{"id":66191,"date":"2026-05-09T17:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T22:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=66191"},"modified":"2026-05-09T17:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T22:12:11","slug":"cinema-du-daikon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=66191","title":{"rendered":"Cinema du Daikon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[ed. note: Daikon is Japanese for “big root” (\u5927\u6839)]<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WLBOTT<\/strong> film critic Clementine DuCinema<\/strong> has long bemoaned the under-representation of the daikon in modern cinema.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A couple recent WLBOTT<\/strong> staff meetings….<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We asked Elder G<\/strong> to fact-check Clementine’s<\/strong> concern:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Clementine\u2019s complaint appears to be well-founded. I can find daikon as food, daikon as culinary subject, and daikon as title-word curiosity<\/strong>, but I do not<\/strong> know of a widely known feature film where a daikon plays a truly significant plot role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closest oddball candidates are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. <\/strong>Iron Chef<\/em> episode: \u201cDaikon Radish\u201d<\/strong>
Not a movie, but at least daikon gets the starring ingredient treatment. That may qualify for Clementine\u2019s \u201cspecial citation for tuberous visibility.\u201d (IMDb<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. <\/strong>Daikon Summer<\/em>
This appears to be a 2025 MIT thesis\/project described as a coming-of-age romance\/drama\/comedy, but from the available snippet I can\u2019t confirm that the daikon itself drives the plot. It may be symbolic, seasonal, culinary, or merely title-adjacent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. A possible Japanese \u201cdaikon weapon\u201d scene<\/strong>
I found a Reddit-described mystery clip involving a man attacking someone with a daikon radish, but that is not reliable enough to count as cinema canon. It does, however, deserve Clementine\u2019s raised eyebrow and a footnote in The Journal of Root-Vegetable Violence<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Clementine is right: modern cinema has failed the daikon<\/strong>. Carrots get comedy. Potatoes get pathos. Turnips get folklore. But the daikon, long, pale, dignified, and quietly crunchy, remains standing outside the studio gates with its little SAG-AFTRA card.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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So I have a bit of a surprise for Clementine<\/strong>. Today, while engaging in my 0.2km walk at the YMCA, I watched the last episode of the second season of “Beef” on Netflix. The heroes are crouched behind a vegetable street vendor in Korea. They are being chased by some really bad dudes, when one of the good guys picks up a large daikon and hurls it past the bad guys, momentarily distracting them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elder G<\/strong> calls this “a daikon with narrative agency<\/strong>.” S\/he further opines…\u201cThough denied dialogue, the daikon performs with admirable restraint. Its arc through the air is brief, but spiritually elongated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Bygone Golden Era<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Clementine does have a point. In the golden era of Hollywood, daikon had plenty of screen time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bogart Hits<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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[ed. note: Daikon is Japanese for “big root” (\u5927\u6839)] WLBOTT film critic Clementine DuCinema has long bemoaned the under-representation of the daikon in modern cinema. A couple recent WLBOTT staff meetings…. We asked Elder G to fact-check Clementine’s concern: Clementine\u2019s complaint appears to be well-founded. I can find daikon as food, daikon as culinary subject, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clementine-ducinema","category-movies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66191"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66201,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66191\/revisions\/66201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}