Tyler Burke Journal Staff
Dr. Merry White, professor of anthropology at Boston University, captivated an audience in the Poetry Center Friday morning describing her journey of a growing appreciation of Japan’s coffee culture. Her knowledge of the culture surrounding enjoyment of coffee in Tokyo has been carefully refined over five decades, beginning even before the 1964 Olympics, which restaged Japan as a world-class city.
The opinion that Japanese people eat sushi, drink green tea, and practice zen would likely be quickly dismissed as a stale stereotype by Professor White. While green tea occupies a well-established place on the Japanese palate, it is savored distinctly and often alongside coffee. Green tea “is like the air they breathe, you don’t pay for it,” she describes. Coffee, on the other hand, is enjoyed all out. White recalled an experience in which she was given green tea along with the menu of coffee at one shop. “It’s not like if you drink one you won’t have room for the other,” she describes, “they are enjoyed separately.”
White highlighted Japan’s surprisingly vibrant and revolutionary coffee history. In the 1870’s, before coffee was leisurely enjoyed, it had early medicinal use and became the drink of choice among Nagasaki prostitutes. In the early 1920’s, the Japanese coffeehouse was a symbol of modernity “where people expressed political ideas and personal ideologies,” White described. The coffeehouse created an alternative place of being for the Japanese people away from the traditional teahouses and apart from the constraints of institutions and daily life.
Today, Japan is the world’s third largest importer of coffee after Germany and the US. Coffeehouse culture remains an art, and one’s proper conduct must strictly adhere to the formalities of the space. However, the coffeehouse is an area of freedom from the rigidness and expectations surrounding people in the rest of their lives. The coffeehouse is not where you go to work on a laptop – they have Starbucks for that. Conversely, these places can allow urbanites to escape the busy and loud day-to-day city life and enjoy silence and alone time. “What you’re paying for is not just a cup of coffee,” White explains “but a real estate piece to own for yourself for a while.” Consequently, these fine drinks are drunk in the space, not for take away.
There is a value piece placed on handmade items in Japan, as described by Merry White. The hand of the master doing a meticulous pour-over is valued more than a machine-made espresso. At some cafes, coffee is ordered and roasted a day ahead of your arrival. Master baristas roast and blend coffee beans by the cup, creating incomparable and unforgettable experiences for the drinker. Her vivid journey through this culture conveys the listener’s attention to another world she recalls fondly.
Dr. White will be speaking again on April 14 at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual event at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC). Her latest book Coffee Life in Japan was released last year. The Barbara and Richard M. Rosenberg Institute sponsored this lecture for East Asian Studies at Suffolk University.
