When Japanese people hear “Morocco,” many probably picture scenery before anything else.
Camels crossing the desert, narrow lanes winding through old cities, colorful markets, and streets painted in shades of blue.
Photos of Chefchaouen are fairly familiar in Japan. Some people may recognize the famous blue streets immediately without being able to remember the name “Chefchaouen.”
In that sense, Morocco is a country whose visual image often reaches Japan before its geography or history does.
“Casablanca” is another familiar name.
Many Japanese people know it from the film Casablanca, even if they could not say much about the city itself.
Food provides another point of contact.
The distinctive conical tagine pot is also familiar to many people in Japan, and the pots themselves are sold as cookware. Someone may never have eaten at a Moroccan restaurant and still have seen a tagine pot in a shop or magazine.
Couscous is also known in Japan as a North African food, although of course it is not unique to Morocco.
But there is a much more surprising connection between Morocco and the Japanese diet.
Octopus.
Japan has imported octopus from Morocco for many years.
Octopus is an extremely familiar ingredient in Japan. It appears in sushi and sashimi, vinegared dishes, and, most famously, takoyaki.
So some of the octopus eaten in everyday Japanese meals has traveled all the way from Morocco.
That suddenly makes a country associated with deserts and blue streets feel much closer.
Morocco and takoyaki do not seem like an obvious pair.
Yet they really are connected.
Sport has given Japanese people another way to encounter Morocco.
In football, the 2022 World Cup was a major moment.
Morocco defeated Spain and Portugal and became the first African team ever to reach a World Cup semifinal. The run received considerable attention in Japan and left a strong impression even on people who had not previously followed Moroccan football.
Football fans may also know Achraf Hakimi.
For Japanese combat-sports fans, another Moroccan name is difficult to forget: Badr Hari.
Born in Amsterdam to Moroccan parents, Hari has represented Morocco throughout his career. He also fought many times in Japan through K-1, where his aggressive style and presence made him a very well-known foreign kickboxer among Japanese K-1 fans.
For some Japanese combat-sports followers, Badr Hari may have been one of the first people who made them pay attention to Morocco at all.
The interesting thing is that these points of contact come from completely different directions.
Someone may know Morocco from photographs of deserts and blue streets, recognize a tagine pot from a shop, remember the national team from the World Cup, or know Badr Hari from K-1.
And without realizing it, that same person may already have eaten Moroccan octopus in Japan.
When those separate pieces are put together, Morocco begins to look a little different.
For Japanese people, Morocco can seem very distant at first, yet the more familiar things they trace back to their origins, the more often they find unexpected connections with Japan.
References
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Kingdom of Morocco” and Japan–Morocco relations
- Moroccan National Tourism Office, materials on Chefchaouen
- Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, materials on Moroccan fisheries and seafood trade
- FIFA, Morocco at the 2022 FIFA World Cup
- GLORY Kickboxing, “Badr Hari” official profile
