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The outcome of future wars will not be determined by the
strongest army, but by the strongest populace. A strong populace
is one which has physical strength and spiritual health, one
which is richly imbued with loyalty and patriotism, and one
which respects cooperation, rules, and discipline. The populace
which has this kind of education will not merely have a
strong army, but will also be successful in conducting agricultural,
manufacturing, commercial, and other industrial efforts.
The reservists must achieve the reality of becoming good
soldiers and good citizens and exert their influence (for these
goals) in their home community. 2
The preparations for total war began in the late 1920s. It was only in 1938,
however, with the ratification of the National General Mobilization Law,
that the state was provided with an unprecedented controlling power over
people and resources. 3 These totalitarian circumstances facilitated successful
implementation of far-reaching reforms that aimed at cost-effective
production of food and efficient distribution. For example, industrial food
processing received strong backing from the government and small retail
foodstuff dealers were replaced with dealers’ co-operatives and ultimately
by state-controlled distribution stations. 4 Such measures went hand in hand
with wide-ranging efforts to disseminate scientifically grounded principles
of efficient nourishment among the population. In line with the doctrine of
‘total war’, nutritional knowledge was rapidly transformed from a scientific
domain of specialists into a practical advice for the people. A variety of state
institutions singled out diet as an important home-front weapon essential for
preserving order and productivity.
These actions stand in contrast with the image of wartime Japanese
society sketched by the American anthropologist Ruth Benedict. In her bestseller
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, published in 1946 and commissioned
by the us Office of War Information, Benedict portrayed Japanese
as irrational people who ‘do not recognize the one-to-one correspondence
which Americans postulate between body nourishment and body strength’. 5
Equally misleading is the patriotic symbolism of the ‘Rising Sun
Lunch Box’ (Hinomaru bentō), consisting of plain boiled rice and plum
pickle (umeboshi) placed in the centre of a rectangular lunch box, which
together resembled the Japanese flag. This meal of questionable nourishing
quality is totally unrepresentative of the general approach to nutrition
in wartime Japan. The origin of the Hinomaru bentō is attributed to an
initiative of 1937 in a girls’ school in the Hiroshima prefecture, where this
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