On July 20, 1971, the first McDonald's restaurant in Japan opened in the upscale Ginza district of Tokyo, marking the beginning of American fast food's penetration into the Asian market and the start of a global expansion that would eventually establish McDonald's in over 100 countries. The Ginza McDonald's was operated by Fujita & Company under a licensing agreement and was carefully adapted to Japanese tastes and aesthetics while maintaining the core McDonald's menu and service model. This opening represented a pivotal moment in food globalization, demonstrating that American fast food formats could be transplanted into radically different culinary cultures and sparking debates about cultural imperialism that would recur with each new market entry.

The arrival of McDonald's in Ginza inspired a body of Japanese poetry and literary criticism exploring the tensions between traditional food culture and American globalization, themes that appear in the work of poets like Shuntaro Tanikawa who wrote about postwar Japan's cultural hybridity. The globalization of fast food became a major theme in world poetry, with poets from Africa, Asia, and Latin America using the arrival of McDonald's and similar chains in their home cities as occasions to reflect on cultural change, neocolonialism, and the complex desires that draw people to foreign food traditions.