shu and Japanese confectionary (和菓子), as well as storylines that were slightly preposterous but noteworthy for their originality: how does a struggle centered on alcohol versus sweets sound to you? The plots were like a battle of the bands for food and drink. But I could not stop thinking of James Bond movies. “What’s going on here?,” I said to myself. And then it dawned on me: this was a very early version of product placement, and 007-cinema is largely about subtly plugging products: brand names abound in those movies. “Bond’s history of product placement reads like a roll call of luxury brands: Rolex watches, Brioni tuxedos, Bollinger champagne, Coke Zero and 7 Up soda, Finlandia vodka, Perrier water and Marlboro cigarettes.1 Personally, I wouldn’t put Coke Zero and 7 Up in the luxury brand category, but so it is here.
This fascinating lecture was augmented by sake-and-food pairings matching those featured in the manga. I didn’t leave shaken, but I did leave stirred, inspired to learn more about product placement in old Edo. The prescience of these creative types is truly remarkable, but then again, Japan’s nihon-shu producers were pasteurizing their brew during the Muromachi Period, about three centuries before Louis decided to do his thing!
1Graser, M., “ALL THE WORLD, SHAKEN AND STIRRED, V Plus, May 14-20, 2012.
Link to Information on Hata-sensei’s Book: https://bensei.jp/index.php?main_page=product_book_info&products_id=103861
Drinking Japan 