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they affected the cooking practices of the people at whom they are targeted.
Anne Murcott, for example, argues that cookery books ‘conveniently
freeze something of the period at which they were produced’, but are not
a reflection of reality. 31 Stephen Mennell, however, points out that this
does not hold true for cookery columns in magazines, identifying a strong
connection between their content and the diet of the ‘real people’:
It is easier to feel more confident about the connection between
what appears in the cookery columns and what actually happened
in the domestic kitchen than was the case with the
cookery books . . . It appears to be broadly true that women’s
magazines, in cookery as in other supposedly feminine concerns
. . . sought to set high standards for their readers, leading
them but taking care not to run too far ahead of them – which
could have demoralised the housewife and been bad for the
magazines’ circulation. 32
It would be misleading to assume that the cookery columns of Japanese
women’s magazines published in the 1920s and ’30s reflected the reality of
home meals consumed by middle-class households at the time. 33 However,
there is a striking continuity between the recipes and menu suggestions
that appeared in the mass media at the time and the mainstream home
cooking repertoire that began to prevail throughout Japan since the 1960s.
This continuity clearly indicates that middle-class home cooking as projected
in the periodical mass media of the pre-war period served as a model
in the development of the post-war national standard.
Four themes dominated in cookery columns of Japanese women’s
magazines during the 1910s, ’20s and ’30s: hygiene/nourishment, economy,
convenience and novelty. 34 They reflected the four principles of the new
Japanese home cooking that these columns helped to construct. Ideal home
meals were to ensure the physical well-being of the family members – and,
therefore, follow the scientific principles of hygiene and nutrition – while
keeping family finances restrained. They were not supposed to be difficult
to prepare, but needed to attract the appetite of the family members, while
suiting their taste preferences.
Such ideal home cooking came to be known under the name katei
ryōri (‘home’ + ‘cooking’). The new term consciously used the neologism
katei, emphasizing a strong connection with the ideology of domesticity.
Along with home economics textbooks, the new genre was disseminated
through the cookery columns of women’s magazines. Periodicals devoted
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