Bake off “Japanese week”: The great British fail?
Last week, much beloved Channel 4 series The Great British Bake Off decided to have a Japanese week, but did they do their due diligence or was it a case of show over substance?
By Amy Phung
Hosts Noel Fielding, Matt Lucas, Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood. Credit: Channel 4
The first challenge consisted of steamed buns, which are originally of Chinese origin, better known as baozi. The technical challenge was a French crêpe cake, using matcha within the layers. The signature bake was to create a cake with the theme of “kawaii” (cute), or rather “kowaii” (scary) as pronounced by the hosts. Little did they know.
Actress Naoko Mori. Image credit: Kari Haley
Torchwood and Absolutely Fabulous actress Naoko Mori posted this response to the show:
The conflating of East and South East Asian countries is one of the most common ways in which Western media contributes to the erasure of the very distinct cultures within the region.
Daniel Fujiwara, a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and also CEO of Simetrica-Jacobs, a leading research consultancy in wellbeing, economics and social value analysis, gave us this insight:
“Japan does not use baking in everyday cuisine and only really uses it when making Western food so it is a bit weird to have a Japan-themed week on a bakery programme. However, like all food in Japan, Western-style baked food like bread and cakes are just amazing and GBBO really could have done a lot better by showcasing this. There are a lot of Japanese re-inventions of Western cakes that are amazing and they could have focussed on that. But instead the matcha crêpe cake was horrific (they don’t look like that nor do they use butter cream and chocolate in those cakes in Japan). And the final Kawaii cake challenge was pathetic. Japanese don’t style cakes with manga-style characters and never make heavy cakes like that so I don’t know what the point of that challenge was. Probably the worst thing were the buns at the start which are Chinese and in Japan very clearly understood as Chinese so they were completely off the mark. There were then annoying little things like Noel Fielding try to do a random bow and stuff like that throughout the programme. Overall it was a completely wasted opportunity to showcase proper Japanese-style cakes and a bunch of annoying culturally insensitive comments thrown in made it an awkward watch for me.”
Hosts Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas. Credit: Channel 4
It’s clear from the marketing of the episode and attitude of the hosts and contestants, that Japan was being used as a prop rather than an inspiration. No serious consideration was given to the history or significance of Japanese baking.
We passed the mic to the besea.n community and this is what you had to say:
A swift check of the credits shows that Love Productions, the production company behind The Great British Bake Off, did not hire any experts in Japanese baking. Comments like, “I hate matcha. Might as well eat grass,” then gagging and comparing katsu to “cat poo” were simply insulting, one of the numerous things that should have not been allowed to pass out of the editing room.
It should be noted that Paul Hollywood Eats Japan, broadcast in April this year, was widely condemned as xenophobic and cringeworthy.
During the course of that show, he confessed, “Japan makes me nervous because it’s all rice and noodles isn’t it?” and was filmed giving a Michelin-starred ramen chef a pot of Pot Noodle.
Shows like this episode of The Great British Bake Off and Paul Hollywood East Japan are symptomatic of Western media’s tendency to treat East and South East Asia, it’s people, culture and traditions as something mystical, confusing and at worst, downright scary and unapproachable.
To be fair, contestant Lottie created a cotton sponge cake, a genuine Japanese invention, which was a glimmer of light amongst the other unfortunate gaffs that littered Japanese Week on The Great British Bake Off. What could have been a truly fascinating exploration of Japanese baking simply left the ESEA community feeling deflated, an embarrassing hour where a whole nation and its culture was played for laughs.
We will wave off this debacle on a positive note, with the following Instagram post by @cheftimanderson who collated a fantastic list of UK-based Japanese bakeries, patisseries and sweet shops. A few basic steps like this to engage and scratch below the surface of a very tired narrative that East and South East Asians are “other” and inscrutable can actually yield some exemplary examples of the best that Japan can offer. Can we redo the whole thing?
Click on image to go to the post.