Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to a number of people for their assistance in this book project. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge three people for their intellectual inspiration and moral support. Dr. Natsuko Tsujimura introduced me to the topic of the language of food in 2015 and encouraged me to complete this project on a number of occasions with productive and kind words. Italian Linguist Dr. Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano and late Historian Dr. Gabriele Scardellato, colleagues at the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, encouraged me to participate in a stimulating conference they hosted at York University in 2017, “Italian Foodways Worldwide: A Conference on the Dispersal of Italian Cuisine(s),” and they inspired me to host a conference for linguistics in Japanese the following May.

This book features a collection of seven papers presented at the “Conference on the Language of Japanese Food,” held May 4–5, 2018, at York University, Canada, along with four additional contributions solicited to strengthen the book’s cognitive theme. The conference was partially funded by York University, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies Research (Dean’s Office), Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, York Centre for Asian Research, and Japan Foundation. I am extremely grateful for their support. My appreciation is also extended to the conference participants, especially the three keynote speakers, Dr. Masako Hiraga, Dr. Polly Szatrowski, and Dr. Natsuko Tsujimura, and conference co-organizer Dr. Mitsuaki Shimojo for their engaging discussions and insightful questions and comments, from which some of the contributors greatly benefited.

The book could not have been realized in its current format without the external and internal anonymous reviewers whose valuable insights and productive comments substantially improved the quality of the chapters. I also deeply appreciate the timely cooperation of all contributors to my numerous editorial requests and queries. I would like to thank Dr. Kimi Akita, Dr. Yoshihiko Ikegami and Dr. Kazuko Shinohara for their valuable guidance on logistics to compile the volume. I am also grateful to Dr. Elizabeth Thompson for her editorial assistance at different stages.

The global pandemic has posed an enormous challenge to all of us, but everyone involved in the project acted promptly and responsively to move things forward. Once again, I would like to extend my gratitude to the authors of the volume and the reviewers for their commitment to prioritize this project.

Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Ms. Esther Roth from John Benjamins for her timely and helpful support and to Dr. Ninke Stukker and Dr. Kris Heylen, the series editors of Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, for their productive and insightful comments on the project at different stages, and to Dr. Stukker for her tactful guidance when I was finalizing the manuscript.