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Diet and the comparison of living standards across the Great Divergence: Japanese food history in an English mirror

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Penelope Francks
Penelope Francks*
Affiliation:
East Asian Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The assessment of relative living standards, dominated by food, has been central to analysis of the timing and causes of the Great Divergence. Comparative quantitative measures of real incomes and food availability have generated the conclusion that living standards on the western side of Eurasia, in particular in England, were already higher than those observable on the eastern side by the seventeenth century, with the divergence widening thereafter. However, in the English case, research based on evidence as to what people actually ate suggests that the path of dietary change was by no means a straightforward matter of rising calorie consumption. When viewed in the light of this, evidence derived from the work of food historians of Japan can similarly be used to reveal a more complex pattern of dietary development than can be encompassed in quantitative estimates, even if along the lines of a very different diet and cuisine. This needs to be taken into account when living standards are compared across the divergence.

Keywords

comparative food historycomparative living standardsdiet and the Great Divergencedietary change in Englanddietary change in Japan
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 3 - 21
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

†

The names of Japanese authors writing in Japanese are presented in Japanese order, i.e. family name first.

References

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36 Charlotte von Verschuer, Rice, agriculture and the food supply in premodern Japan, trans. Wendy Cobcroft, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016, ch. 4. See also Ōmameuda Minoru, O-kome to shoku no kindai shi (The modern history of rice and diet), Tokyo: Yoshikawa Bunkan, 2007, table 3.

37 Gotō, Edo no shoku, pp. 69, 90, and table 27.

38 Yamaguchi Kazuo, Meiji zenki keizai no bunseki (Analysis of the early Meiji economy), Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppansha, 1963, table 7.

39 Ōmameuda, O-kome to shoku, table 5.

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43 Bassino et al., ‘Japan and the Great Divergence’, p. 15, n. 8.

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47 Gotō, Edo no shoku, p. 73.

48 Ibid., pp. 25–7.

49 Yamaguchi, Meiji zenki keizai, table 17.

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56 Ibid., table 7.06.

57 Thirsk, Food in early modern England, p. 220.

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65 Gotō, Edo no shoku, tables 14 and 24; Allen, British Industrial Revolution, p. 36.

66 Thirsk, Food in early modern England, e.g. pp. 326–7.

67 Von Verschuer, Rice, agriculture and the food supply, ch. 2; see also Walker, Brett, ‘Commercial growth and environmental change in early modern Japan: Hachinohe’s wild boar famine of 1749’, Journal of Asian Studies, 60, 2, 2001, pp. 333–335 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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69 Koyama, ‘Hida go-fudoki’, pp. 213–14; Walker, ‘Commercial growth’, p. 335.

70 Horomi, Taguchi, ‘Matagi: Nihon rettō ni okeru nōgyō no kakudai to shuryō no ayumi’ (Matagi: the history of hunting and the expansion of agriculture on the Japanese archipelago)’, Chigaku Zasshi (Journal of Geography), 113, 2, 2004, p. 194 Google Scholar .

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73 Thirsk, Food in early modern England, e.g. pp. 133–5, 169–70.

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90 Hanley, Everyday things, p. 124.

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100 Hashimoto, Shokutaku no Nihon shi, p. 137.

101 Harada, Edo no shokubunka, pp. 148–9; Koizumi, ‘Kurashi no dōgu’, p. 359.

102 Yamaguchi, Meiji zenki keizai, table 28.

103 Muldrew, Food, energy and industriousness, esp. pp. 226–33.

104 Ibid., pp. 64–83.

105 See, for example, Takagaki, ‘Yonezawa no shokuseikatsu’, p. 134.

106 See, for example, Maruyama Yasunari, ‘Kinsei ni okeru daimyō minshū no shokuseikatsu (The diet of lords and commoners in the early modern period)’, in Ishikawa and Haga, Zenshū Nihon no shoku bunka 2, p. 191.

107 Examples from Maruyama, ‘Kinsei ni okeru’, pp. 193–4.

108 Harada, Edo no shokubunka, pp. 56–7.

109 Vaporis, Tour of duty, p. 192.

110 For examples, see Francks, Penelope, The Japanese consumer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 21–26 Google Scholar .

111 Harada, Edo no shokubunka, p. 133.