When the Characters are INSIDE the Kids’ Lunchboxes

If you know a chef, you've probably heard the art of food is in the presentation. Which for me means cutting my daughter's PB&J into four triangles instead of two. If she's lucky I'll crimp the edges when I remove the crust. But Japanese mamas apparently have more Martha in one little finger than I have in my whole body. Either that or a lot more time on their hands.

Every day, Japanese moms are keeping alive a tradition begun at the latter end of the country's Kamakura Period (which officially came to a close in 1333) in their children's lunchboxes. It's a modern twist on charaben, short for character bento boxes, that sends average kids to school with a lunch styled to look like Piglet, Spiderman or Tinkerbell is popping out of their box.

The creations were profiled in Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes, a hardcover out earlier this year from Mark Batty Publishers. Author Christopher D. Salyers recalls talking to mothers who were embarrased by the notion that magazines would want to display their work. They do it, they told him, for the praise of their kids. He says it's evidence of deep "parent-to-child devotion," a value highly valued in Japanese society.

Salyers' rich photographs were paired with detailed ingredient lists. A spot on likeness of the Aristocats' Marie, for example, took sixteen different ingredients to create – including cucumber, fish cake, green beens and thinly sliced beef. Seaweed was lovingly sliced to craft a winking eye, whiskers and even supply eyelashes for the Disney feline.

Can you see your kid eating seaweed? What about fish cake? Mine either. But as "Western" food from McDonald's and Starbucks have come to dominate the Japanese eating habits the way they have our own, Salyers says charaben help moms keep their kids nutritional habits healthy. But the projects can take anywhere from half an hour to two hours, and it's all going to be eaten by lunchtime.

What do you think? Worth a try, or too much work? I'm impressed. . . but Martha's still out to lunch.

Images: FaceFoodBento, Christopher D. Salyers