Naked Sushi
Behind the Violent Sexualization of Women in Ethnic Dining
Jessica Simes
Issue date: 11/2/09 Section: Outside the Bubble
Since our inception, DITZ has taken an interest in restaurants serving "naked sushi" by placing their ngiri and California rolls on the bodies of nude models. What better time than the Body Issue to explore this trend happening in our own Los Angeles backyard? In this article, DITZ Contributor Jessica T. Simes explores the image of the hyper-sexualized Asian female in Western culture, specifically in the atmosphere of trendy Los Angeles dining. Through an analysis of ethnic dining and a photo journal journey through Hollywood's popular Giesha House, Simes uncovers that even before women lose their clothes, their representation in Asian dining results to an extremely harmful and violent disembodiment.
When you hear the term "geisha," what comes to mind? Do you see a beautiful woman in a full kimono, playing musical instruments, dancing, and serving tea? Or do you see the hyper-sexualized Japanese female, commodified by Western culture and exploited for all her cultural worth, serving as living embodiment of the phrase "sex sells"?
From sushi served on female bodies to Quentin Tarantino fight scenes, Japanese culture has been taken advantage of and greatly misrepresented in Western society. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the trendy dining establishments of Los Angeles.
True to form, L.A.'s famous Dulce Group has opened a restaurant to perfect the art of single-handedly offending and othering an entire group of people. Their chic Hollywood Geisha House may not lay women on the table wearing nothing but California rolls, but it's subtle sexual imagery is just as harmful, if not more.
"A combination of five star sushi restaurant set in the atmosphere of a surreal high-class brothel, the goal of Geisha House is to make the client climax. If all you want is a California roll, you're at the wrong sushi restaurant!"
A quick review of their website shows that this supposed cultural experience is merely a glorified western sushi bar. The restaurant calls their business a "brothel"--a common, incorrect understanding of Japanese Geisha houses. Further review of the website demonstrates that this restaurant, along with many others in the Los Angeles area, is nothing but a misrepresentation of a cultural symbol and tradition, splashed onto a blank canvas of upper-class whiteness and masquerading as a "real" Japanese experience.
"EATING THE OTHER"
We know that ethnic cuisine sells. By eating "their" food, one can explore and sensually experience the Other. In her essay, "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance," bell hooks discusses the commodity of the Other and its relationship to food, culture, and sexuality within whiteness, concluding that "difference can seduce precisely because the mainstream imposition of sameness is a provocation that terrorizes."
Thus, eating ethnic food is not simply an experience of new culture--it is crossing a boundary, sexual and racial, that was once forbidden, and is now trendy and popular. Difference, then, is no longer problematic and feared, but sought after. Through commodity culture, a privileged group can experience places and people of forbidden pleasure while simultaneously consuming commodities that embody that Other. Eating "ethnic food," then, is a highly complex social engagement with an ideological Other.
Sidney W. Mintz, author of "Eating Communities: the Mixed Appeals of Sodality," points out the irony of so-called nationalistic foods--they must be adapted to fit the palate of consumers of another nationality and taste in order to turn a profit. Furthermore, these desires to participate in world foods and so-called ethnic restaurants speaks to a consumerist necessity to reach out to "old times" and romantic images of a "primitive" land lost to modernity. Hooks writes that "masses of young people dissatisfied by U.S. imperialism, unemployment, lack of economic opportunity, afflicted by the postmodern malaise of alienation, no sense of grounding, no redemptive identity, can be manipulated by cultural strategies that offer Otherness as appeasement, particularly through commodification."
Restaurants such as Geisha House seem to be banking on their consumer's lack of identity by using a simulacra of images, symbols, meanings, and bodies to fabricate, taste, and have sex with an imaginary Other. This is an especially potent idea for the young, up-and-coming crowds that flock to Los Angeles restaurants-these are the crowds hooks refers to, the throngs of aging youth looking for an outlet for their dissatisfaction and a way to act out against their country's imperialistic urges. The irony comes, then, from their performance of counterculture by participating in an ultimately imperialistic act of consuming the ethnic Other.
EXPERIENCING GEISHA HOUSE
Excerpt from Geisha House's Website
Geisha House is a Modern Japanese Restaurant, Sushi Bar and Sake Lounge that embraces the flavor of traditional Japan while catering to the hip, sophisticated clientele of Los Angeles. Taking a cue from Japan's popular sake bars and traditional Geisha Houses of entertainment, Geisha House serves Japanese cuisine as well as fresh sushi and sashimi dishes with a contemporary spin. Whether it's a wrap party of a simple dinner for two, Geisha House is a destination point for groups of all sizes.
However…Be Warned!
Geisha House is not just another sushi restaurant
Sensual…Ethereal…Mysterious
Geisha House provides a sexy dining experience that titillates the senses, beginning with the palate and continuing from there…While most sushi restaurants tend to ignore or hide from Japan's rich sexual history…Geisha House embraces it. A combination of five star sushi restaurant set in the atmosphere of a surreal high class brothel, the goal of Geisha House is to make the client climax. Geisha House provides the vibe, the music, and the intoxicating tones necessary to create sensuality through, taste, touch, smell, and complete stimulation.
If all you want is a California roll, you're at the wrong sushi restaurant.
Geisha girls, seared albacore, Sake-Infused Martinis, Kamasutra…all leads to one thing…a happy ending.
This is sex…
This is Geisha House.
***
It's impossible to ignore the sexual implications inherent in this site. To say nothing of the fact that geisha houses were not brothels and had no connection to the Kamasutra, the overt sexuality connected to the Otherness of Japanese bodies clearly plays a major role in the restaurant's overall appeal. I decided to contact the manager of Geisha House immediately.
Unfortunately, my efforts were in vain--the employees did not want to talk about the possible problems of the restaurant. When I asked them what kind of clientele the restaurant had, most responded, "young, trendy people," failing to note the color and class of their clientele. The staff did not seem phased by the fact that all visible staff members were white, while people of color were kept in the background, doing kitchen or bussing work. While this is true of the vast majority of high-end restaurants, it only added insult to identity-politics injury at Geisha House.
Because the staff refrained from talking to me, I used photos to tell the story of the violent disembodiment of Asian women at Geisha House.
Photo Journal
When I arrived, I couldn't find the entrance to the restaurant; this was a bad sign. As if the expensive menu, dress code, and valet parking weren't enough, a hidden entrance only underscored Geisha House's exclusivity. I rounded a corner and was accosted by a shockingly large image of presumably a Geisha's mouth eating a cube of tofu. The eerie lighting, coupled with the disjointed facial feature, made me sick to my stomach--not an effect restaurants usually strive for. The overtly sexual implications of the mouth of an Othered body at the entrance into this "unknown" mysterious brothel-restaurant exuded imperialism. This image, I found later, was all over the restaurant, from menus to chopstick wrappers.
I found this bonsai tree in the corner of the restaurant behind a curtain. The bonsai tree, important in many Japanese traditions such as Shinto, Zen, and the art of the garden, was being used artificially as a metonym for "something Japanese" with which the customers could identify. I chose to radically alter the photographic representation of the tree, much like Andy Worhol, to emphasize its artificial state and its implications in popular culture.
Geisha House was so dark and poorly lit that it was almost impossible to shoot film. Luckily, I brought a tri-pod. In this image, I wanted to emphasize the seductiveness of that darkness, acting as a symbol of the darkness of the Other. The walls in this space of the restaurant are covered in kimono cloth, another metonym and easily recognizable symbol of "Japanese cool," a part of the décor so important to the overall success of this brothel-restaurant.
The sushi bar was the first location where I saw a person of color. To extend the stereotypes to sickening degrees, all of the sushi chefs were Asian males. These images capture the sushi chefs at work before the opening of the store. I spoke with them about the restaurant, and asked about their experiences here. Interestingly, only two of the nine chefs were actually Japanese. For their performance of authenticity, the restaurant only needed to hire men who looked the part, who looked "Oriental," regardless of their ethnicity. Throughout the restaurant, orchids are placed in flower arrangements and on tables as a symbol of the Oriental feminine; these flowers have often served to represent female genitalia, fertility, and sexuality in popular culture.
These ropes lined the walls of the restaurant's second floor. They expressed a sinister effect of a gallows or nooses, or perhaps bondage and punishment. I tried to express that effect with the lighting available to me. This feeling was inherently related to the Othered bodies being objectified throughout the store. Perhaps it speaks to the violent and sexual desire bell hooks discusses within the experience of eating the Other.
The striking image of the "monstrous Geisha" on the chopsticks highlights the experience of eating the Other. In this case the customers literally get to eat the Other with chopsticks decorated with the Other's face. The folded napkin, orchid, red table, and low lighting create an ambiance of mystery, sexuality, and cultural imperialism.
When you hear the term "geisha," what comes to mind? Do you see a beautiful woman in a full kimono, playing musical instruments, dancing, and serving tea? Or do you see the hyper-sexualized Japanese female, commodified by Western culture and exploited for all her cultural worth, serving as living embodiment of the phrase "sex sells"?
From sushi served on female bodies to Quentin Tarantino fight scenes, Japanese culture has been taken advantage of and greatly misrepresented in Western society. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the trendy dining establishments of Los Angeles.
True to form, L.A.'s famous Dulce Group has opened a restaurant to perfect the art of single-handedly offending and othering an entire group of people. Their chic Hollywood Geisha House may not lay women on the table wearing nothing but California rolls, but it's subtle sexual imagery is just as harmful, if not more.
"A combination of five star sushi restaurant set in the atmosphere of a surreal high-class brothel, the goal of Geisha House is to make the client climax. If all you want is a California roll, you're at the wrong sushi restaurant!"
A quick review of their website shows that this supposed cultural experience is merely a glorified western sushi bar. The restaurant calls their business a "brothel"--a common, incorrect understanding of Japanese Geisha houses. Further review of the website demonstrates that this restaurant, along with many others in the Los Angeles area, is nothing but a misrepresentation of a cultural symbol and tradition, splashed onto a blank canvas of upper-class whiteness and masquerading as a "real" Japanese experience.
"EATING THE OTHER"
We know that ethnic cuisine sells. By eating "their" food, one can explore and sensually experience the Other. In her essay, "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance," bell hooks discusses the commodity of the Other and its relationship to food, culture, and sexuality within whiteness, concluding that "difference can seduce precisely because the mainstream imposition of sameness is a provocation that terrorizes."
Thus, eating ethnic food is not simply an experience of new culture--it is crossing a boundary, sexual and racial, that was once forbidden, and is now trendy and popular. Difference, then, is no longer problematic and feared, but sought after. Through commodity culture, a privileged group can experience places and people of forbidden pleasure while simultaneously consuming commodities that embody that Other. Eating "ethnic food," then, is a highly complex social engagement with an ideological Other.
Sidney W. Mintz, author of "Eating Communities: the Mixed Appeals of Sodality," points out the irony of so-called nationalistic foods--they must be adapted to fit the palate of consumers of another nationality and taste in order to turn a profit. Furthermore, these desires to participate in world foods and so-called ethnic restaurants speaks to a consumerist necessity to reach out to "old times" and romantic images of a "primitive" land lost to modernity. Hooks writes that "masses of young people dissatisfied by U.S. imperialism, unemployment, lack of economic opportunity, afflicted by the postmodern malaise of alienation, no sense of grounding, no redemptive identity, can be manipulated by cultural strategies that offer Otherness as appeasement, particularly through commodification."
Restaurants such as Geisha House seem to be banking on their consumer's lack of identity by using a simulacra of images, symbols, meanings, and bodies to fabricate, taste, and have sex with an imaginary Other. This is an especially potent idea for the young, up-and-coming crowds that flock to Los Angeles restaurants-these are the crowds hooks refers to, the throngs of aging youth looking for an outlet for their dissatisfaction and a way to act out against their country's imperialistic urges. The irony comes, then, from their performance of counterculture by participating in an ultimately imperialistic act of consuming the ethnic Other.
EXPERIENCING GEISHA HOUSE
Excerpt from Geisha House's Website
Geisha House is a Modern Japanese Restaurant, Sushi Bar and Sake Lounge that embraces the flavor of traditional Japan while catering to the hip, sophisticated clientele of Los Angeles. Taking a cue from Japan's popular sake bars and traditional Geisha Houses of entertainment, Geisha House serves Japanese cuisine as well as fresh sushi and sashimi dishes with a contemporary spin. Whether it's a wrap party of a simple dinner for two, Geisha House is a destination point for groups of all sizes.
However…Be Warned!
Geisha House is not just another sushi restaurant
Sensual…Ethereal…Mysterious
Geisha House provides a sexy dining experience that titillates the senses, beginning with the palate and continuing from there…While most sushi restaurants tend to ignore or hide from Japan's rich sexual history…Geisha House embraces it. A combination of five star sushi restaurant set in the atmosphere of a surreal high class brothel, the goal of Geisha House is to make the client climax. Geisha House provides the vibe, the music, and the intoxicating tones necessary to create sensuality through, taste, touch, smell, and complete stimulation.
If all you want is a California roll, you're at the wrong sushi restaurant.
Geisha girls, seared albacore, Sake-Infused Martinis, Kamasutra…all leads to one thing…a happy ending.
This is sex…
This is Geisha House.
***
It's impossible to ignore the sexual implications inherent in this site. To say nothing of the fact that geisha houses were not brothels and had no connection to the Kamasutra, the overt sexuality connected to the Otherness of Japanese bodies clearly plays a major role in the restaurant's overall appeal. I decided to contact the manager of Geisha House immediately.
Unfortunately, my efforts were in vain--the employees did not want to talk about the possible problems of the restaurant. When I asked them what kind of clientele the restaurant had, most responded, "young, trendy people," failing to note the color and class of their clientele. The staff did not seem phased by the fact that all visible staff members were white, while people of color were kept in the background, doing kitchen or bussing work. While this is true of the vast majority of high-end restaurants, it only added insult to identity-politics injury at Geisha House.
Because the staff refrained from talking to me, I used photos to tell the story of the violent disembodiment of Asian women at Geisha House.
Photo Journal
 Media Credit: Jessica Simes Monstrous Geisha |
When I arrived, I couldn't find the entrance to the restaurant; this was a bad sign. As if the expensive menu, dress code, and valet parking weren't enough, a hidden entrance only underscored Geisha House's exclusivity. I rounded a corner and was accosted by a shockingly large image of presumably a Geisha's mouth eating a cube of tofu. The eerie lighting, coupled with the disjointed facial feature, made me sick to my stomach--not an effect restaurants usually strive for. The overtly sexual implications of the mouth of an Othered body at the entrance into this "unknown" mysterious brothel-restaurant exuded imperialism. This image, I found later, was all over the restaurant, from menus to chopstick wrappers.
 Media Credit: Jessica Simes Bonsai Tree |
I found this bonsai tree in the corner of the restaurant behind a curtain. The bonsai tree, important in many Japanese traditions such as Shinto, Zen, and the art of the garden, was being used artificially as a metonym for "something Japanese" with which the customers could identify. I chose to radically alter the photographic representation of the tree, much like Andy Worhol, to emphasize its artificial state and its implications in popular culture.
 Media Credit: Jessica Simes Kimono Booth |
Geisha House was so dark and poorly lit that it was almost impossible to shoot film. Luckily, I brought a tri-pod. In this image, I wanted to emphasize the seductiveness of that darkness, acting as a symbol of the darkness of the Other. The walls in this space of the restaurant are covered in kimono cloth, another metonym and easily recognizable symbol of "Japanese cool," a part of the décor so important to the overall success of this brothel-restaurant.
 Media Credit: Jessica Simes California Roll |
 Media Credit: Jessica Simes Orchids |
The sushi bar was the first location where I saw a person of color. To extend the stereotypes to sickening degrees, all of the sushi chefs were Asian males. These images capture the sushi chefs at work before the opening of the store. I spoke with them about the restaurant, and asked about their experiences here. Interestingly, only two of the nine chefs were actually Japanese. For their performance of authenticity, the restaurant only needed to hire men who looked the part, who looked "Oriental," regardless of their ethnicity. Throughout the restaurant, orchids are placed in flower arrangements and on tables as a symbol of the Oriental feminine; these flowers have often served to represent female genitalia, fertility, and sexuality in popular culture.
 Media Credit: Jessica Simes Ropes |
These ropes lined the walls of the restaurant's second floor. They expressed a sinister effect of a gallows or nooses, or perhaps bondage and punishment. I tried to express that effect with the lighting available to me. This feeling was inherently related to the Othered bodies being objectified throughout the store. Perhaps it speaks to the violent and sexual desire bell hooks discusses within the experience of eating the Other.
 Media Credit: Jessica Simes Place Setting |
The striking image of the "monstrous Geisha" on the chopsticks highlights the experience of eating the Other. In this case the customers literally get to eat the Other with chopsticks decorated with the Other's face. The folded napkin, orchid, red table, and low lighting create an ambiance of mystery, sexuality, and cultural imperialism.
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