The post-war Japanese eating model: A sociological exploration of semi-compressed food modernity

Abstract

Among multiple factors that can influence people’s food security, the gender inequality factor has attracted inadequate attention in high-income countries, particularly in Japan. To analyse how and why gender inequality issue has been neglected in food policy in Japan, I propose the notion of the ‘post-war Japanese eating model’ based on the sociologies of family and food. I demonstrate how Japanese society has persisted with this eating model by examining two dominant dietary discourses, the Japanese dietary pattern and Hōshoku (deterioration of dietary practices). The former reinforced the post-war Japanese eating model, despite the prevailing agricultural and nutritional accounts. Regarding the latter discourse, Hōshoku was overestimated, resulting in enlarging the contradiction between norms (the Japanese dietary pattern) and practices. Given the increasing difficulty in performing such practice, their dietary norms need to be reconstructed through awareness of reflexive or ‘semi-compressed’ food modernity facing Japan.