Abstract

Food provides a crucial interdisciplinary lens for examining the consequences of warfare and imperialism. Building on existing scholarship that highlights how imperial and military agendas have shaped foodways in global history, this study investigates the history of Manchurian food and explores its plural definitions and consumption within the context of Japan’s imperial expansion and total war mobilization. Through the prism of food, it engages with studies of the Japanese Empire that examine how imperialism and military actions were naturalized in everyday life and reshaped cultural experiences, revealing both successes and failures. From the 1920s to 1945, Manchurian food was transformed from an
exotic delicacy of the Chinese continent into a symbol of wartime effort within Japan proper. Following the establishment of an inner-empire food supply network in the early 1930s, foods from Manchuria came to embody metropolitan visions of the continent across the sea. While military authorities and nutrition professionals promoted these resources for rational feeding and dietary reform, Japanese consumers initially embraced Manchurian food as part of a novel culinary experience in the expanding empire. After the outbreak of prolonged war with China in 1937, policymakers popularized Manchurian food as the solution to rice shortage, a method to promote Manchukuo-Japan unity, and a path to better
nourishment of the population. For most ordinary households, it became an accessible and inevitable element of wartime dining tables. This transformation illuminates the persistent tension between nutritional ideals, imperial policy, and popular culinary preferences. While Manchurian food became a symbol of patriotism and collective endurance on the home front, its limited integration into everyday diets underscores the constraints of state-driven dietary reform within imperial Japan.

Keywords: Manchurian foodways, nutrition, consumer culture, Japanese empire, home front