Making food replicas a popular activity in Japan for tourists hungry for the local culture

You’ve probably seen replicas of popular dishes in restaurant window displays. Tourists in Japan join workshops to learn how they’re made

Reading Time:4 minutes

Japan’s lifelike food replicas are gaining popularity with tourists, who attend workshops to learn more about how they are made and how the art has evolved. Photo: Iwasaki Company

Published: 12:45pm, 19 Nov 2024

At a workshop in Tokyo, a dozen or so tourists watched as green and white wax was poured into warm water. As the liquid turned into a sheet, they were asked to slowly pull it up and roll it, gasping at its transformation into lettuce.

Hands-on lessons in the art of creating food replicas have caught on with foreign visitors keen to learn more about a distinctive Japanese craft that has evolved for over 100 years. An exhibit of food replicas was even held in the British capital, London, this year.

The lessons were offered by Iwasaki Group, which is believed to have been the first to commercialise the production of food replicas in 1932.

Now used not only as window-display enticements by restaurants but also as training tools for farmers and as souvenirs, food replicas trace their roots to the period from the late 1910s to early 1920s in Japan, when dining out became popular thanks to the emergence of restaurants, including at department stores.

Hands-on lessons in the art of creating food replicas have caught on with foreign visitors to Japan. Photo: Iwasaki Company

The popularity of food replicas also grew in tandem with the spread of Western culture and ideas and helped introduce unfamiliar Western dishes to consumers in Japan.