병식(兵食)의 변천과 일상 식사에의 영향- 메이지기를 중심으로 -

Abstract

The soldier’s food is a meal in a sense that it is offered in the military and, in that respect, it is not different from a daily meal. But the soldier’s food is classified as a special meal or unusual meal because it is offered in the special condition. And it needs to be easily cooked and preserved, which is different from a daily meal. Meiji government which accepted the western military system and the advanced soldier’s food culture, added a new item, ‘nutrition’ to the important factor of a soldier’s food. They faced this task during the Ching-Japan War in which the number of the dead from malnutrion was over that of the war dead. It resulted from offering ‘the principle food based on rice and the side dishes’to their soldiers. And they were forced to improve the soldier’s food. They replaced ‘the principle food based on rice and the side dishes’ with bread and meat and offered biscuit and hardtack subsequently to their soldiers. And they found a canned food for the ship and the barracks which lacked the preservation capability for food. Those processed food mentioned above, which were distinctly different from the traditional preserved food such as tsuke-mono, etc., made the level of the preserved food higher. But the improvement of the soldier’s food did not went smoothly. Even those in charge of soldier’s food in the military could not agree to the improvement project of the soldier’s food one others, which resulted in the time lag of introduction of the western soldier’s food. In addition, it took considerable time for the soldiers to be used to the new food culture. But, through the complex course mentioned above, they found the value of ‘balance of nutrition’ , which was an unexpected production to them. And the soldier’s experience to the western food culture in the military contributed to the spread of it to their own home town and home and to overcoming the locality of Japanese traditional food culture and homogenizing Japanese common taste.