Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:57:27.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Simple pleasures: food consumption in Japan and the global comparison of living standards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2013

Penelope Francks
Penelope Francks*
Affiliation:
School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK E-mail: p.g.francks@leeds.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Contrary both to Pomeranz's argument for the comparability of pre-industrial living standards across Eurasia and to the accumulating evidence of the extent of growth in the Japanese economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, quantitative historical comparisons of living standards consistently place Japan on a level with the least developed parts of Europe and imply that the living conditions of ordinary Japanese people only began to approach those of the industrialized West once imported modernization had been absorbed. This article uses concepts derived from comparative consumption history to go deeper into this issue, arguing that, from at least the late eighteenth century, Japanese living standards were changing in ways that paralleled equivalent developments in Europe. Through the consumption histories of a set of ‘transformative’ products – rice, tea, tobacco, and sugar – it seeks to demonstrate the potential for comparative qualitative analysis of living standards and to show that, in Japan as in Europe, the ‘transformation of desire’ paved the way for industrialization.

Keywords

comparative living standardsconsumption historyeveryday luxuriesJapanrice
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 95 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Pomeranz, Kenneth, The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000Google Scholar

Hayami, Akira, Saitō, Osamu, and Toby, Ronald, eds., Emergence of economic society in Japan, 1600–1859, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004Google Scholar

2 Tanimoto, Masayuki, ed., The role of tradition in Japan's industrialization, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Robert Allen, Jean-Pascal Bassino, Debin Ma, Christine Moll-Murata, and Jan Luiten van Zanden, ‘Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India’, Economic History Review, 64, S1, 2011, pp. 8–38Google Scholar

Bassino, Jean-Paul and Ma, Debin, ‘Japanese unskilled wages in international perspective, 1741–1913’, Research in Economic History, 23, 2005, pp. 229–248CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Broadberry, Stephen and Gupta, Bishnupriya, ‘The early modern great divergence: wages, prices and economic development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800’, Economic History Review, 59, 1, 2006, pp. 2–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Please note that authors writing in Japanese are cited in surname–forename order.

5 Osamu, Saitō, Hikaku keizai hatten ron (On comparative economic development), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2008Google Scholar

6 Pomeranz, Great divergence, pp. 116–127Google Scholar

7 Boldizzoni, Francesco, The poverty of Clio: resurrecting economic history, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 136Google Scholar

8 Jan de Vries, The industrious revolution: consumer behavior and the household economy, 1650 to the present, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008Google Scholar

Smith, Woodruff, Consumption and the making of respectability, 1600–1800, New York: Routledge, 2002Google Scholar

Berg, Maxine, Luxury and pleasure in eighteenth-century Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005Google Scholar

9 de Vries, Industrious revolution, pp. 31–37Google Scholar

10 McCants, Anne, ‘Exotic goods, popular consumption, and the standard of living: thinking about globalization in the early modern world’, Journal of World History, 18, 4, 2007, pp. 433–462CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Ikegami, Eiko, Bonds of civility: aesthetic networks and the political origins of Japanese culture, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 342Google Scholar

Kazuko, Koizumi, ‘Kurashi no dōgu (Tools of everyday life)’, in Iwanami Kōza, ed., Nihon tsūshi (Japanese history), vol. 13, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994, pp. 339–361Google Scholar

12 Jensen, Robert and Miller, Nolan, ‘A revealed preference approach to measuring hunger and undernutrition’, NBER Working Paper no. 16555, Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010Google Scholar

13 Broadberry and Gupta, ‘Early modern’, pp. 26–27Google Scholar

14 Kaoru Sugihara, ‘The East Asian path of development’ in Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita, and Mark Seldon, eds., The resurgence of East Asia, London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 78–123Google Scholar

15 Francks, Penelope, ‘Inconspicuous consumption: sake, beer, and the birth of the consumer in Japan’, Journal of Asian Studies, 68, 1, 2009, pp. 135–164CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Francks, Penelope, ‘Kimono fashion: the consumer and the growth of the textile industry in pre-war Japan’, in Penelope Francks and Janet Hunter, eds., The historical consumer: consumption and everyday life in Japan, 1850–2000, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 151–175CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Shammas, Carole, ‘The eighteenth-century English diet and economic change’, Explorations in Economic History, 21, 1984, pp. 264–265CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Allen et al., ‘Wages’, p. 21Google Scholar

17 Latham, A. J. H., ‘Rice is a luxury, not a necessity’, in Dennis Flynn, Lionel Frost, and A. J. H. Latham, eds., Pacific centuries: Pacific and Pacific Rim history since the sixteenth century, London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 110–124Google Scholar

18 Cheung, Sui-wai, ‘A desire to eat well: rice and the market in eighteenth-century China’, in Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black, and Dagmar Schaeffer, eds., Rice: a global history, Cambridge University Press, forthcomingGoogle Scholar

19 Minoru, Ōmameuda, Okome to shoku no kindaishi (Rice and the modern history of food), Tokyo: Furukawa Kōbunkan, 2007, pp. 2–3Google Scholar

Miyohei, Shinohara, Kojin shōhi shishutsu, chōki keizai tōkei (Personal consumption expenditure, long-term economic statistics), vol. 6, Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinposha, 1967Google Scholar

20 Kuroda, Yoshimi, ‘The present state of agriculture in Japan’, in Emery Castle and Kenzo Hemmi, eds., U.S.–Japanese agricultural trade relations, Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1982Google Scholar

21 Hiroshi, Kitō, ‘Edo jidai no beishoku (Rice consumption in the Edo period)’, in Haga Noboru and Ishikawa Hiroko, eds., Zenshū Nihon no shoku bunka vol 3: kome, mugi, zakkoku, mame (Japanese food culture series, vol. 3: rice, mugi, miscellaneous grains, beans), Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1998, pp. 52–53Google Scholar

22 Hayami, Akira and Kitō, Hiroshi, ‘Demography and living standards’, in Hayami, Saitō, and Toby, Emergence, pp. 235–240Google Scholar

23 Harada Nobuo Rekishi no naka no kome to nōka (Rice and rural households through history), Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1993, p. 263Google Scholar

24 Shimbo, Hiroshi and Hasegawa, Akira, ‘The dynamics of market economy and production’ in Hayami, Saitō, and Toby, Emergence, p. 163Google Scholar

25 Ishige, Naomichi, The history and culture of Japanese food, London: Kegan Paul, 2001, pp. 109–113Google Scholar

Minoru, Watanabe, Nihon shoku seikatsu shi (History of Japanese foodways), Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1964, p. 199Google Scholar

26 Junko, Takegaki, ‘Yonezawa no shokuseikatsu (Foodways in Yonezawa)’, in Haga Noboru and Ishikawa Hiroko, eds., Zenshū Nihon no shoku bunka, vol 10: nichijō no shoku (Japanese food culture series, vol. 10: everyday food), Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1997, p. 113Google Scholar

Hanley, Susan, Everyday things in premodern Japan: the hidden legacy of material culture, London: University of California Press, 1997, p. 79Google Scholar

27 Leupp, Gary, Servants, shophands, and laborers in the cities of Tokugawa Japan, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992Google Scholar

28 Ibid., p. 137.

29 Shinzō, Ogi, ‘Tōkyō shomin no shokuseikatsu (Foodways of Tokyo townspeople)’, in Haga Noboru and Ishikawa Hiroko, eds., Zenshū Nihon no shoku bunka vol 2: shoku seikatsu to tabemono shi (Japanese food culture series, vol. 2: the history of food and foodways), Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1999, pp. 244–253Google Scholar

30 Ishige, History, pp. 100–101Google Scholar

Koizumi, ‘Kurashi no dōgu’, pp. 343–345Google Scholar

Hanley, Susan and Yamamura, Kozo, Economic and demographic change in preindustrial Japan, 1600–1868, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 158–159Google Scholar

31 Berg, Luxury, pp. 71–72Google Scholar

32 Ikegami, Bonds, pp. 337–342Google Scholar

Kinski, Michael, ‘“How to eat the ten thousand things”: table manners in the Edo period’, in Eric Rath and Stephanie Assman, eds., Japanese foodways past and present, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010, pp. 42–67Google Scholar

33 Keizō, Mochida, Nihon no kome (Japanese rice), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1990, pp. 21–22Google Scholar

34 Chūbachi, Masayoshi and Taira, Koji, ‘Poverty in modern Japan: perceptions and realities’, in Hugh Patrick, ed., Japanese industrialization and its social consequences, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976Google Scholar

35 Yoshihiro, Ogino and Yoshito, Yamaguchi, ‘Kokunaishijō – seisaku suijun (The domestic market and living standards)’, in Ishii Kanji, Hara Akira, and Takeda Haruhito, eds., Nihon keizai shi 2: sangyō kakumei ki (Economic history of Japan 2: the industrial revolution period), Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2000, pp. 194–195Google Scholar

36 Shinohara, Kojin shōhi shishutsu, table 6.3.

37 Ogi, ‘Tōkyō shomin’, p. 227Google Scholar

38 Lewis, Michael, Rioters and citizens: mass protest in imperial Japan, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990Google Scholar

39 For survey evidence from the 1990s, see Food and Agriculture Policy Research Center, Structural changes in Japan's food system, Tokyo: Food and Agriculture Policy Research Center, 1997, pp. 19–20.

40 Macnaughtan, Helen, ‘Building up steam as consumers: women, rice cookers and the consumption of everyday household goods in Japan’, in Francks and Hunter, Historical consumer, pp. 79–106Google Scholar

41 Collins, E. J. T., ‘Why wheat?’, Journal of European Economic History, 22, 1993, pp. 7–38Google Scholar

Sarti, Raffaella, Europe at home: family and material culture, 1500–1800, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002, p. 171Google Scholar

42 Smith, Consumption, pp. 171–175Google Scholar

43 De Vries, Industrious revolution, pp. 151–152Google Scholar

44 McCants, Anne, ‘Poor consumers as global consumers: the diffusion of tea and coffee drinking in the eighteenth century’, Economic History Review 61, S1, 2008, pp. 172–200Google Scholar

45 Watanabe, Nihon shoku seikatsu, 126–127Google Scholar

46 Ikegami, Bonds, p. 125Google Scholar

47 Makoto, Takeuchi, Edo shumin no ishokujū (The clothing, food and housing of Edo townspeople), Tokyo: Gakken Kenkyūsha, 2003, p. 91Google Scholar

48 Macfarlane, Alan, The savage wars of peace, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997, pp. 136–137Google Scholar

49 Vaporis, Constantine, ‘To Edo and back: alternate attendance and Japanese culture in the early modern period’, Journal of Japanese Studies, 23, 1, 1997, p. 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Pratt, Edward, Japan's rural elite: the economic foundations of the gōnō, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999, pp. 158–169Google Scholar

51 Kazuo, Yamaguchi, Meiji zenki keizai no bunseki (An analysis of the early Meiji economy), Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppansha, 1963, p. 18Google Scholar

52 Ishige, History, pp. 118–122Google Scholar

53 Takegaki,‘Yonezawa’, p. 134Google Scholar

54 Yoshifumi, Sasama, Nihon shokuhin kōgyō shi (History of the Japanese food-processing industry), Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinposha, 1979, p. 23Google Scholar

55 Vaporis, Constantine, Tour of duty: samurai, military service in Edo, and the culture of early modern Japan, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008, pp. 210–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Saeko, Narimatsu, ‘Kinsei goki no nikki ni miru shōya kazoku no seikatsu (The lives of late Tokugawa merchant families as seen in diaries)’, in Hayami Akira, Saitō Osamu, and Sugiyama Shinya, eds., Tokugawa shakai kara no tenbō (The view from Tokugawa society), Tokyo: Dōbunkan, 1989, p. 178Google Scholar

57 Ohkawa, Kazushi and Shinohara, Miyohei, eds., Patterns of Japanese economic development, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979Google Scholar

58 Pomeranz, Great divergence, p. 117Google Scholar

59 De Vries, Industrious revolution, p. 160Google Scholar

60 Watanabe, Nihon shoku seikatsu, pp. 276–277Google Scholar

61 Calculated from Shinohara, Kojin shōhi shishutsu, table 73, deflated by the consumer price index and population data in Ohkawa and Shinohara, Patterns, tables A50 and A53.

62 Mitsuzono, Isamu, ‘Mail-order retailing in pre-war Japan: a pathway of consumption before the mass market’, in Francks and Hunter, Historical consumer, pp. 27–80Google Scholar

63 de Vries, Industrious revolution, pp. 157–158Google Scholar

Smith, Consumption, pp. 161–169Google Scholar

Price, Jacob, ‘Tobacco use and tobacco taxation’, in Jordan Goodman, Paul E. Lovejoy, and Andrew Sherratt, eds., Consuming habits: global and historical perspectives on how cultures define drugs, 2nd edn, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 158–177Google Scholar

64 Finnane, Antonia, ‘Yangzhou's “mondernity”: fashion and consumption in the early nineteenth century’, positions, 11, 2, 2003, pp. 405CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 Ryōichi, Miura and Toshio, Suzuki, Nihon tabako sangyō: hyakunen no ayumi (The Japanese tobacco industry: the story of a hundred years), Tokyo: San'aishoin, 2009, p. 8Google Scholar

66 Shively, Donald, ‘Sumptuary regulation and status in early Tokugawa Japan’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 25, 1964, p. 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 See examples in Tobacco and Salt Museum (catalogue), Tokyo: Tabako to Shio no Hakubutsukan, 2001, p. 29.

68 Miura and Suzuki, Nihon Tabako, pp. 9–10Google Scholar

69 Ibid., p. 10

70 Takeuchi, Edo shumin, pp. 88–89Google Scholar

71 Tobacco and Salt Museum, p. 46.

72 Calculated from Shinohara, Kojin shōhi shishutsu, table 76. Some tobacco was imported into Japan throughout the period before the Second World War, but the quantities were small compared with domestic production.

73 De Vries, Industrious revolution, p. 160Google Scholar

74 Shinohara, Kojin shōhi shishutsu, table 75. The association of smoking with the kiseru pipe was ridiculed by foreign cartoonists, who portrayed Japanese smokers smoking their cigarettes through kiseru-shaped holders (Tobacco and Salt Museum, p. 39).

75 Mintz, Sidney, Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history, London: Penguin, 1985Google Scholar

76 Mazumdar, Sucheta, Sugar and society in China: peasants, technology, and the world market, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 Pomeranz, Great divergence, 118–123Google Scholar

78 Watanabe, Nihon shoku seikatsu, p. 73Google Scholar

79 Roberts, Luke, Mercantilism in a Japanese domain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 189–193CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 Sasama, Nihon shokuhin, pp. 47–48Google Scholar

81 Ishige, History, pp. 84Google Scholar

82 Watanabe, Nihon shoku seikatsu, pp. 249–253Google Scholar

83 Takeuchi, Edo shumin, p. 64Google Scholar

84 Satoru, Nakanishi, ‘Bunmei kaika to minshū seikatsu (“Civilization and enlightenment” and people's lives)’, in Ishii Kanji, Hara Akira, and Takeda Haruhito, eds. Nihon keizai shi vol. 1: bakumatsu ishin ki (Economic history of Japan, vol. 1: the late Tokugawa and Restoration period), Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2000, pp. 241Google Scholar

85 Watanabe, Nihon shoku seikatsu, pp. 287Google Scholar

86 Kushner, Barak, ‘Sweetness and empire: sugar consumption in imperial Japan’, in Francks and Hunter, Historical consumer, pp. 127–150Google Scholar

87 Kanji, Ishii, ‘Kokunai shijō no keisei to hatten (The formation and development of the domestic market)’, in Yamaguchi Kazuo and Ishii Kanji, eds., Kindai Nihon no shōhin ryūtsū (Commercial trade in early modern Japan), Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1986, p. 36Google Scholar