Техники за изобретяване на местна традиция: маслините и японският остров Шодошима
Techniques for Inventing a Local Tradition: the Olives and Shodoshima Island, Japan

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the problem of cultural borrowing and the invention of tradition in the context of Japanese culture. The object of the study is the olives, imported one hundred years ago as a result of the Meiji government policy, in what is now known as the only “Olive Island” in Japan – Shodoshima. In this paper I analyze the process of the invention of the olive tradition and its naturalization with a view to the strategies, techniques, participants and results. I argue that olives are naturalized successfully on a visual level, that they became the visual symbol which builds the local identity and the symbolic zone in which the Shodoshima community is consolidating as a group. On the other hand, this tradition still fails to be active on an everyday life level. The local people regard their island as the “Olive Island”, they produce and participate in various practices and activities aimed at maintaining that image and popularizing it outside the island, but the actual consumption of olives is highly restricted in their eating habits. My point is that this very gap in the existence of the olives on the island is the proof for their invented tradition. This study shows how local business and political elites used one community to achieve their commercial aims by importing a food product – olives – and inventing local tradition by legitimizing practices. These practices are not self-sufficient, but are producing a local identity that is constructed in relation to the Other, the imported product.

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