The Sway of Authenticity
What started out centuries ago as an indispensable pantry item in East and Southeast Asian cuisines has become global. The culinary importance of soy sauce is no longer limited to the traditional foods of countries such as Japan, China, Korea, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam but now serves as a generic, umami-rich flavoring agent and a more complex-tasting substitute for salt in foods associated with a whole host of non-Asian countries. The chaotic bricolage of recipes archived on the Food Network’s website is one possible indicator of the increasing global use of soy sauce. A simple key word search of an unlikely pairing of soy sauce with Gorgonzola cheese, for example, yields a rib-eye steak sandwich courtesy of the network’s resident Italian cuisine personality, Giada De Laurentiis.42 A search of soy sauce with the word “Creole” yields a recipe for Brandied Duck Liver Mousse with Cre- ole Mustard Sauce from the immensely popular Emeril Lagasse, regarded as a master of New Orleans cuisine.43 Meanwhile, the Kikkoman Corpora- tion has on its website a cookbook titled World Soy Sauce Cooking, which offers evocative recipes that contain soy sauce, from nearly a hundred differ- ent countries. These recipes, most of which were provided by their national embassies in Japan, include dajaj mashwi, a chicken dish from the Hash- emite Kingdom of Jordan; karhai, a chicken dish from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan; lachania, a pork and cabbage dish from the Hellenic Republic;
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oksegryte, a beef stew from the Kingdom of Norway; filetes con aceitunas y vino blanco, a beef and olive dish from Spain; churrasquinho, a grilled beef dish from the Federative Republic of Brazil; shrimp ceviche from the Repub- lic of Ecuador; curry and rice with sauce arachide from the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire; akoho sy voanio, a chicken and coconut stew from the Republic of Madagascar; and, incredibly, chop suey from Canada.44
Not surprisingly, this internationalization of soy sauce use translates into an expanded global trade of the product. Behind the smiling visage of the chairman in the New York Times ad is a decades-long tug-of-war between Kik- koman and its chief American rivals over a growing global soy sauce market. Kikkoman has already won the battle for America by vanquishing the two largest chemical soy sauce brands, La Choy and Chun King (both owned by the industry giant ConAgra Foods), to become the best-selling soy sauce in the United States. A generation ago, La Choy and Chun King were the most recognized and top-selling brands in America, the Coke and Pepsi of Amer- ican soy sauces. But by 1971, Kikkoman had overtaken Chun King as the sec- ond best-selling brand after La Choy, which relinquished the top spot to Kik- koman five years later.45
The next battle, however, is on a much larger stage. In direct competition against Kikkoman beyond the United States is, once again, La Choy, the larg- est American producer of “bottled” soy sauce, whose top export markets include Jamaica, Haiti, Greece, St. Martin, and Belize.46 The largest producer of “packet” soy sauce—the tiny, individually portioned packets commonly given away by Chinese take-out restaurants—is Kari-Out, yet another widely profit- able chemical soy sauce brand.47 Thus, Kikkoman appears to have set its sights on competing with these and other chemically produced brands both in and beyond the United States.
The New York Times ad highlights a crucial strategy employed by Kik- koman’s marketing wing to sway public opinion in its favor: the promise of authenticity. While not unique to Kikkoman, the strategy is particularly well suited to the Japanese company’s efforts to distinguish itself from its American competitors. The gist of Kikkoman’s message is as simple as it is blunt: We, the Japanese, produce real soy sauce; they, the Americans, produce something else. This message is made clear in the ad in Chairman Mogi’s description of Kikkoman soy sauce as an example of “naturally brewed soy sauce . . . still made just it was more than 300 years ago—slowly fermented and aged for full flavor like a fine wine.” This self-characterization is the centerpiece of Kik- koman’s current global advertising campaign. A visitor to Kikkoman’s website, for example, is offered the following counsel on shopping: “As a general rule of
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thumb, it is best to avoid chemically manufactured sauces. . . . Kikkoman soy sauces are naturally brewed, made from three ingredients—soybeans, wheat and salt.”48 An inquisitive shopper may ask, What are the ingredients found in other brands? The label on a bottle of La Choy soy sauce provides one answer: water, salt, hydrolyzed soy protein, corn syrup, caramel color, and potassium sorbate.
Although not referenced by name, Kikkoman’s American competitors are discredited for producing ersatz soy sauce, a poorly simulated product made merely to suggest the presence of the real thing. If Kikkoman can be compared with fine wine, then by inference, American brands like La Choy and Kari-Out are the equivalent of artificially flavored grape soda blended with cheap alco- hol. By repeatedly underscoring its three-centuries-long tradition of brewing soy sauce, Kikkoman is sounding a warning to every potential buyer: Don’t be duped. Beware of other brands. Beware of fakes.
Here is where the two discursive threads stemming from Kikkoman’s golden anniversary celebration come together as one—and the result is not necessarily beneficial for either Kikkoman or Japanese Americans. Through its marketing strategy, Kikkoman characterizes chemically produced soy sauce as too American and Japanese Americans as not American enough. What makes this assertion especially compelling is the fact both can trace their beginnings to Japan. That the ancestry of Japanese Americans goes back to Japan is self-evident. Not so obvious is that the technology for chem- ical soy sauce production also originated in Japan—and it was Kikkoman that led the way.
Immediately after World War II, during the Occupation, Kikkoman was responsible for a radical industrywide change in the manufacture of soy sauce. The shortage of raw materials, such as soybeans, wheat, and salt, necessitated experimentation with alternative ingredients and means of production. In 1948, Kikkoman, which operated under the name Noda Shoyu from 1917 to 1964, introduced a “semichemical” soy sauce, which was based on a method that had existed in Japan since the 1920s. According to Mark Fruin, “The com- pany had felt compelled to develop and to popularize these newer methods because Occupation officials, as an answer to crop shortages, had recom- mended that soy sauce producers give up fermentation altogether in favor of the faster and less expensive process of mixing hydrochloric acid and hydro- lyzed vegetable protein.”49
Although most Japanese soy sauce makers returned to producing fermented soy sauce by the 1950s, the chemical method, which critics charge is inferior in terms of taste and aroma, took hold in United States by the time Kikkoman