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Clearly undernourished peasants pounding New Year’s rice cakes. Woodblock print,
name of artist and date unknown.
when cooking millet, Deccan grass, or wheat, they mix in so
many greens, turnips, potato leaves, bean leaves, or other leaves
that one can hardly see the grain. 38
While keeping in mind the complexities of the issue of rice as the Japanese
staple, it seems reasonable to conclude that in nineteenth-century Japan,
except for certain areas particularly abundant in rice, peasants resorted to
staples other than rice, or sustained on rice extended with other grains.
In the westernmost part of Japan, people ate a higher proportion of wheat,
barley and sweet potatoes, while millet and Deccan grass were consumed
more often in mountainous areas. 39 Pure rice was reserved in peasant
households for special occasions, such as New Year. Despite the rising
standard of living during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
peasant diet still fell considerably below urban standards. Katemeshi, a dish
consisting of rice, millet and barley cooked with chopped radish, and hagate,
the same dish made of radish leaves instead of roots, remained a staple in
many rural households during the 1920s and ’30s. 40 For many drafted men,
having white rice at each meal day after day was a luxury that they had
never experienced before being conscripted.
Still, the rice-based daily meals, consumed either in urban or in rural
Japan, were very simple. Allowing for regional variation, a standard meal
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