Fermenting for the Future: Japanese Pickles and Microbial Foodways

Fermenting for the Future reveals the fascinating story of tsukemono, the rich variety of pickles that have been an integral part of the Japanese diet for over a thousand years. Today, industrial pasteurization and declining agrodiversity have led to the disappearance of many of the hundreds of traditional tsukemono along with their benefits to human health. While fermenting vegetables and fruit was once a task of domestic drudgery, Aya Hirata Kimura shows how the art of tsukemono can now be appreciated as a catalyst for sociocultural change amid a growing awareness of the drawbacks of antibiotic modernity. By examining the complex socio-environmental facets of tsukemono, Kimura deepens our understanding of how the modernization of food and agriculture transform not only human relationships to plants and the land but also the microbial diversity in our food systems and bodies.