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Front page of the
magazine Ryōri no
tomo, 1910s.
This experience of mass-mediated modernity was critical in shaping the
desires, tastes and consumption practices of future consumers. This holds
particularly true in reference to home cooking. Cookbooks and periodical
mass media targeted at middle-class Japanese housewives, and later at all
Japanese women, provided a steady stream of information and recipes that,
if not always used in the kitchen, engraved the new ideal of home cooking
in the minds of their readers. This was an interactive process, with women
themselves participating in it via correspondence columns, send-in recipes
contests and various events organized by the publishers. 30 Such discourse
shaped the national standard of the home meal, which would be put into
practice by future generations of housewives.
It is difficult to assess to what extent the recipes depicted in household
manuals, cookbooks and cookery columns reflect reality, and how
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