Tradition, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation: The Craft of Japanese Fine Dining

This study explores how traditional craft produces novelty, which appears to be at odds with its emphasis on continuation. While prior research has explored how tradition is rediscovered and revived from the past, traditional craft can produce intrinsic novelty potentially through its own repetitive acts. This study examines a Japanese cuisine Kaiseki, which is traditional but simultaneously innovative. The analysis of a well-known chef's design processes reveals that the chef designs novel dishes by responding to what has been done before, making something better and differently and thereby going beyond the limit of the tradition; Kaiseki tradition is re-enacted through such practices. A process philosophy of Gills Deleuze is engaged to explain our concept of “tradition as capacity” as well as “tradition as object.”