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Calpis sherbet 15 sen
Ice cream 15 sen
Iced coffee 10 sen
Iced tea 10 sen
Calpis 10 sen 50
It needs to be pointed out that 15 sen was worth much less in 1925 than
thirty years earlier. The price of a sushi meal had risen by then to 20 sen
and that of noodles to 10–40 sen; 100 grams beef was sold for 21 sen, 1.8
litres of soy sauce for 86 sen, 1 kilogram of sugar for 49 sen and 10 kilograms
of rice for 3 yen 20 sen. 51 It needs to be kept in mind that the dining
halls of Mitsukoshi were relatively expensive, which implies that the same
food was available for less. For example, department store menus were
recreated at cheap dining halls managed by municipal governments. Certain
yōshoku items also began to be served by noodle shops, street stalls and
other native eating places. 52
The gastronomic stage of urban Japan began to transform during
the 1920s and ’30s; big corporations with grand capital, such as railways,
trading companies and department stores, increasingly replaced individual
entrepreneurs in the dining business. Before, most eating-out establishments
were run on a small scale, and were often owned by the cook himself.
Restaurants, cafeterias and teashops in department stores clearly represented
the mass catering of the future – advertising was handled in close
cooperation with the store ’s general marketing department and ingredients
were supplied directly by the stores’ own food departments, often
produced under the store ’s brand name. The shift towards an increased
The kitchen of the
Hankyū department
store in Osaka. It
served 30,000 customers
daily. From
Nihon hyakkaten
shokudō yōran (1937).
53