

It is a known fact that Yukihira Soma is the son of one of the world's most
famous chefs, Yukihira Joichiro, but why is it that the students from Tōtsuki
Culinary Academy don't know about Soma?

It's even stranger that Nakiri, who is known as the God's Tongue for her
extreme tasting skills, admires Joichiro but fails to realize that Yukihira
Soma is the son of Yukihira Joichiro. She had seen Soma's application form, so
it must have given her a hint already. One of the few people (or maybe the
only one) who seems to know about this fact is the headmaster.

Why is that? Are they trying to hide the fact that Soma is the son of
Joichiro, probably for some unknown reason?


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2015-04-22T09:34:54.347
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shokugeki-no-soma
Why is Yukihira Soma not famous at Tōtsuki Culinary Academy?


I have not read the entire manga, but I read that Soma's father was formerly
known as **Saiba Jōichirō**. It is not the same last name as Yukihira Soma, so
this may be a reason why people don't know that they are father and son.

Source: [Jōichirō
Yukihira](http://shokugekinosoma.wikia.com/wiki/J%C5%8Dichir%C5%8D_Yukihira)
on Shokugeki no Souma wiki.


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A few possible reasons:

  1. Joichiro ran a small shop for years, and faded away from public eye, and especially the younger generation may no longer know about him. The older generation may not care, or they just want to know what is going to happen.
  2. People share names - they may just think it's a coincidence, especially as Soma is a bit troublesome
  3. It's fiction - not knowing the relation makes the manga much more interesting.
  4. As @YLombardi said, Joichiro previously used the last name "Saiba", which may confuse people. This would contribute to 1st option, as well.

We won't really know, unless the author clarifies, but I think it's the 3rd
option, with the author explaining it with one (or both) of the two.

BTW, the last name is Yukihira, not Soma.


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[OFF TOPIC]I think everything goes as headmaster Senzaemon plan. He uses Souma
to help Erina free from his father's curse. Erina confessed already, even
though she is well talented in cooking, that she never feels any slight of
happiness towards her cooking, however not until they become close friends
with Souma which was shown in the latest chapters. It seems like everything
she do is just to obey his father. Headmaster Senzaemon is just trying to let
Erina feel the true essence of cooking, and breaks the fear Erina has towards
his father, and he uses Souma for it. Although it was not directly implied by
the Author but it seems like Erina's father, Azami Nakiri knew it already when
Souma confess that Saibi Jouichirou is his dad. Honestly, I dont know whats
the big deal about this plan. But anyway Nakiri Erina later on knew as well
that Souma is Saiba's son.


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His father went to the school, but never graduated. It has never been clearly
stated why that's the case, though it's implied it's related to him meeting
Soma's mother; from this one might guess that "Yukihira" is his mother's last
name. The failure to graduate may have hampered his renown, and lessened
Tootsuki's desire to associate with him. Recall that the academy is set up as
very punishing and almost militaristic, regarding those who fail to graduate
as decidedly incapable of being a truly great chef. It runs counter to this
belief to give a failure any recognition, and may actively encourage the
institution to bury or at least ignore the connection.

Furthermore, Joichiro's professional career was characterized by constantly
changing locations, and eventually hiding himself away in a local diner.
That's not conducive to maintaining a strong presence in the culture; a few
elites will know him, but before they can pass on the stories he simply moves
away, leaving children no opportunity to learn except by happenstance (aka,
Erina).

His change of last name was probably only known to a few people closest to
him. Even Dojima took a long time to connect Soma to Jouichiro, mostly doing
so by chance. As for why that monk seemed to know him by the Yukihira last
name, and the timeline suggesting he also knew him before the name change,
there are a few possible explanations, with my personal preference listed
first:

  * The author hadn't thought of this problem ahead of time. It only occurred to them later that a cook with his skills and connections should be well-known. This was at odds with the intent for Soma to be a darkhorse commoner, as the story was very early characterized as "local nobody struggles against the elites to becomes a big somebody, proving that passion and hard work are the keys to success". Ergo once the problem became inescapable, the author pulled the ol' "name change" maneuver, and intentionally drew as little attention as possible to the possible discrepancies with the early story. This is a common writing technique for serialized media. Manga, comics, anime, TV series, cartoons, etc. all tend to employ it of necessity.
  * Essentially nobody knew that Yukihira Joichiro was the same person as Saiba Joichiro until just before the story started, when someone was able to find him and talk him into working for him around the world. Possibly this person was a long time confidant, and so did know these two people were the same, or maybe they just applied enough resources to find out what happened to Joichiro. Afterwards, now that he was back in the limelight he could now be recognized by former admirers, such as the monk, or word could otherwise slowly spread through patrons that connected the two together. Either way the monk can connect the two identities together, but the spread of information would have been too slow and localized to propagate all the way back to high school age students in Japan. Never mind the internet; we rarely even see academy students using smart phones or computers if they're not related to cooking something right then and there, and possibly with such elite and affluent customers even the internet is slow to pass the information along. Plus, as has been mentioned, lots of people have the last names Saiba and Yukihira, so there'd be little more than coincidence to connect Soma to Joichiro. It would actually be more unrealistic for people to assume a familial relation, even if they were aware of Joichiro's name change.

As a relevant sidenote, the headmaster of the academy (at the time the story
starts), is later revealed to have been plotting something benevolent and that
Jouichiro/Soma were integral to this plot. It was in the best interest of his
plot that Soma be a complete unknown to the students, so he would have
incentive to hide the Saiba/Yukihira connection.


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