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item on the menu. Since the summer of 1940 the authorities had prohibited
Tokyo restaurants from serving rice dishes. 7
The knowledge of how to make maximum use of the limited
resources – scientifically grounded practical advice on nutrition – was
propagated on a large scale by a variety of state institutions. State propaganda
had elevated the knowledge of eating healthily at a low cost to a level
of a patriotic virtue. The confidence in a scientific solution for wartime food
shortages remained strong until the very end – the inaugural meeting of the
Dietician’s Association of Great Japan was held on 21 May 1945. 8 The military
provided the example of an efficiency-driven approach towards food
preparation and consumption. The totalitarian character of the Japanese
state bolstered the effectiveness of the reforms. The political innocence of
food, on the other hand, ensured their longevity. Unlike ideological aspects
of wartime life, which were persistently erased by the occupying forces
after 1945, the knowledge and skills of healthy diet disseminated in wartime
were perpetuated undisturbed despite the fall of the regime.
The extensive involvement of the wartime Japanese state in the
consumption practices of its population exposes the intricate connections
between power, welfare and knowledge that developed in Japan during the
first decades of the twentieth century. 9 As Turner has pointedly observed,
scientific advances did not liberate the body from external control, but, on
the contrary, intensified the means of social regulation. 10 The application
and dissemination of nutritional science through a range of state institutions
constituted a technique for making Japanese civilians objects of knowledge
and power. It was not an oppressing and dominating power, but rather a
kind of a government ‘at a distance’. While the autonomy of individuals
was preserved, they were controlled through the establishment of rules and
by shared expert knowledge and conceptual frameworks. 11 Such ‘government
at a distance’ played a critical role in homogenizing Japanese cuisine.
The foundations for the modern science of nutrition were laid in the
first half of the nineteenth century: in 1803 gastric digestion was shown to
be a chemical process; in 1814 fats were demonstrated as being composed
of fatty acids and glycerol; and in 1827 food constituents were classified
into three categories – sugars, fats and proteins. 12 The new science developed
at first as part of organic chemistry and medicine, and was later
subsumed under the field of ‘hygiene ’, which was defined as anything
pertaining to the maintenance and strengthening of health as opposed to the
cure of diseases. Gradually, however, nutritional science developed as an
independent discipline and featured increasingly highly on political agendas.
The development of capitalist production and the introduction of general
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