A bento is a single-portion take-out or home-packed meal of Japanese origin, often for lunch, typically including rice and packaged in a box with a lid (often a segmented box with different parts of the meal placed in different sections). Outside Japan, similar meals are common in other East and Southeast Asian culinary styles, especially within Chinese, Korean, Singaporean, Taiwanese cuisines and more, as rice is a common staple food in the region. The term bento is derived from the Chinese term biandang, which means “convenient” or “convenience”.
A traditional bento typically includes rice or noodles with fish or some other meat, often with pickled and cooked vegetables in a box. Containers range from mass-produceddisposable containers to hand-crafted lacquerware. Dividers are often used to separate ingredients or dishes, especially those with strong flavors, to avoid them affecting the taste of the rest of the meal. A typical divider is green plastic ‘sushi grass’, known as baran in Japan, which also works to slow the growth of bacteria.
Bento are readily available in many places throughout Japan, including convenience stores, bento shops, railway stations, and department stores. However, Japanese homemakers often spend time and energy on carefully prepared bento for their spouses, children, or themselves. Outside Japan, the term bento box may be used (e.g., on English menus for Japanese restaurants). Bento can be elaborately arranged in styles called kyaraben (“character bento”, typically decorated to look like popular characters from anime, manga, or video games) or oekakiben (“picture bento”, decorated to look like people, animals, buildings and monuments, or items such as flowers and plants). Contests are often held where bento arrangers compete for the most aesthetically attractive arrangements.
There are comparable forms of boxed lunches in other Asian countries such as in China, Taiwan and other Sinophone communities, known as héfàn or biàndāng in Mandarin, piān-tong in Taiwanese Hokkien, and in Korea as dosirak. Other Asian countries would either just use bento as a loanword or hokben, which means “steaming bento”. There has also been discussion regarding what bento means for Japanese society and what it represents. Analyses range from a simple semiotic approach to one that outlines the deeper ideological meanings behind bento.
