Deep Streams: 'Samurai Gourmet'

In much the same way that the classic rock radio feature "Deep Tracks" highlights a more obscure track buried deep inside an album's rundown, "Deep Streams" highlights a streaming series that's worth watching. If you could ever find it.

Even at its most commercial, television programming produced in Asia is interwoven with cultural touchstones that are both comforting and a bit disorienting if you are an American. That is especially the case with food-oriented TV programs. Which makes sense, given that the exploration and appreciation of food is a very personal, visceral thing. I'll never understand the love that leads someone to produce an eight-part series about rice noodles. But I can still warm myself in the unfamiliar appreciation of an ingredient that I take for granted.

Samurai Gourmet is a 12-episode Japanese series that is based on Masayuki Kusumi's essay and manga of the same name. Its gentle tone and slow pacing is as unfamiliar as many of cultural issues that are tackled in each episode. And yet, when I recently stumbled across the Netflix series, I binged the entire season in one sitting.

The series tells the story of Takeshi Kasumi (played by Naoto Takenaka), a recently retired "salary man," who finds himself restless now that his corporate life has come to a close. Each episode features Takeshi exploring newly discovered food haunts or revisiting menus and locations that remind him of his younger self. The vignettes are pretty simply set-up. For instance, Takeshi decides to take up walking as a hobby. But soon he's hungry and all of the popular Ramen places are crowded. In another episode, a search for a book leads Kasumi to an unfamiliar area of town where he searches for an old-style cafe where he can sip coffee and read.

In each episode, Takeshi is faced with some small personal crisis that I suspect resonates much more with Japanese salary men than it does with an American audience. He's faced with a decision of whether or not he should complain about poor service or whether he should ask some loud customers in the booth next to his to lower their voices. As he considers his options, he imagines himself as a "Samurai Gourmet," a wandering samurai who answers to no master but himself. Takeshi takes pleasure from imagining how a stronger, more confident version of himself would handle the situation.

Part of the reason why I enjoyed Samurai Gourmet so much was that these imaginary scenes didn't result in Takeshi suddenly developing the ability to take control of the situation. In fact, in most episodes, while he dreams of a universe in which he would have the confidence of a samurai, he ends up shrugging and accepting the situation.

The term "everyman" is overused a great deal when discussing class and culture, but Takeshi Kasumi fits the image I have of that older Japanese everyman. He worked hard in the business world, has a wife who both supports and puts up with him and in the end, he isn't anything special. 

And to be honest, that description fits a lot of people. But despite the hidden fantasy component of Samurai Gourmet, what makes the show so easy to enjoy is the joy it finds in just the act of being alive and true to yourself.

Samurai Gourmet is currently available on Netflix.