METODOLOGÍA

Farmer-Entrepreneur Kanie Ichitaro¯

The transfer of cooking skills from the Westerners in the treaty ports to their Japanese employees went hand in hand with the development of an infrastructure of suppliers of the necessary ingredients. Along with the inspiration to emulate Western-style dining by the Japanese elite discussed in chapter One, this was the third important channel that facilitated the diffusion of Western food among wider sections of the Japanese popula-tion. The demand created by Westerners was, at the early stage, a critical stimulant for the production of hitherto unknown foodstuffs, as we have observed earlier with the example of beef. However, meat supply was not the only problem. In the early years, onions for use in the treaty ports were imported from Bombay and potatoes from America.^

The use of vegetables in Japanese kitchens during the Edo period was very diverse, depending on the region. Various types of radishes (daikon, kabu), tubers (gobo¯, satoimo), gourds (yu¯gao, to¯gan) and leeks were cultivated, and numerous kinds of wild greens, bamboo shoots and mushrooms were collected.^Sweet potatoes and squash were also available, but not the vegetables that were widely used in Western-style cooking, such as cabbage, carrots, onions, tomato, beetroot, celery, asparagus, cauliflower, string beans, green peas, parsley, etc. Some of them, like white potatoes, had been introduced during the Tokugawa period, but failed to spread on a wide scale.

These vegetables began to be grown in Japan soon after the establish-ment of the first Western communities in the s.^New varieties of the vegetables that had been known in Japan, such as carrots and eggplants, were also introduced during the Meiji period and gradually replaced or crossed with the Japanese varieties. The new food plants were all labelled seiyo¯ yasai(Western vegetables), including the Chinese cabbage that was carried to Japan by the Chinese servants and clerks who accompanied the

Three

Strengthening the Military

Westerners (see chapter Six). Initially, Western households and Western-style hotels set up vegetable gardens around their residences in order to meet their needs. However, as the number of Western households and restaurants serving Western-style food increased steadily over the decades and demand rose, growing Western vegetables was gradually taken over by Japanese peasants whose land was situated in the proximity of foreign settlements and larger towns. Lured by the lucrative new occupation of market gardeners, they abandoned grain-centred agriculture.^

Onions, cabbage, carrots, beetroots, celery and potatoes were in greatest demand – not surprisingly, when one considers their central role in European and American cuisines – and their production increased most rapidly. Between  and  alone, the share of onions in the entire vegetable production in Japan rose from . to . per cent.^Onions, cabbage, carrots and potatoes were easier to grow and more robust than, for example, lettuce, cauliflower and asparagus. These attributes deter-mined their lower price once the production in Japan began. For example, in  the price of Western onions equalled that of indigenous taros, and potatoes sold for almost half the price of squash, which had been popular since the Edo period.^The fact that vegetables such as lettuce, asparagus and cauliflower, were not widely used in Anglo-Saxon cookery



A vegetable stand, c. 1880s–1890s, from Souvenirs from Japan (1991).

further inhibited their diffusion. The spectacular growth in demand for onions, cabbage and potatoes coincided with the rising popularity of yo¯shoku. Once these vegetables became widely available and inexpensive, they began to be used in Japanese cooking as well and their consumption increased considerably. For example, the acreage occupied by the white potato crop expanded more than tenfold between  and .^

During the first twenty years of the Meiji period, the Japanese government was very actively involved in the popularization of Western vegetables. The Agricultural Experiment Stations set up throughout the country became responsible for cultivating seeds of new vegetables and developing new varieties of already known ones. They were to encourage agricultural innovation, distributed the seeds to the prospective producers and provided them with help in starting up businesses.^It was at such a station that Kanie Ichitaro¯ (–) learned how to grow Western vege-tables. Kanie was born into a peasant family settled near the city of Nagoya, approximately halfway between Tokyo and Kyoto. Like other peasant boys in late nineteenth-century Japan, he experienced the hardships of the farming existence, but his life was already affected by the early reforms of



Kanie Ichitaro¯

shortly before his departure to the front in 1904.

the Meiji government – he acquired three years of elementary education and at the age of  was drafted into the army.

Along with the policies of ‘civilization and enlightenment’, which aimed to bolster Japan’s image in the eyes of Westerners, the ambitions of the new government were conveyed by the slogan fukoku kyo¯hei (‘rich country, strong army’), with the ‘strong army’ component increasingly taking precedence. The chief objectives of the Meiji leadership were to establish modern armed forces of the strength equal to those of the Western powers and to put in place the infrastructure of a capitalist indus-trial economy comparable to the ones found in Europe and the United States. In order to support the two projects, the Japanese people had to be moulded into loyal subject-citizens, and this goal was to be achieved through mass compulsory education and universal conscription. In 

the legal basis for the system of elementary schooling for all children was created, and the following year the conscription law that obliged all males of  years of age and older (except those eligible for exemption) to give three years of active service was stipulated.^

A year before being conscripted, Ichitaro¯ got married and moved to the nearby village. He married well, into a family more prosperous than his own. Since his wife was an only child, following the established prac-tice Ichitaro¯ was adopted into her family, and after the death of her father was to become the head of the Kanie household. His father-in-law was an enterprising farmer who grew mulberry as a cash crop. In view of the growing export of silk, mulberry, which was used to feed silk worms, constituted an important supplementary income for many farmers in nine-teenth-century Japan.^

In  Ichitaro¯ was drafted to the th foot regiment of the rd Nagoya division of the Imperial Japanese Army, and his encounter with First Lieutenant Nishiyama during the third year of service inspired him to take up the market gardening of Western vegetables. Nishiyama tried to convince young farmers in his regiment that growing rice and barley was the thing of the past and that modern times called for an entrepreneurial spirit in the Japanese peasants. Propelled by the rising popularity of dining Western style, the demand for Western vegetables was constantly grow-ing, but their production was still limited.

Since the mulberry fields of the Kanie family had been troubled by diseases for a few years in a row, upon his return in  Ichitaro¯ managed to persuade his father-in-law to devote part of the mulberry land to grow-ing Western vegetables. Cabbage, lettuce, parsley, carrots and onions sold well during the following years, but tomatoes proved less saleable. With



the hope of increasing sales, Ichitaro¯ attempted to process the tomatoes into tomato purée. He was aided in this endeavour by cooks from Western-style restaurants in Nagoya, to whom he supplied his vegetables. In 

the first batch of tomato purée packed in empty beer bottles sold like hot cakes. In view of this success, mulberry fields were abandoned altogether, and growing and processing tomatoes was turned into the main activity of the Kanie family.^

The following year the Russo-Japanese War (–) broke out and Ichitaro¯, being a reservist of the Nagoya regiment, was drafted again. This bloody war, in which Japan suffered nearly a , casualties, proved lucky for Kanie. He not only managed to escape injury but was awarded with  yen for his brave conduct on the battlefield. The money was invested in the construction of a tomato-processing factory and the enter-prise began to thrive. In  Kanie started to develop two products that would become emblematic for his business – tomato ketchup and the so-called so¯su (deriving from the English word ‘sauce ’), a domestic product that replaced imported Worcestershire sauce used copiously on most items on the yo¯shokuya menu. In  the ketchup and so¯su constituted  per cent of sales of all of the Kanies’ produce, including rice and barley that the family still continued to grow.^

A glimpse into Kanie Ichitaro¯’s life provides a perfect starting point for the analysis of the role that the Japanese armed forces played in the construction of Japanese national cuisine. The conscription experience



The Kanie family manufacturing tomato purée, c. 1910

broadened the horizons of young farmers such as Kanie and confronted them with objects, practices, tastes and opinions that they would otherwise have had little opportunity to encounter. In the army peasants not only became accustomed to the exotic taste of beer, meat and yo¯shoku, but also turned into regular consumers of rice and soy sauce – the two basic ele-ments of the urban diet consumed in farm households only sporadically.

Furthermore, the demand for processed food created by army and navy orders was crucial to the survival of pioneering canneries and other food-processing enterprises in Japan, which in the future would provide the Japanese public with its daily supplies. Thus, in the long run, the ‘strong army’ policies of the Meiji government had a significant, homogenizing effect on the consumption practices of the Japanese population.

Food Processing and the Armed Forces

The very first Japanese canned product was manufactured in Nagasaki in

. Matsuda Masanori (–) succeeded in canning sardines in oil using the method he had learnt from the Frenchman Leon Dury. Matsuda was not the only pioneer who embarked on experimental food processing



Peasants working in a rice field, c. 1900s.

in Meiji Japan. Yanagisawa Sakichi and O¯ fuji Matsugoro¯, both returnees from a study trip in the United States, were the first to can peaches and tomatoes. Their canning tests were conducted at the Interior Ministry’s Laboratory for the Promotion of Agriculture in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The laboratory not only worked on the mastering of the canning process itself, but also put effort in replicating canning machinery that the Japanese bureaucrats had purchased in Europe and the United States.^

The first commercial canneries began to operate in Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands. In  a salmon cannery in Ishikari was set up and a year later another one in Bekkai, both under the supervision of Ulysses S. Treat, a prominent canner from Eastport, Maine.

Treat was included in the team of experts that Horace Capron (–) brought with him upon his appointment in  as the chief foreign advi-sor to the Kaitakushi, a governmental agency responsible for developing Japan’s northern frontier of Hokkaido. Russian demand for a delineation of the northern boundary between the two countries compelled the new government to embark quickly on the ‘civilizing mission’ of the island.

Although salmon prevailed, venison was also canned in Hokkaido, and since  the canneries began to function as training centres for prospec-tive canners. Apprentices from all over the country flocked to Hokkaido eager to become acquainted with the new technology.^

Two reasons lay behind governmental support for the canning industry. First of all, the widespread use of canned food in the United States convinced the Japanese policy makers that, along with telegraph, rail and other technological innovations, canning was an attribute of progress and modernity.^The second reason was related to the Japanese trade imbalance. Since the investment required for setting up a canning



Canned salmon produced by commercial canneries in Hokkaido, c. 1880s.

business was minimal and fresh aquatic and agricultural resources widely available, the authorities hoped that canned products would join rice, tea and silk as the Japanese export articles. It was not before the s, however, that Japanese cans were able to meet these expectations and compete with American and European products on the global market.^

Canned food did not succeed in becoming fashionable in Japan, unlike beef stew or yo¯shoku, because of its relatively high price. The Western community, top-end hotels and restaurants, and the Japanese elites who could meet the expense, preferred reliable imported brands to Japanese products of inferior quality.^Fortunately, the infant industry could rely on the principal patron of canning – war. Warfare and imperial-ism had from the very outset played a prominent role in the development of the canning industry in Europe and propelled the production and consumption of canned food in various times and locations.^Canning technology provided Western armies and navies with long-life and easy-to-transport food that could be securely eaten out of place and out of season.

It enabled expatriate Western communities in remote corners of the world to retain their distinctive food patterns and protected them from the poten-tial danger of contagion.^

Canned food appealed to the Japanese military authorities for the same reasons as their counterparts elsewhere – it made the armed forces less vulnerable and more independent of local food supplies. Experts in the West believed that standardized rations could improve military plan-ning and preparedness, and facilitate the expansion of Western economic power into non-Western areas.^In view of the Meiji rhetoric on meat eating, canned beef received particular attention in Japanese military circles – beef was considered critical for bolstering the disastrous physical condition of conscripts. Many drafted men were in fact excused from duty after the physical examination, simply because they could not fulfil the minimum height requirement of . centimetres; by the end of the nineteenth century such cases constituted . per cent of all conscripts (see overleaf ).^

For the sake of comparison, it should be mentioned that the average height of Dutch conscripts at the time was  centimetres, and this was comparable to young males in other parts of western Europe.^The critical eye of Major Henry Knollys of the British Royal Artillery, who inspected the Japanese army in the mid-s, did not fail to notice the poor consti-tution of Japanese soldiers:

As regards physique, they strike one as conspicuously



dwarfish – too small, in fact, for their weapons – and no won-der, inasmuch as their average height barely exceeds five feet.

Moreover, they appear deficient in what I may call muscular solidarity – probably owing to their youth – as though they might be broken up and bowled over with greater facility than is in accordance with the generally received ideas of military coherence.^

Canned beef and ship’s biscuits were introduced in the Japanese Imperial Army in  on the occasion of the Satsuma Rebellion – the first test for the new conscript army. Their introduction was motivated by con-venient portability as field rations. Moreover, beef was believed to have strengthening properties for the troops. By , along with soy sauce extract and fukujinzuke pickle (various vegetables thinly sliced and pickled in soy sauce and mirin), ship’s biscuits and canned beef constituted the chief four items in the field rations of the Imperial Japanese Army. The so-called Yamatoni (beef simmered in soy sauce with ginger and sugar) soon became the mainstay in military menus. For example, Yamatoni constituted

. per cent of all canned beef purchased for the troops during the Sino-Japanese War (–), the first modern war that Japan was to fight.

The army spent a total of ,, yen on canned food during that war, of which approximately two million went on canned beef. Imports from the United States accounted for merely one fourth of this amount; the rest was produced domestically – quite an achievement when one considers that both canning and beef were relatively new additions to the food production system in Japan.^

By the time of the Russo-Japanese War (–), which broke out ten years later, the total value of canned products contracted by the military

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Anthropometric measures for 20-year-old males based on Military Conscription Examination Data, 1900–1940.²⁵

/ %  (

 . . not available not available

– . . not available not available

– . . . .

– . . . .

– . . . .

had increased ninefold in comparison to the Sino-Japanese War. This time, following the successful incorporation of canned beef, the use of canned seafood increased remarkably.^ The share of imported cans became negligible and ship’s biscuits used as field rations were also by then pro-duced domestically.^

Mori Rintaro¯ (–), military surgeon and an influential re-former of military catering, warned of the dangers of Japanese armed forces becoming too dependent on Western products. Since he was already concerned at the way Europe exploited Japan as a market for manufac-tured goods, he argued strongly against any large importation of Western foodstuffs, something that ‘no Japanese patriot would ever desire ’.^

Dependence on Western imports had at first been inevitable, since the modern Japanese military was modelled on the Western example. Practi-cally every piece of equipment, from weapons to beds and uniforms, had to be imported, not to mention the expensive instructors who were hired to train Japanese units according to Western standards. The collaboration between the food-processing industry and the military proved beneficial for both parties. Military orders were crucial for the survival of the pio-neering Japanese enterprises at a time when the domestic civilian market had not yet emerged and the export opportunities remained limited. The armed forces, on the other hand, secured a reliable source of provisions for the troops, marking the first steps towards self-sufficient food supply, which would assume an increasingly important role during the s and ’s.

Fighting Beriberi

Setting up a modern military was considered a priority by the Meiji gov-ernment. The Military Affairs Ministry was set up in ; a decree order-ing all domains to adopt the French model for their land forces and the English model for their naval forces was issued in ; the formation of the Imperial Guards, the first military force directly under the control of the central government, took place in ; and the separate army and navy ministries were established in . The emergence of a modern national military is conventionally dated either from the formation of the Imperial Guards or from the Conscript Edict of .^

The birth of modern military catering goes back to , when it was proclaimed that the responsibility for feeding soldiers would from now on rest on the military itself. This decision revolutionized the existing status



quo, by discarding the prevailing practice of purchasing food for the troops from contracted cook shops, inns and pedlars. The introduction of a system of military catering marked a radical change that required the

quo, by discarding the prevailing practice of purchasing food for the troops from contracted cook shops, inns and pedlars. The introduction of a system of military catering marked a radical change that required the