Eating to survive: the overlooked reason for beef consumption in Japan, 1874-1912

Chelsey Wong (1)

1 Universiteit Leiden = Leiden University

This article argues that there is ample and solid evidence for the role of health concerns in the rise of beef consumption in Japan in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It discusses how the social background, and, in particular, the cholera outbreak of 1886, boosted beef consumption. Fear of the effects of plagues led citizens in the Meiji era to seek out food that was, according to the science of the time, both nutritious and easily digested, leading to the development of a new set of values applied to food, including beef. Rather than seeing early beef consumption as only ostensibly medicinal, or as purely a matter of imitation of the West, as previous scholars have suggested, the author argues that beef consumption came to be perceived as urgently necessary for survival.

Keywords: Japan; Meiji; beef; plagues; cholera; health; diet

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences

Chelsey Wong. Eating to survive: the overlooked reason for beef consumption in Japan, 1874-1912. 2023. ⟨hprints-04328118⟩