(pictured left, a late Edo-period woodblock print of rice workers polishing rice, done by Hokusai)Although Japan has an ingrained tradition of rice consumption, the foodstuff is a firm but has not been an unchanging, immovable pillar of Japanese eating culture since it first became widely cultivated in the 8th century. Under this umbrella of significance, of course, the value of rice has fluctuated and changed according to geographic and historical spaces.
Historians generally correlate the beginnings of ancient Japanese culture to the introduction of rice from China, vis-a-vis the Korea peninsula, and claim that it marked the first break from the of nomadic hunter-gathering culture of the Jomon period. The exact time frame of the introduction has been argued vehemently among archaeologists, as have arguments concerning the degree to which rice became the staple. Some sources indicate that in the Heian period, rice was the staple for the aristocrats, while commoners lived off of barley.
Initially, like grain in feudal Europe, rice served not only as a foodstuff but as a market unit as well. Bolito, in an article deconstructing the samurai legend, points out that the earliest samurai in the warring states period seemed singularly obsessed with land. Land, food, and money were all wrapped up in each other. Peasants could pay fees to daimyo lords in rice. Rice markets have existed in Kyoto from as early as 1400 A.D. Osaka rice market carried on the business, expanded to the extent of being informal bank institutions, until the Meiji period.
In the Meiji period, rice began to be hulled and polished in a mechanized process making the grains a 'pure' white, at the expense of discarding certain crucial vitamins.
During World War 2, and for several years afterward, huge rice shortages resulted in a rebound of a high demand for rice, in excess of what had been normally consumed. Accordingly, rice became even more popular in daily meals than it had been before the war; yet as soon as the late 1960s, the increasing power of western meals and various side-dishes led to the decrease in consumption of rice. The decrease dropped to such an extent that an individual’s rice consumption in Edo approximately doubled the quantity consumed by urban Japanese today.
Clearly, the way that Japanese eat their rice has undergone some degree of change, in both quantity and quality of consumption, influenced at times by exogenous factors (things going on outside of the country).
So what does rice history have to do with the Japanese sense of self?
As suggested in my introduction, the concept of rice works on a psychological level in the Japanese mind; symbolically, Japanese rice has a connection to the land, a connection to the Japanese soul, and serves as a marker for Japanese“-ness.” The national identity that is represented by rice relies heavily on the created contrast between itself and foreign identities, and foreign food. The government’s fiscally irrational protection policy toward domestic rice farmers has roots in this psyche. Domesticity of rice is key: the author of Rice as Self clearly indicates that in order for Japanese rice to be Japanese rice, it must be grown from Japanese soil (similar to how in some cases a Japanese person of ethnicity, if not born and raised in the country of Japan, is not treated as if he were truly Japanese). In the store, Japonica rice is not only from Japan, it is further broken down into regional and prefectural categorizations.
Go check out the local supermarket -- the seeds come from all over Japan! Do you know where your rice is from?
If you're eating rice from Inakadate, Aomori prefecture, you might just be eating the rice that made up Doraemon's face:
(photo by Chris Lewis, from flickr.com)
Takamiya, H. 2001. Introductory Routes of Rice to Japan: An Examination of the Southern Route Hypothesis. Asian Perspectives, 2001, vol 40.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 1994.
Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bolitho, H. 1984. The Myth of the Samurai. Queensland: Japanese Studies Association of Australia, 1984.
