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smoothly than in the navy. Generally speaking, since the anti-beriberi
measures of 1890, the navy continued to assign a larger budget for food
than the army. 64 Furthermore, because army catering involved many
more mouths to feed, coordinating it was much more complex. For
example, the total number of navy personnel in the late 1930s remained
fewer than 200,000 men, while the total strength of the army exceeded a
million. 65
Except for canned beef and ship’s biscuits, which were used for field
rations, the army accounting records from the Sino-Japanese War could
pass for a shopping list of a pre-modern urban household. Along with rice,
they show foodstuffs such as soybeans, fish, eggs, tōfu, dried guard strips,
wheat gluten, miso, sweet potatoes, leeks, devil’s tongue jelly (konnnyaku),
burdock root, carrots, lotus root, sake, soy sauce and sugar. 66 These provisions
were more elaborate than, but not essentially different from, the
food secured for the Taiwan expedition twenty years earlier – the first time
that Japanese troops were dispatched abroad – which included devil’s
tongue, dried fish, pickled and dried vegetables and miso. 67 At the time of
the Russo-Japanese War, pork and Chinese cabbage dominated the menus
of the troops fighting in China, most probably because these ingredients
Menu served to the 2nd battalion of the 7th regiment of the
9th infantry division between 21 and 29 February 1905. 68
date dinner breakfast lunch
21 February 1905 pork, Chinese fukujinzuke pork, Chinese
cabbage, leeks pickles
cabbage
22 February 1905 egg, Chinese fukujinzuke salted yellowtail
cabbage pickles
23 February 1905 pork, Chinese fukujinzuke dried sardines
cabbage, leeks pickles
24 February 1905 beef, Chinese fukujinzuke salted Pacific
cabbage, potatoes pickles
saury
25 February 1905 salted yellowtail fukujinzuke egg, Chinese
pickles
cabbage, leeks
26 February 1905 pork, leeks, fukujinzuke salted yellowtail
Chinese cabbage pickles
27 February 1905 chicken, leeks, fukujinzuke pork, Chinese
Chinese cabbage pickles
cabbage
28 February 1905 canned beef fukujinzuke pickles canned beef
75