11.18.21 (Hopson) Ingrained Habits: The ‘Kitchen Cars’ and the Transformation of Postwar Japanese Diet and Identity - Dr. Nathan Hopson

Virtual lecture by Dr. Nathan Hopson, Associate Professor, Nagoya University.

This talk explores the history and politics of American-funded food demonstration buses (“kitchen cars”) in postwar Japan. Their express mission was to transform the Japanese national diet. At least in the short to medium term, the kitchen cars were a win-win for the US and Japan. Japan benefited because women learned how to cook cheap, nutritious, mostly easy dishes to improve the health of their families and the nation. For American agricultural and political interests, on the other hand, in addition to supporting a Cold War ally, the kitchen cars—along with the school lunch program—were instrumental in teaching Japan to accept and consume American produce. Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese and East Asian history in the Graduate School of Humanities, Nagoya University, and chair of the Japan-in-Asia Cultural Studies program. He is currently working on a manuscript on the social history of nutrition science in modern Japan as a technology of nation building, focusing on school feeding (gakkō kyūshoku) and government-led nutritional activism as its central case studies. His first book, Ennobling Japan’s Savage Northeast, Tōhoku as Postwar Thought, 1945-2011 (2017), provides the first comprehensive account in English of the discursive life of the Tōhoku region within postwar Japan.