The Obento and Japanese Society

1. Obento is the lunch box prepared by mothers to their children in nursery school (ages from 3 to 6)

1.1. Highly crafted elaborations of food, artistically designed and precisely arranged.

1.2. Social practice - it situates the producer as a woman and mother, and the consumer as a child of mother and student at school

2. Cultural Ritual and State Ideology

2.1. Neo Marxist Louis Althusser conceptualizes power as a force which operates in ways that are subtle, disguised, and accepted as everyday social practice.

2.2. ISA Ideological State Apparatus - Institutions that have some overt function other than political or administrative. Example: social media, health and education.

3. Japanese food as cultural

3.1. The book A Taste of Japan written by Donald Rich says that the presentation style is the guiding principle by which food is prepared in Japan

4. School, State and Subjectivity

4.1. State guided schools - Socialize children and mothers into the gendered roles and subjectivities they are expected to assume in a political order desired,

4.2. Teachers have the role to watch over food consumption and to judge the person consuming food and the mother.

4.3. School teaches children how and what to think, according to Althusser the school is the "the primary role of ideological state apparatus."

4.3.1. Children learn less about reading and writing and more about how to become a Japanese student. Social order is generated.