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Peasants working
in a rice field,
c. 1900s.
broadened the horizons of young farmers such as Kanie and confronted
them with objects, practices, tastes and opinions that they would otherwise
have had little opportunity to encounter. In the army peasants not only
became accustomed to the exotic taste of beer, meat and yōshoku, but also
turned into regular consumers of rice and soy sauce – the two basic elements
of the urban diet consumed in farm households only sporadically.
Furthermore, the demand for processed food created by army and navy
orders was crucial to the survival of pioneering canneries and other foodprocessing
enterprises in Japan, which in the future would provide the
Japanese public with its daily supplies. Thus, in the long run, the ‘strong
army’ policies of the Meiji government had a significant, homogenizing
effect on the consumption practices of the Japanese population.
Food Processing and the Armed Forces
The very first Japanese canned product was manufactured in Nagasaki in
1871. Matsuda Masanori (1832–1895) succeeded in canning sardines in oil
using the method he had learnt from the Frenchman Leon Dury. Matsuda
was not the only pioneer who embarked on experimental food processing
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