A diverse market with four categories of possible readers:
foraging enthusiasts living outside of Japan (and maybe a few inside Japan) who want to know how other cultures use and relate to wild edible plants people who love Japanese food and want to discover something new about an otherwise well-known cuisine people traveling to Japan (especially rural Japan) who want a more in-depth understanding of what they are eating general Japanophiles hungry for any new angle on Japan
Packed with practical information, with 30 recipes and 25 botanical-glossary entries It has 40 beautiful hand-drawn illustrations A unique approach: No other English-language books (no cookbooks, field guides, or non-fiction books) that we are aware of cover Japan’s edible wild plants with the depth and breadth of this book (or actually, at all). Journalistically researched yet written in a more personal voice, which sets it apart from a number of Japan-foodie-travel books on the market written from a less personal perspective. Rooted in a deep personal interest of the author: I have an unusual background combining extensive knowledge of Japan’s natural environment, rural culture, and cuisine gained through years spent living in the Japanese countryside and working as an environmental journalist. For me this was a very personal projects bringing together four of my passions in life: plants, food, rural culture, and Japan.
It draws on three years of research in many remote corners of Japan. Plants reveal aspects of Japan’s culture and history that will be of interest to readers who are not especially interested in botany or foraging. This is a book about how people live and have historically lived outside Japan’s urban centers. In the author’s words: The idea for this book hit me as I was lying in bed in the middle of the night. I got up and essentially wrote down the outline for it right then and there. The inspiration came from an 85-year old neighbor I had when I lived in Nagano Prefecture who was also a writer and plant lover. She collected sansai every spring and introduced me to some of my favorite wild plants..
Statistics
In 2018 Japan saw 31 million visitors from abroad, a 3 million increase from the previous year. This trend is not only expected to continue, but to surge to 40 million in light of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Interest in wild food has steady increased over the past decade-2017 saw a sizeable increase in the Google search popularity of wild food with a peak in June of 2019. According to Food and Wine, people are becoming concerned about sustainability and food waste. Foraging and wild edibles present an alternative. Local and regional cuisines are still in vogue. These trends go hand-in-hand with the emergence of foraging food tours, such as ForageSF. The popularity of wild foods and foraging is further reflected in successful YouTube food and lifestyle channels around foraging even in niche subcategories: Coastal Foraging with Craigs Evans, 68k subscribers; Outdoor Chef Life, 218k subscribers. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpBQMibpipuqHsI\_mJMVveAhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNqpN335uVY9Sx\_ZK\_WuOAA You can find similar success in print media such as the blogger and writer Hank Shaw who has won multiple awards for his writing on hunting and foraging. He also sports some 17,000 followers on Twitter and 54,000 on Instagram. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank\_Shaw\_(author)https://honest-food.net/about/
