Storage of descriptive data relating to food during the Showa period and analysis from the perspective of the history of food culture: Newspapers, magazines, and books

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With the objective of elucidating the actual condition of dietary information and changes in diet in Japan during the first half of the Showa period, we extracted articles relating to cooking, food, and nutrition published in newspapers between 1927 and 1960 and reviewed their contents. A total of 11,344 articles (cooking: 5,618; food: 4,092; nutrition: 1,634) were extracted. The number of cooking articles decreased sharply during the 1948 up to 1945 compared to 1941 and earlier, but tended to increase thereafter. Food articles diversified with the introductions of imported foods and new varieties, but the number of articles on food rations increased sharply between 1941 and 1944. Nutrition articles focused primarily on education on the knowledge and value of nutrition, but the focus gradually shifted to the need for dietetics in wartime and the boom in nutritional supplements. Diet during the first half of the Showa period was found to be greatly influenced by the war.