ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the historical evolution of Taiwan’s tourist image in Japan as a gourmet paradise from the context of postcolonial encounters in the 1960s to global tourism in the twenty-first century. To examine the textual and visual representations of Taiwan’s image, this research includes sources from travel magazines, guidebooks, and special editions on tourism in women’s magazines. In the 1960s, Taiwan was depicted as the ‘Orient’ in Japanese travel magazines, whereas the presence of food was not significant but often appears together with nightclubs and hostesses. As Japan’s economy boomed in the 1970s, guidebooks with rich visual images of cuisines began to replace literal travelogues in the making of the image of Taiwan. As this form of representation persists, Taiwan’s image as ‘the gourmet paradise’ continues to dominate the tourist market and shape Japanese general image on Taiwan. Moreover, after Taiwan’s generous donation to Japan for the recovery of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, various travel media further embeds Taiwanese food with the trust and intimacy between the host and the guests. This ‘gustatory gaze’ toward food images in travel media can thus be considered as an embodiment of a more complex history of Japan’s exotic longings and intimacy toward Taiwan.
