Originally Posted by
jib71
Have you asked someone if they are viewed as luxury goods? I’m interested to know how they’re perceived. I can imagine that they might have been considered luxurious in the pre-bubble years. These days I guess that they’re viewed as merely “practical” because of the long shelf life.
Some gifts and prizes are extremely mundane - maybe not for gift giving season, but certainly on other occasions. I recall receiving things like basic dish soap and laundry detergent. Quite surprising to me because I had never considered such things as potential gifts. But after some consideration I realised that they were quite good because I definitely used them.
If you've ever been on the basement floor of a major department store, you'll see gift sets of canned fruit, curry sauce, tomato sauce, etc., often with the New Otani Hotel or Hotel Okura brand (which are considered luxury brands in Japan) that are beautifully packaged for gift giving:
https://www1.newotani.co.jp/hrt/shop...cked/index.asp (New Otani Hotel brand)
??????? | ???????????????? (Hotel Okura brand)
Certainly, there is a difference in the perception of canned foods in Japan and the US. In the US, because canned foods are the favored packaging of food for welfare recipients, have a long shelf life for storage for a needy day (used by survivalists and others), are fairly inexpensive, and not a fresh form of food, I don't think many people would even consider giving ordinary canned food (corn, fruit, curry sauce, etc.) as gifts, let alone luxury gifts, to friends and others (more likely its a gift for those down on their luck). For example, I can't image a Waldorf-Astoria brand of canned corn. Perhaps during the 1930s depression in the US, they may have been welcome as gifts. Although I can believe they were considered a luxury good in early post-war Japan and for a while after, today, when Japanese housewives tend to go shopping almost daily to ensure they have fresh produce, I'm surprised that ordinary canned foods can still be packaged and sold as luxury items, but I think the luxury cache has worn-off some over the years. But, perhaps that helps explain the practice of putting "Hotel Bread," "Hotel Butter," "Hotel Curry," and "Hotel Pancakes" on packaging to give the food a classy cache when marketing to Japanese consumers and lets the maker charge a little more. Yes, I do realize that Japanese perceptions differ, I'm just saying that I'm surprised at how long this perception has persisted.