2025 Volume 75 Issue 4 Pages 447-465
This study aims to clarify the process of accepting nutritional science in home meal preparation in Japan before World War II.
Previous studies showed that nutritional science was closely linked to governmental authority and widely disseminated during the establishment of the modern state system in Japan.
However, the adaptation of nutritional science to ordinary households remains unclear. This study examines the process by which upper-middle-class women who aim to develop home-based cooking embrace nutritional science.
The findings are as follows: In the Taisho period, women praised Western cuisine as “Jiyoh” and resisted the “nutritional menu” proposed by Dr. Tadasu Saiki, which is contrary to the idea of “cuisine culture.” However, after the Great Kanto Earthquake, they became interested in the findings of nutritional science, in addition to disease, and began to develop nutritional meals based on these findings.
Initially, the nutritional meals were constrained to the sick under the intervention of a male- dominated “cuisine culture” ; however, these cooking techniques gradually garnered recognition. During the Showa period, men increasingly adopted cooking practices.
Furthermore, these cooking practices became rooted in home cooking, thus fostering a “home cooking culture” that emphasized both nutrition and taste.
This study demonstrates the specific process by which scientific knowledge is incorporated into human diets.
