Japan’s food culture up until the 1950s was focused on the consumption of rice. However, changes came to the rice-based diet when the practice of eating bread and meat spread due to food aid (wheat flour) from the government of the United States when food was scarce after World War II, the influence of globalism through American food preferences, and campaigns to improve nutrition. The import of foreign foodstuffs such as low priced beef created a diverse culture of cooking and resulted in Japanese people eating many side dishes including those made of meat. Furthermore, the growth of the food service and home meal replacement industries, as well as the incorporation into home cooking of cuisines from many cultures, further expedited the globalization of Japan’s food culture. Consumption of rice decreased as a result and the diet centered on rice began to decline.

  The development of various foodstuff industries after 1970 created eating habits in which people could eat as much as they pleased. These changes also affected the culture of eating mochi (glutinous rice cakes). The way of thinking declined in which mochi, a traditional food, was regarded as a delicacy and believed to have spiritual value. However, mochi came to be used as souvenirs from various locations as demonstrated by wagashi (traditional Japanese confectionary), sasa mochi (mochi wrapped in a bamboo leaf), and other products.

  The rice surplus in the latter half of the 1960s led to the implementation of the government’s policy of reducing acreage for cultivating rice, which decreased the amount of rice production. This brought about the fall of Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio and the decline of rice growing agriculture. Through the government’s policy of reducing acreage for cultivating rice and the rice deregulation policy at the end of the 1980s, agriculture changed from rice growing agriculture in which agricultural communities were dependent upon the government to self-contained, multifaceted farm management. For example, instead of depending on rice, a system to produce and sell a wide variety of agricultural products has been expanded across the nation. Also, as seen by the production of organic rice, the creation of branded rice with high additional value has shifted importance from rice production amount to rice quality.

  In addition, farmers are working to grow rice for animal feed via organic farming as a response to the government’s policy of reducing acreage for cultivating rice. Agriculture that focuses on environmental conservation and local cycles has come to be practiced, in which this safe feed is sold to local hog farms and the rice farmer purchases compost which is made from the excrement of the livestock.

  The distinguishing feature of Japan’s food culture was its emphasis on eating rice. However, economic globalization after the end of WWII has made rice-centered production and consumer lifestyles decline and has brought about a multicultural food culture.

  This paper argues on rice growing and a rice eating practice of Southeast Asian peoples. The arguments are mainly narrowed down to the following several points, namely the historical progress and expansion of rice culture and the rice eating practice; a variety of rice cooking and rice food culture; myths of rice growing; and rice food culture in the modern globalization.

  In the first section, this surveys the history of rice growing. The old Chinese rice agricultural system with temperate japonica rice came southward about two thousand years ago and the old Indian rice agricultural system with tropical indica rice came eastward about one thousand years ago. Today almost all the peoples living in the area eat rice as their daily staple. However, some peoples where rice is not easy to grow do not eat rice.

  The following section analyzes a variety of rice cooking and eating. They are divided into three traditional methods: the method of boiling-simmer up for japonica rice; boiling-drain for indica rice; and steaming for glutinous rice. A pair of chopsticks and a rice bowl is used for eating japonica rice and a hand and fingers for indica and glutinous rice.

  The next section shows a variety of rice food culture: porridge; cakes; needles; wine; sweets; rice flour and so on. Rice change to several foods as it is easy to ferment. The fifth section describes myths on rice cultivating. In Southeast Asia, rice creates and maintains social relations between people, and between people and the spirit world. Many myths concerning to rice have been transmitted from generation to generation. In the last section, this sums up the main points of the paper from the viewpoint of modern globalization. Peoples in the area maintain the traditional food practice even though the strong globalization spreads in the area.

  In 2004 Mr. Hubert Sauper (a documentary film director and author) completed ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’, which depicted the miserable reality of globalization thrillingly, turning his attention to the Nile perch of Lake Victoria. After releasing, this film received many grands prix as well as creating a sensation.

  This paper treats of the problem on food and agriculture of Tanzania from the angle of destructive effect of globalization which Mr. Sauper especially emphasized in ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’.

  The main objective of this paper is to clarify the serious situation of food and agriculture of the same country and its cause, besides to grope for the way which agriculture should aim at. The contents are composed of (1) the question of ‘Darwin’s Nightmare’, (2) the plunder of land and food crisis, (3) irrigation farming of rice and ‘National Rice Development Strategy’ (4) ‘Agriculture First’ strategy.

  In this paper, the idea of the traditional rice diet forms, the cooking methods, the eating habits and the rice diet people in various parts of Eurasia are summarized, and the construction of their whole image is also tried. However, we aim here not to construct such image itself, but to make understand the diet form of an individual people. To be concrete, our purpose is to enable the effective and balanced comparison with another example when, after the whole image is constructed, we would return to each case so as to observe, analyze and comprehend more clearly, with due consideration for the whole image, the traditional characters, features, characteristics of rice diet form among the people concerned.

  Though it is only a rough view, the following themes are investigated from this viewpoint and various sides of the globalization of rice diet are considered properly : details of change from farm village self-support economy to international exchange economy, distribution of the traditional rice diet people in Asia, diet of wild rice plant, Indica diet and Japonica diet, white rice diet and red rice diet, cleaned rice diet and rice grain diet, treatment of rice, principle and method of rice / boiled rice in daily diet (cooking technique of rice) and feature of idea of the rice diet people in East Asia and South Asia.

  Polyphony, or multi-voicedness in speeches, has been widely discussed in social science, including anthropology. This article extracts some polyphonic speeches from conversation data in Malay language, and analyzes them relying on the positioning theory. The data consists of a scene of conversation participated by three Malay Malaysians and one Chinese Malaysian. When polyphonic speeches are followed by shared laughter, ways in which participants positioned each other in their talk have some influence on their interpersonal relations. On the other hand, when speeches are not followed by shared laughter, participants do not position each other in any special way as above; rather those speeches are understood just as citation that convey some referential information. Because polyphony followed by laughter is used as important resources of conversation especially by managing social distance, the way in which such a management of social distance is achieved by polyphony followed by laughter is examined from the perspective of the Face. What polyphony does on participant’s relations varies according to whether the speech concerns to addressee’s territory or not. In cases of speeches that don’t concern to addressee’s territory directly, those speeches positioned participants as members of a group having shared knowledge and values for understanding those speeches. For example, those speeches emphasized their shared knowledge about a movie star, trouble forgetting people's names, and having no interest to a particular foreign city. And in cases of speeches that concern to addressee’s territory, those speeches position each other so that social distance between the speakers and addressees are changed. One speech using representation recognized as Face Threatening Act decrease distance between speaker and addressee, and other speech using the representation which take Face into consideration, increase distance between them. Such management of social distance is achieved by polyphony followed by laughter.