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usually consisted of a bowl of rice with pickled vegetables, supplemented
by miso soup for breakfast and a fish or, more often, a vegetable or a tōfu
dish for lunch and dinner; in the Kyoto–Osaka area the soup was served for
lunch. Simmering ingredients in stock, with the addition of soy sauce and
sometimes sugar or sweet rice wine (mirin) – the so-called nimono – was
the most common cooking technique. Grilled fish was not an ordinary
dish; it was customarily served for lunch on the first and the fifteenth day
of the month. 41 On a daily basis, even high-ranking samurai followed this
austere meal pattern. 42 However, the principle did not apply to meals
taken by affluent classes outside the home, or at celebratory occasions.
Restaurant menus and festive banquets were distinguished by their great
number of dishes, which often required very complex preparation and
were meticulously decorated. As elsewhere, a strong contrast between the
austerity of home meals and the opulence of professional cookery was pronounced
in pre-modern Japan. 43
The rice-centred meal pattern of the urban population and the
samurai class became increasingly unhealthy as rice-polishing technology
improved and the preference for white, highly polished rice developed.
Before the eighteenth century people who could afford rice ate it partially
polished, retaining part of the bran, which is a rich source of vitamin b1
(thiamine). A diet centred on white rice, with a limited supply of vitamins
from side dishes, will eventually lead to beriberi, while a comparable diet
centred on brown rice, barley or other grains will not. The disease may
affect the muscles, nerves and digestive system, and may even cause heart
failure. It was not until the early twentieth century, however, that thiamine
deficiency became known as a cause of these symptoms. Beriberi had been
known in the Tokugawa period as ‘Edo affliction’, because it occurred
mainly in big cities such as Edo, where by the eighteenth century white,
polished rice had become a conventional staple, as opposed to the brown,
partly unpolished rice and other grains prevailing in the countryside. 44
People who became ill while working as servants in Edo are reported to
have improved soon after returning to the country. 45
A reliance on white rice proved to have catastrophic results for the
health of the troops in the modern Japanese military. Thousands of soldiers
and sailors suffered from beriberi before the cause of the disease was
found and the dispute over what constituted the most efficient remedy
against it finally ended. In 1883 the conditions in the navy were so alarming
– 120 out of every 1,000 sailors suffered from beriberi – that the
Beriberi Research Committee was established in order to fight the disease.
46 One of the individuals involved in the work of the committee was
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