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Consuming rice: food, ‘traditional’ products and the history of consumption in Japan

2007; Routledge; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09555800701330030

1469-932X

Penelope Francks,

Chinese history and philosophy

Abstract Abstract While historians of Europe and North America have been devoting increasing attention to the history of consumption, much less interest has been shown in the historical development of the now much-vaunted, contemporary Japanese consumer. In particular, there has been little analysis of the historical growth in the consumption of ‘traditional’, ‘indigenous’ goods, in contrast to the foreign-inspired goods seen as embodying Western modernity. This paper therefore presents the consumption history of rice, the archetypal ‘traditional’ good in Japan, within the framework of analysis now applied to the role of ‘ordinary’ consumer goods in the ‘consumer revolutions’ of the West, considering the changing ways in which rice was consumed as economic and social contexts developed through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In so doing, it argues that shifting patterns of rice consumption were determined, as were those of comparable food products elsewhere, as part of the process of social and economic change that preceded and accompanied industrialization and ‘modernization’. ‘Traditional’ goods thus played a part in the historical emergence of the consumer and Japanese consumption growth can be seen to have indigenous origins outside the orbit of imported Western-style modernity. Keywords: consumption historyJapanese consumerricetraditional fooddietary history Acknowledgement Many thanks to Japan Forum's two anonymous referees for a number of helpful suggestions and for seeing the point. Dr Penelope Francks is Honorary Lecturer in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Leeds and Research Associate at SOAS in London. Her most recent publication is Rural Economic Development in Japan (Routledge, 2006). She is now researching and writing a book on the economic history of consumers and consumption in Japan from the Tokugawa period to the late twentieth century. She can be contacted at p.g.francks@leeds.ac.uk. Notes 1. For the anthropological case, see Ohnuki-Tierney (1993) Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 1993. Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time, Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]; for an economic treatment of rice (and other ‘indigenous’ products) as necessities and Western-style products as ‘luxuries’, see Horioka (1993: 273–9). 2. Ohkawa and Rosovsky (1961) Ohkawa, Kazushi and Rosovsky, Henry. 1961. ‘The indigenous components in the modern Japanese economy’. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 9(3): 476–501. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] found that, even in the 1950s, over half of consumer expenditure was still devoted to ‘indigenous’ products which had existed in the Tokugawa period. Young (1999) Young, Louise. 1999. ‘Marketing the modern: department stores, consumer culture, and the new middle class in interwar Japan’. International Labour and Working-Class History, 55: 52–70. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] typifies existing work in English on Japanese consumption history in focusing on the department store and its role in introducing Western-style goods; Partner (1999) Partner, Simon. 1999. Assembled in Japan, University of California Press. [Google Scholar] is unusual in bringing the consumer into his study of the development of the electrical goods industry. For a rare comparative political-economy approach to consumption in post-war Japan, see a number of the papers in Garon and Maclachlan (2006). 3. See, e.g., Stearns (2001) Stearns, Peter. 2001. Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire, London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar] and Trentmann's (2004) critique of it. There is, however, growing evidence of the existence of pre-industrial elite consumers in China (see, e.g., Brook 1999 Brook, Timothy. 1999. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China, University of California Press. [Google Scholar]; Clunas 1991 Clunas, Craig. 1991. Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China, Cambridge: Polity Press. [Google Scholar]) and Kenneth Pomeranz (2000: ch. 3) has attempted estimates which demonstrate rising consumption levels for more ‘ordinary’ consumer goods, such as sugar and tea, in eighteenth-century China and, for comparative purposes, Japan. 4. The much-quoted ‘necessary analogue’ comes from McKendrick (1982: 9). 5. For the main critique of McKendrick, see Fine and Leopold (1990) Fine, Ben and Leopold, Ellen. 1990. ‘Consumerism and the industrial revolution’. Social History, 15(2): 165–73. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]. For a useful survey of the literature on consumption history, see Glennie (1995) Glennie, Paul. 1995. “‘Consumption within historical studies’”. In Acknowledging Consumption, Edited by: Miller, Daniel. 164–203. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar] 6. On the issues involved in defining stages of consumerism, see Stearns (1997) Stearns, Peter. 1997. ‘Stages of consumerism: recent work on the issues of periodization’. Journal of Modern History, 69(1): 102–17. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. 7. For the evidence of this in England, see, e.g., Weatherill (1996) Weatherill, Lorna. 1996. Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760, , 2nd edn, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], Shammas (1990) Shammas, Carole. 1990. The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar] or Overton et al. (2004) Overton, Mark, Whittle, Jane, Dean, Darron and Hann, Andrew. 2004. Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600–1750, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]. 8. One of the key arguments made by the controversial and popular historian Amino Yoshihiko in the 1980s was that rice-based agriculture and its associated diet did not necessarily represent the dominant cultural pattern during the pre-modern period. The belief that there might be a special relationship between rice and the Japanese emperor and people is, according to Amino, a relatively modern ‘fabrication’. See, e.g., Amino (1996) Amino, Yoshihiko. 1996. “‘Emperor, rice and commoners’”. In Multicultural Japan, Edited by: Denoon, Donald, Hudson, Mark, McCormack, Gavan and Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 235–44. Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]. 9. Through to the first half of the seventeenth century at least, there were also significant areas of cultivation of Indica rice varieties (known as ‘red rice’) which were more highly resistant to cold and unreliable water supplies than those of the Japonica type which was to become synonymous with rice in Japan. They were grown for home consumption alongside Japonica rice for tax payments (Harada 1993 Harada, Nobuo. 1993. Rekishi no naka no kome to niku, Heibonsha. [Google Scholar]: 256). 10. The question of just how much rice was eaten in the countryside in the Tokugawa period remains contested. Given what is known of increases in planted acreage and yields, relative to the rural and urban populations, it seems likely that by no means all the available rice crop can have been consumed in the cities and that therefore a significant amount must have been eaten in the countryside, although there were wide regional variations in the importance of rice in the diet (see, e.g., Kitō 1998 Kitō, Hiroshi. 1998. “‘Edo jidai no beishoku’”. In Zenshū Nihon no shoku bunka, Vol. 3: Kome, mugi, zakkoku, mame, Edited by: Noboru, Haga and Hiroko, Ishikawa. 47–58. Yūzankaku Shuppan. [Google Scholar]: 54). However, for present purposes, as later sections will argue, it is differences and changes in how rice was consumed, rather than in the quantities involved, that really matter. 11. For a description of such cooking and eating arrangements as still to be observed in the late Meiji period, see Nagatsuka Takashi's 1910 novel The Soil (1989: 3–4). 12. On markets, see Bestor (2004: ch. 3) and McClain (1999: 54–67). On restaurants and eating out, see Nishiyama (1997: 164–77), Watanabe (1964: 212–26) and Kanzaki (2000) Kanzaki, Noritake. 2000. “‘Ryōriya no sake · izakaya no sake’”. In Sake to Nihon bunmei, Edited by: Tadao, Umesao and Shūji, Yoshida. 145–60. Kōbundō. [Google Scholar]. That food items were associated with both status and fashion is indicated by their frequent appearance in sumptuary legislation and, for example, regulations banning the sale of particular desirable seasonal items before certain dates in the year (Shively 1964–5; Watanabe 1964: 243). 13. See, e.g., Watanabe (1964: 259) on diversification in the range of ceramic- and lacquer-ware and Ishige (2001: 90) on tea equipment. 14. See the Tokugawa-period illustrations in Kosuge (1991: 22–3) showing a samurai wife directing female servants in her kitchen and a male chef in the kitchen of a high-level samurai receiving orders from his master, against a background of teapots, sake flasks and rice tubs all beautifully arranged on shelves. 15. As Shammas (1990: 145–6) points out for early modern England, the retreat of the threat of famine and the growth in demand for market-supplied food and drink products did not necessarily mean an improvement in nutritional standards – where English consumers worsened their diets by deriving a rising proportion of their calories from sugar and white bread, Japanese ones did so as a result of being able to substitute white rice for whole grains and vegetables. 16. Nakano (1995) Nakano, Makiko. 1995. Makiko's Diary: A Merchant Wife in 1910 Kyoto, Edited by: Smith, Kazuko. Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar]. Makiko records lunch and dinner menus almost every day. For the incident with the store manager, see pp. 140–2. 17. Annual average per capita consumption of mugi (wheat, barley and naked barley) rose from 44.85 kg in 1878–82 to a peak of 68.25 kg in 1898–1902, remaining at about this level until it began to decline in the mid-1920s. Only then did the proportion of rice in overall grain consumption start to rise from the 70 per cent level it had maintained since the 1880s (Kayō 1958 Kayō, N. 1958. Nihon nōgyō kiso tōkei Nōrinsuisangyō Seisansei Kōjō Kaigi [Google Scholar]: tables K-a-1–4). 18. The survey data are presented in Umemura et al. (1983: tables 16, 17) and record ‘staple food consumption of common people’. 19. Urban rioters castigated farmers for ‘hoarding’ rice, even though many of them may well have been members of rural households until relatively recently. As Lewis remarks, ‘it did not take long for the newcomer to the city to shed all but a sentimental attachment to the countryside as he or she adjusted to the new realities of urban life’ (1990: 118). 20. Rioters claimed that a fisherman needed one shō of rice per day. This would represent 3.5 koku (325 kg) per year, well above what was taken as a normal annual requirement. As Lewis (1990: 43) points out, it is more likely a symbolic indication of what represented a decent standard of living. 21. Sand (2003: 33–9) stresses the significance of changing forms of family meal in defining ‘modern’ lifestyles in the early twentieth century, contrasting in his illustrations the extended ‘traditional’ rural family eating from individual trays set around a brazier (fig. 1.5d) with the recommended, more intimate, ‘family circle’ eating together at a single low table (fig. 1.4). The centrality of rice to the ‘modern’ dining arrangements pictured is reflected in the presence of the rice bucket, placed beside the housewife who serves from it herself. It took a truly trendy 1920s Tokyo couple (fig 1.5c) to be photographed making toast and taking tea from cups and saucers. 22. Suye Mura housewives were also aware that adding other grains to rice did make it healthier (Embree 1964 Embree, John. 1964. Suye Mura, , revd edn, University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]: 38). 23. See Sand (2003: fig 5.6), showing a 1919–20 poster contrasting a modern kitchen, equipped with gas stove, work surfaces and sink designed to be used standing up, with a dirt-floored, ‘traditional’ kitchen in which people work sitting on the ground. 24. Once abandoned as the real food of country people, country cooking was of course free to take on new meanings. According to Ashkenazi and Jacob (2000: 3), stews of soba, vegetables and tofu ‘embody the warmth, flavour, and comfort of the countryside and home cooking and serve as reminders of simpler, albeit harsher, times’. ‘Japanese country cooking’ has even made it to the United States as a healthy ‘alternative’ choice (see Homma 1991 Homma, Gaku. 1991. The Folk Art of Japanese Country Cooking: A Traditional Diet for Today's World, Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. [Google Scholar]), which includes recipes for rice/other grain mixes and for mimicking rice cooked on a kamado using a modern stove. 25. ‘The appeal to native culture was, in fact, the very sign of capitalist modernity and its modernist ideological program rather than resistance to it’ (Harootunian 2000 Harootunian, Harry. 2000. History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice and the Question of Everyday Life, Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]: 49). 26. See Maclachlan (2006: 250–1) on the long-standing campaign of Takeuchi Naokazu, founder of the Japan Consumers Union, for food to be treated as a ‘life resource’ (seimeiza) rather than a consumer good (shōhin). However, this in effect means eating more domestically produced ‘traditional’ foods – rice for breakfast, for instance – and resisting American attempts to ‘occupy the stomachs of the Japanese’.