Denis Dutton is a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and author of “The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution.”
While preparing attractive bento box lunches is an honorable and inventive craft, the traveling lunch box is not unique to Japan.
Lisa Poole/Associated Press Hopalong Cassidy lunch box.
Take a look at the history of the lunch pail and the lunchbox in America, with an efficient Thermos bottle tucked in the lid. By the middle of the 20th century, children’s versions were decorated with the likes of Mickey Mouse and Hopalong Cassidy.
No need to regard this cynically, however: children do enjoy lunches that are made into something special. This is bento lunch’s great strength: the thought and attention given to creating it. Making and presenting food with care is an act of love, whether it means a judicious balance of food ingredients (for taste, color, texture), or making the contents fun for a child, using imaginative cut-out shapes.
Generations of loving American moms did the same when they cut crusts off sandwiches (perhaps also an appeal to children’s aesthetic tastes), and did whatever else it took to fill lunch boxes with nutritious foods their children would eat. It still happens, every morning.
But is a cleverly assembled bento box lunch a work of art? Such elevation of decorative crafts to the status of “art” seems superfluous to me. Call it an art form if you wish, but such words add nothing to the pleasure of the bento lunch.
