Traditional Japanese cooking, called washoku, is built around rice served with miso soup, plus side dishes of fish, pickled vegetables and vegetables simmered in broth. Seafood is grilled, eaten raw as sashimi or sushi, or fried in a light batter as tempura. Japan absorbed much from China over the centuries, and in the modern era it adapted Western and Chinese dishes such as ramen, gyoza, curry and hamburgers to local tastes. Meat was largely avoided under Buddhist influence until the 1880s, after which dishes like tonkatsu and yakiniku became common. Tokyo has held the title of the city with the most three-Michelin-starred restaurants.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.