The Japanese Butter Shortage: Changing Tastes and the Food Crisis
The Japanese are short of butter and considering emergency imports, according to the Wall Street Journal. How the worm turns, at least on the biggish historical scale.
A hundred and fifty years ago, it would have been the very rare person in Japan who would have had even the faintest clue what butter was. The only people in Japan who ate butter (except perhaps as a medicine) were the Dutch in their trading post at Nagasaki.
Then came the black ships and the forcible opening of Japan to the west. For a wonderful account of how this produced modern Japanese cuisine, look for Katarzyna Cwiertka’s wonderful book of the same name published by the University of Chicago Press last year. In a nutshell, though, the Japanese government, after a few fits and starts, embarked on a campaign to make the Japanese diet more like the Western diet. Just what this meant depended on where you stood in the social scale. Butter was for those at the top end. The government underwrote the early dairy industry.
About a hundred years ago, a few wealthy Japanese might have eaten butter and possibly even buying it. An enterprising Japanese lawyer opened Meidi-ya, an upmarket store, inspired by what he had seen at Harrods and other London department stores that sold all kinds of western food products. Well-to-do Japanese had the choice of butter from France, Holland, and Denmark. Later, butter for the store came from dairies established on the northern island of Hokkaido.
Was butter greeted with cries of joy? Hardly. Fats in quantity were a new experience. According to the distinguished Japanese food historian, Watanabe, they gave diners diarrhea and so Chinese immigrants who opened restaurants cut back on the fat in their dishes. That certainly fits with my experience in Hawaii where I heard elderly Japanese claim that the saimin (noodle soup) sold in McDonald’s was too greasy for their taste because it was made of chicken stock instead of a stock of seaweed and perhaps fish.
About fifty years ago, the Japanese would have begun to have ready access to butter following the lean (literally) war years and their aftermath. So in a couple of generations, butter has become so essential to the Japanese that the government is thinking of intervening to ensure the supply.
I realize that I don’t know how butter is used in Japan. I doubt it’s for spreading on bread (whose rise in Japan parallels that of butter) because in most parts of the world bottled mayo seems to have that function. I doubt it’s for home cooking. So is it in restaurants? If I had to guess, I’d guess upmarket cakes and confections.
I’m probably dead wrong. But someone out there must have an answer. Anyone know?
An interesting tale of changing tastes, globalization and its effects.
I read about the butter shortage… I probably say as an ingredient for cakes and such like
Very interesting how in a few decades some food becomes a staple. In India, there is a discussion on how increased wheat consumption in the south, which is mainly a rice-eating area for the longest time, has caused the price of wheat to spiral out of control. interesting times.