Digesting modernity, healing with nature: The birth of a 'natural' food movement in Meiji Japan, 1905-1910

This article traces the emergence of a 'natural' food movement in Japan in the first decade of the twentieth century. At the centre of the movement was the Imperial Food Education Society (Shokuikukai, later changed to the Shokuyō Association) led by a former military physician, Ishizuka Sagen. Drawing on nineteenth-century physiological chemistry, Sino-Japanese medicine and the yōjō (nurturing life) tradition from the Tokugawa period, Ishizuka put forth a new dietary program based on the mineral balance between potassium and sodium. By situating these claims on 'right eating through the natural and traditional diet' in the context of the post-Hibiya riot social milieu, this article seeks to probe into the modern cultural nationalism that underpinned this natural food campaign.