Abstract
This paper takes the new social historical approach that focuses on food in everyday life, in the involvement of the wartime Japanese state in the family and the nature of gender in this process, such as movements for the improvement of living and the organizing of women. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the construction of motherhood roles and norms related to children’s growth and health, as well as their food and nutrition. Specifically, this paper deals with the Improvement project for schoolchildren’s lunch boxes and the introduction of school lunches for all children by the Osaka Municipal Hygienic Laboratory in the 1930s.
This paper indicates how the role of mothers in making bento and preparing meals at home was emphasized in almost all stages of this movement and how the role and norms that mothers are responsible for giving birth to and raising children with good health conditions were reinforced. This paper also suggests that, in the first half of the 20th century, there was a strong link associated with child hygiene, between growth/health and food/nutrition, that the responsibility for this was placed on mothers, and that there was a widespread perception that the health condition of a child was determined by the degree of the mother’s love. Thus, this paper argues the origin of Aijō Bento-ron—a nutritious and elaborate bento is proof of a mother’s love for her child—can be traced back to the first half of the 20th century.
