Post War Japanese-American Cook Book East-West Flavor, 1965

Japanese American Cookbook

First Edition

[Japanese-American] [Cookbook] West Los Angeles Auxiliary of the Japanese American Citizens League, East West Flavors, 1965, documents the domestic and cultural life of Japanese American communities in Los Angeles during the postwar decades following World War II incarceration, with direct relevance to Japanese American resettlement, women’s civic leadership, and midcentury cultural assimilation. Issued as a fundraising effort during the 1965 to 1966 club year, the volume gathers recipes contributed by the organization’s friends, relatives, and neighbors, providing direct evidence of how Japanese American families reconstructed communal identity through everyday domestic practices after forced removal and internment during the 1940s. The Japanese American Citizens League, founded in 1929 to support the civil rights and integration of Japanese Americans, forms the institutional framework for the work, and the cookbook reflects the domestic sphere of its postwar, predominantly Nisei membership in California. The opening haiku by Yosa Buson, “The uguisu is singing / All the family assembled / At the meal time,” establishes food as a vehicle for intergenerational memory and cultural continuity within a community rebuilding its social infrastructure in midcentury California.

Uyeno, Satsuki; Isono, Tayeko; Inouye, Chieko (eds.). East West Flavors. Los Angeles: West Los Angeles Auxiliary of the Japanese American Citizens League, 1965 to 1966. First edition.
Spiral bound community cookbook compiled by a committee of Japanese American women including Satsuki Uyeno, Tayeko Isono, and Chieko Inouye, who not only gathered and organized recipes but also oversaw original woodcut illustrations by Miye Yoshida and calligraphy by Keiko Tanaka, emphasizing the creative agency of women within Japanese American civic life. The recipe corpus spans approximately ninety pages and demonstrates hybridization of culinary traditions, with dishes such as “Abalone Rakkyo Appetizer,” “Chicken Teriyaki,” and “Curried Crab” appearing alongside midcentury American recipes including “Macaroni Loaf” and “Hamburger Noodle Bake,” as well as globally inflected dishes like “Polynesian Spareribs” and “Wild Rice Seafood Casserole.”

202 pages. Illustrated throughout with original woodcuts and calligraphic elements. Spiral bound illustrated wrappers. Royal octavo format. Produced within a network of postwar Japanese American civic organizations, the volume aligns with broader patterns of community cookbook production as a form of grassroots documentation and fundraising among women’s groups in the United States during the mid twentieth century. Its timing within the 1960s coincides with renewed civil rights advocacy by the Japanese American Citizens League and a period of increased public visibility for Japanese American identity following wartime displacement, as families rebuilt social and cultural life in neighborhoods such as West Los Angeles, Gardena, and surrounding communities. Light foxing to title page, several early pages with minor dog earing at lower right corner, otherwise clean and intact. Overall very good condition.

Item #22799

Price: $225.00