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Meat and Modernity Changing Perceptions of Beef PDF
Meat and Modernity Changing Perceptions of Beef PDF
Philippa Mowat *
Throughout the past four hundred years of Japans modern history, beef
has come to symbolise and embody key political and social trends. This
essay will investigate how beef has been employed as a symbol at
important stages in Japans modern history. Starting with the Edo
period, this essay will explore representations of beef under the
Tokugawa Shogunate; the equation of beef with modernity and a
changing political order immediately after the Meiji Restoration of 1868;
the political role of beef during different stages of the interwar period;
and finally the ambiguous status of beef during the contemporary
political era. In doing so, this paper will demonstrate that beef
consumption patterns, and perceptions of beef in relation to the
individual and the state, mirror major political turning points in
Japanese politics.
*
Philippa Mowat is in her third year of a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Asia Pacific Studies
degree at the Australian National University. She is a current resident of Bruce Hall.
1
Carol Gluck, The Past in the Present in Andrew Gordon (ed) Postwar Japan as History
(1993) 64, 74-87.
2
Katarzyna J Cwiertka, Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity (2006) 24.
3
See Ibid; M. William Steele, Alternative Narratives in Modern Japanese History (2003) 125.
4
See Hans Martin Kramer, Not Befitting Our Divine Country: Eating Meat in Japanese
Discourses of Self and Other from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (2008) 16 (1)
Food and Foodways 33, 36; Cwiertka, above n 2, 26. Interestingly, anthropologist Marvin
Harris found that the religious taboo against eating beef in India was also made because it
was considered more economical in the long-term to use cows as draught animals as
opposed to using them as food.
42 Cross-sections | Volume V 2009
important to note that whatever the initial reasons were for the
prohibition of meat-eating in AD675, the aversion to meat-eating during
the Edo period was primarily influenced by the Buddhist notion of
transmigration and compassion for living things, coupled with the
Shinto idea of kegare, or impurity.5
5
Kramer, above n 4, 36.
6
Fukuzo Nagasaki, Nikushoku Bunka to Gyoshoku Bunka (1994) 41. Nagasaki argues that
without the interaction between Buddhism and Shintoism, there may not have been a
meat taboo in Japan, as China and Korea, both Buddhist nations, prominently feature
meat in their national cuisines.
7
Akio Okada, Bunmei Kaika to Shokumotsu in Noboru Haga and Hiroko Ishikawa (eds),
Ibunka to no Sesshoku to Juyo (1997) 39, 39.
8
Ibid.
9
Zenjiro Watanabe, The Meat-Eating Culture of Japan at the Beginning of Westernization
(2004) 9 (1) Food Culture 2, 5.
10
Both of these terms are considered highly derogatory, and are used in this paper purely
because there is no alternative terminology.
11
John D. Donogue, An Eta Community in Japan: the Social Persistence of Outcaste
Groups (1957) 59 (6) American Anthropologist 1000, 1000-1001.
Meat and Modernity | Philippa Mowat 43
stigmatised, and the very bottom of the social ladder.12 The Eta were
scorned not only for the fact that they dealt with corpses and animal
carcasses, but especially for the fact that they ate beef and other meats in
public. Despite religious taboos and political bans on meat-eating,
many Japanese during the Edo period engaged in meat-eating in some
shape or form, just not visibly. While the Eta were facing persecution
because of their day-to-day dealings with meat, people of higher social
standings were privately indulging in the consumption of meat.
It was not until the Meiji Restoration, however, that the consumption of
meat in general, and beef specifically, was officially sanctioned by the
new Japanese government. The haibutsu kishaku17 movement of 1868, a
product of the changing political order in which the Buddhist
Shogunate was overturned by the mostly secular supporters of the
Shinto imperial family, sought to remove Buddhist control of Japanese
politics. It was thought that removing the public taboo towards meat-
eating, which had been in effect since the first Buddhist crossings to
Japan, would revolutionise social attitudes and discourage the
governmental tendency to temporise.18 This movement was supported
12
Kramer, above n 4, 45. On the other end of the social spectrum was rice, which
symbolised the royal family, and, by extension, epitomised the Shinto ideal of purity.
13
Okada, above n 7, 37.
14
Ibid. This term sakura is still in use today.
15
Watanabe, above n 9, 5.
16
See Ibid 5-6; Naomichi Ishige, The History and Culture of Japanese Food (2001) 147.
17
.
18
Okada, above n 7, 40-41. The term temporise is a translation of the Japanese .
44 Cross-sections | Volume V 2009
19
.
20
Richard Jaffe, Meiji Religious Policy, Soto Zen, and the Clerical Marriage Problem
(1998) 25 (1-2) Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 45, 46.
21
See Cwiertka, above n 2, 29.
22
.
23
Ishige, above n 16, 148.
24
Hugh Cortazzi, Victorians in Japan: In and Around the Treaty Ports (1987) 257.
25
Ibid 259.
26
See Ishige, above n 16, 142 and Clara Whitney, Claras Diary: an American Girl in Meiji
Japan (1979) 12 and Kiyoko Iida, Kuidoraku ni Okeru Seiyo Ryori no Donyu in Noboru
Haga and Hiroko Ishikawa (eds) Ibunka to no Sesshoku to Juyo (1997) 143, 143.
27
Ishige, above n 16, 147.
Meat and Modernity | Philippa Mowat 45
Once the nutritional benefits of beef were made clear and the myths
surrounding the impurity of beef were debunked,30 it was only a matter
of developing new recipes before beef consumption truly spread among
the Japanese populace. The lack of beef in the Japanese diet was
thought to be the cause of a number of illnesses, including beriberi31 and
a sickness called Nihonby,32 and beef was emphasised as the key to
building a stronger, healthier Japanese nation. The existence of recipes
and customs that easily accommodated for the introduction of beef into
the diet, such as the practice of kusurigui, and nabe recipes,33 is seen as
the reason beef gained such popularity.34 The naturalisation of beef in
the Japanese diet was also helped by official government policy,
particularly the fukoku kyhei or rich nation, strong army doctrine. Beef
was added to the Japanese military menu in the 1870s in an effort to
create soldiers with bigger, stronger physiques.35 However, it was not
until after the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, when
nationalism was gaining momentum and the benefits of beef had been
28
Termed in Japanese texts as .
29
Translated by Donald Keene, Modern Japanese Literature: an Anthology (1960) 32.
30
Okada, above n 7, 42. Some medical explanations baselessly claimed that beef caused
swelling, boils on the head and face, and hair loss.
31
Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, Popularising a military diet in wartime and postwar Japan
(2002) 1 (1) Asian Anthropology 1, 9-10.
32
Ayu Majima, Nikushoku to iu Kindai: Meijiki Nihon ni okeru shokuniku gunji juyo to
nikushokukan no tokucho (2002) 11 Ajia Bunka Kenkyu 213, 214. Nihonbyo, or Japan
sickness is not recognised as a disease in contemporary medicine.
33
See Ishige, above n 16, 148. The recipe for sukiyaki, called Gyunabe during the Meiji
period, was one example of using Japanese tastes to naturalise foreign ingredients. Ishige
writes that sukiyaki was adapted from existing recipes for kusurigui, which originally
used boar and deer.
34
See Okada, above n 7, 35-36. Okada calls this phenomenon , or Japanisation.
35
Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, Western Nutritional Knowledge in Early 20th Century Japan
(1996) 21 (1) BNF Nutrition Bulletin 183, 187.
46 Cross-sections | Volume V 2009
36
Majima, above n 32, 213. This included the household adoption of dishes that were
invented for the military.
37
Mariko Inoue, Regendering Domestic Space: Modern Housing in Prewar Tokyo (2003)
58 (1) Monumentica Nipponica 79, 81-82.
38
.
39
Inoue, above n 37, 81.
40
Ishige, above n 16, 144.
41
Buchanana wrote in 1923 that very little meat finds its way to the farmhouse in Daniel
H. Buchanana, The Rural Economy of Japan (1923) 37 (4) The Quarterly Journal of
Economics 545, 562.
42
Jean-Pascal Bassino and Debin Ma, Japanese Unskilled Wages in International
Perspective, 1741-1913 (2005) 23 (1) Research in Economic History 1, 9. This figure is still
quite low by Western standards, but it reflected an overall rise in beef consumption from
previous decades.
43
Cwiertka, above n 31, 13.
Meat and Modernity | Philippa Mowat 47
It was this imperialist ethos and its consequences that caused drastically
different beef consumption patterns during the dark valley of Japanese
history. As noted before, during the early 1920s, beef consumption rates
had reached 4.1 kilograms per capita, but from 1934 to 1938, total meat
consumption (including beef, chicken and pork) had fallen to 2.2
kilograms per capita.49 The reasons for this have not been documented,
but it is reasonable to assume that beef production would have given
way to more pressing matters as Japan invested its resources in war
with China, and that most of what little beef was produced would have
gone to military supplies, such as Yamato-ni and the menu described
above. The decline in beef consumption during the 1930s is
nevertheless ironic, considering the fact that the government was
stepping up its promotion of state-based nutrition programs as it
became more militaristic. During the 1930s and early 1940s, it was more
important than ever for civilians and military personnel to be physically
strong and healthy, yet beef, the golden ingredient for Western military
strength, was remarkably absent from the Japanese civilian diet.50
44
Cwiertka, above n 31, 9.
45
Ibid 14.
46
Yamato is an archaic name for Japan that has predominantly been used in contemporary
times to invoke feelings of patriotism.
47
Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, A Note on the Making of Culinary Tradition: an Example of
Modern Japan (1998) 30 (1) Appetite 117, 125.
48
Cwiertka, above n 35, 187.
49
Ishige, above n 16, 153.
50
Of course, beef was not the only food item that was non-existent in the civilian diet
during the latter years of World War II, and malnutrition was more or less universal at the
time.
51
Ibid 145.
48 Cross-sections | Volume V 2009
52
Anke Scherer, Drawbacks to Controls on Food Distribution: Food Shortages, the Black
Market and Economic Crime in Erich Pauer (ed) Japans War Economy (1999) 106, 108.
53
Ibid 113.
54
John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II (1999) 98- 102.
55
John W. Longworth, Beef in Japan: politics, production, marketing and trade (1983) 2.
56
Ibid 6.
57
Ishige, above n 16, 233.
Meat and Modernity | Philippa Mowat 49
The association of beef with affluence and wealth has become more
nuanced since the 1980s. On the one hand, the importation of beef from
Australia, New Zealand and the United States indicates that the
demand for beef is so high that it cannot be met through domestic
production alone. On the other hand, imported beef is relatively cheap
compared to the generally much higher quality beef produced inside
Japan, including wagy. Kramer found that beef consumption in Japan
is equal to that of other developed countries, with beef accounting for
approximately 8% of total food expenditure.59 However, since beef
prices are inflated in Japan, this does not seem to be the most accurate
method for measuring consumption. Regardless, 8% of food
expenditure is a significant figure, and it reflects the position beef now
takes in the Japanese diet. A survey conducted by the NHK in 1981
found that of the 20 top favourite foods names by its 5,000 interviewees,
four dishes were beef-centred.60 Of those four dishes, one was Japanese
(sukiyaki), one was Korean (yakiniku), and two were of European
origin (steak and curry rice), reflecting the cosmopolitanisation of
Japanese food preferencesanother indicator of affluence. These and
other beef dishes have become special occasion foods, with their
consumption rates spiking during the cherry blossom season and over
the New Year period.61
58
Longworth, above n 55, 11-12.
59
Kramer, above n 4, 43.
60
Ishige, above n 16, 164.
61
Longworth, above n 55, 12.
62
Steven K. Vogel, When Interests are not Preferences: the Cautionary Tale of Japanese
Consumers (1999) 31 (2) Comparative Politics 187, 197.
63
Longworth, above n 55, 65.
64
Aurelia George, The Politics of Interest Representation in the Japanese Diet: the case of
agriculture (1991) 64 (4) Pacific Affairs 506, 511.
50 Cross-sections | Volume V 2009
Also significant was the fact that the National Federation of Agricultural
Cooperative Associations, known in Japan as Zen-noh, was not only the
foremost lobbyist for greater economic protectionism, but was also the
major importer of foreign beef. This confusing dichotomy became more
defined after the 1988 trade agreements that on paper allowed the
United States increased access to the Japanese market, particularly with
regards to beef and orange imports,66 but really only changed the rules
of the game, with Japan merely adjusting its quota system. Longworth
refers to this as the intransigence of Japan in regard to trade
liberalisation.67 Admittedly, this attitude does not just apply to beef, as
the rice industry is subject to even fiercer protectionism.68 Rice and beef
share another thing in common, as they both seem to embody the value
of Japanese-produced foodstuffs over foreign imports. Just as Japanese-
grown rice is thought to be better suited to Japanese tastes and cooking
methods,69 so too is Wagyu, Japans native beef. Wagyu represents the
holy grail of beef in Japan, its marbled fat and paper-thin cut fetching
much higher prices than imported beef. Wagyu is expensive to produce
but also brings in massive returns. The Wagyu industry holds a revered
place in the Japanese beef cattle industry, and so regulations are geared
towards promoting the consumption of Wagyu as much as possible.
65
Longworth, above n 55, 68. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry is now
known as the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
66
John Knight, Rural Revitalisation in Japan: spirit of the village and taste of the country
(1994) 34 (7) Asian Survey 634, 635.
67
Longworth, above n 55, 42.
68
Larry L. Burmeister, Dismantling Statist East Asian Agricultures? Global Pressures and
National Responses (2000) 28 (3) World Development 443, 445.
69
Jill E. Hobbs and William A. Kerr, Responding to Japans Deregulation of Beef
Imports: a Multifaceted Challenge for Canadian Export Managers (1991) 11 (1) Asia Pacific
journal of Management 47, 49.
Meat and Modernity | Philippa Mowat 51
70
H. K. Mori, K. Ishibashi, D. Clason and J. Dyck, Age-Free Income Elasticities of
Demand for Foods: New Evidence from Japan (2000) 40 Senshu Daigaku Shakaikagaku
Nenpo 17, 29.
71
Hyun J. Jin and Won W. Koo, The Effects of the BSE Outbreak in Japan on Consumers
Preferences (2003) 30 (2) European Review of Agricultural Economics 173, 178.
72
Wijers-Hasegawa, Japan Set to Lift U.S. Beef Ban (2006) The Japan Times Online
<http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20060621a1.html> at 27 May 2009.
73
Japan Times Online Editorial Staff, First U.S. Beef Since Botched Veal to Arrive Sunday
(2006) The Japan Times Online <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-
bin/nb20060805a5.html> at 5 August 2009
74
See M. Nagai, T. Hashimoto, H. Yanagawa, H. Yokoyama and M.Minowa ,
Relationship of diet to the incidence of esophageal and stomach cancer in Japan (1982) 3
(4) Nutrition and Cancer 257.
75
Longworth, above n 55, 6.
76
Kramer, above n 4, 33.
52 Cross-sections | Volume V 2009
77
Ian Reader, Review: identity, Nihonjinron, and academic (dis)honesty (2003) 58 (1)
Monumenta Nipponica 103, 114.
78
The ubiquity of McDonalds, for example, suggests that very few people actually
subscribe to such arguments.
Meat and Modernity | Philippa Mowat 53
References
1. Articles/Books/Reports:
Jaffe, R, Meiji religious policy, Soto Zen, and the clerical marriage
problem (1998) 25 (1-2) Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 45
Jin, H.J. and W.W. Koo, The effect of the BSE outbreak in Japan on
consumers preferences (2003) 30 (2) European Review of Agricultural
Economics 173
Vogel, S.K, When interests are not preferences: the cautionary tale of
Japanese consumers (1999) 31 (2) Comparative Politics 187
2. Other Sources:
Japan Times Online Editorial Staff, First U.S. beef since botched veal to
arrive Sunday (2006) The Japan Times Online
<http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20060805a5.html> at 27
May 2009
Wijers-Hasegawa, Y, Japan set to lift U.S. beef ban (2006) The Japan Times
Online <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20060621a1.html> at 27 May
2009