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usiness was minimal and fresh aquatic and agricultural resources widely
available, the authorities hoped that canned products would join rice, tea
and silk as the Japanese export articles. It was not before the 1910s,
however, that Japanese cans were able to meet these expectations and
compete with American and European products on the global market. 16
Canned food did not succeed in becoming fashionable in Japan,
unlike beef stew or yōshoku, because of its relatively high price. The
Western community, top-end hotels and restaurants, and the Japanese
elites who could meet the expense, preferred reliable imported brands to
Japanese products of inferior quality. 17 Fortunately, the infant industry
could rely on the principal patron of canning – war. Warfare and imperialism
had from the very outset played a prominent role in the development
of the canning industry in Europe and propelled the production and
consumption of canned food in various times and locations. 18 Canning
technology provided Western armies and navies with long-life and easyto-transport
food that could be securely eaten out of place and out of season.
It enabled expatriate Western communities in remote corners of the world
to retain their distinctive food patterns and protected them from the potential
danger of contagion. 19
Canned food appealed to the Japanese military authorities for the
same reasons as their counterparts elsewhere – it made the armed forces
less vulnerable and more independent of local food supplies. Experts in
the West believed that standardized rations could improve military planning
and preparedness, and facilitate the expansion of Western economic
power into non-Western areas. 20 In view of the Meiji rhetoric on meat
eating, canned beef received particular attention in Japanese military
circles – beef was considered critical for bolstering the disastrous physical
condition of conscripts. Many drafted men were in fact excused from
duty after the physical examination, simply because they could not fulfil
the minimum height requirement of 151.5 centimetres; by the end of the
nineteenth century such cases constituted 16.7 per cent of all conscripts
(see overleaf ). 21
For the sake of comparison, it should be mentioned that the average
height of Dutch conscripts at the time was 165 centimetres, and this was
comparable to young males in other parts of western Europe. 22 The critical
eye of Major Henry Knollys of the British Royal Artillery, who inspected
the Japanese army in the mid-1880s, did not fail to notice the poor constitution
of Japanese soldiers:
As regards physique, they strike one as conspicuously
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