{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01958997722095672, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0018223234624145787, 'mean_word_length': 5.083102493074792, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Pizza and Pizza Chefs in Japan: A Case of Culinary Globalization: By Rossella Ceccarini

As suggested by the title of the book, Rossella Ceccarini provides an intriguing history and ethnography of the globalization of artisanal pizza and pizza chefs, primarily in and between Italy and Japan. The chapters of her book are each devoted to a particular vertex of a “cultural diamond” of pizza: pizza as a cultural object, Italian pizzerias in Japan as a social world, Japanese consumers as receivers, and Japanese and Italian pizzaiolos as creators. She begins with a history of pizza from its contested etymological origins in Israel and the lands of Levantine Arabic in the late tenth century, to its humble presence on the tables of the poor in Italy from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century, and its gradual popularization among not only the royalty of Italy (especially, Queen Margherita in the nineteenth century), but also the rest of the world (following the Italian migration to the United States and the Second World War). As part of this history, she traces the transformations pizza undergoes in terms of both its physical shape and in the composition of the network of actors associated with its travel (e.g. migrants and later a “package” constituted by the aforementioned vertices of the cultural diamond). In the next chapters on Italian restaurants and pizzerias in Japan from the 1950s to the present, she focuses on the historical and symbolic establishment of Italian cuisine, and in particular artisanal pizza, through the accumulation of cultural capital and signs of authenticity by chefs in Japan. Following these chapters is an analysis of the interaction between Japanese (female) consumers and Italian chefs in the mutual shaping of pizza and taste. Finally, Ceccarini describes the influence, perception, and experiences of Japanese and Italian pizzaiolos, with an emphasis on how the movement of chefs between Italy and Japan shapes both the reception of their product and their occupation. Ceccarini’s study is a valuable contribution to not only the growing literature on food in Japan and food studies more generally, but also to the relatively scarce