The Japanese invented the Samaurai Code where one wins or dies; Sippuku and Harikari, methods by which the Samauri does himself in when he loses both contest and honour; and the Kamikaze Code, in which you sacrifice yourself for your country. There are elements of all these ancient traditions in Japan’s latest competitive eating craze…
Nattou. Fermented Soy Beans. Some say it smells like old socks.
Others just love it. Ah, the Mysteries of the Orient…
The phemomenon of competitive eating started probably a couple of hundred years ago, with pie-eating contests at harvest fairs across the western world. The competitive aspect was codified in the early 1900s by Hot Dog pioneer Nathan Handwerker of Coney Island, New York, with the inauguration of his annual Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Since then, competitive eating has become an international phenomenon and all sorts of food are in play: Hot Dogs are still the majority consumable, Pizza comes in a respectable second and other specialty items including but not limited to Hamburgers, Hard Boiled Eggs, Chili, Poutine – even Shrimp Cocktail and Hostess Twinkies! Basically, any food you could raise a fan club for…
But now…
The Japanese – in their trademark way, fueled by the Samauri Spirit and shrouded in classic Oriental Mystique – have brought a new food to the competitive eating table. They call it Nattou, a fermented Soy Bean concoction, which one leading Japanese food blog describes as, “slimy, sticky, and smells like socks.” And you have to eat it with chop sticks. For me, that would take Samauri-like grit and dedication.
The moral(s) to this story…
1. The human spirit is, by definition, competitive. Especially the male part. And that means competitive eating contests are just going to keep on getting nuttier and nuttier until somebody is seriously injured or dies.
2. As the Nattou example illustrates, not all eating contests involve foods that almost everybody likes. (There’s that Kamikaze self-sacrifice thing, again.)
3. Crazy as it sounds, the Nattou eating contest may be, to the Japanese, what a Hot Dog eating contest is to the Americans. Or a Poutine eating contest is to Canadians.To each, their own. And I’ll leave the eating contests entirely to the ‘pros’.
~ Maggie J.