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13.04[261]

The Professor compares with these totals the 34.4 sen and 39.3 sen per
day which seem to represent the cost of the food of the rank and file
in the navy and army, and three standards of diet issued by the
official Bureau of Hygiene providing for expenditures of 32.1 sen, 33
sen and 44.4 sen respectively. (All the prices I have cited are dated
1915.) Beef and pork as well as fish are used in the army and navy.
The navy also uses bread.

Professor Morimoto estimates that a Japanese may be fairly expected to
consume only 80 per cent. of what a foreigner needs, for the average
weight of Japanese is only 13 _kwan_ 830 _momme_ to the European's 17
_kwan_ 20 _momme_.

My personal impression, which I give merely for what it is worth, for
I have made no investigation of the subject, is that, though Japanese
may thrive on meagre fare, they eat large quantities of food when
their resources permit of indulgence. The common ailment seems to be
"stomach ache." This may be due to eating at irregular hours, to an
unbalanced dietary, to the eating of undercooked viands or to
occasional over-eating, or to all of these causes.[262] Undoubtedly
there is much room for dietetic reform.

Professor Morimoto had come to the conclusion "that there is
under-feeding, largely due to a bad choice of foods, that the relation
of the nutritive value of foods to their cost is insufficiently
studied and that cooking can be improved." It is of course an old
criticism of the Japanese table that food is either imperfectly cooked
or prepared too much with a view to appearance. The Professor's
finding was that the Japanese need the addition of meat and bread to
their dietary. As far as meat is concerned he did not convince me. Let
me quote him on the soy bean: "It is a remarkably good substitute for
meat. It is very low in price but its nutritive value is very high.
The essential element of _miso_, _tofu_ and _shoyu_ is soy bean."
Bread is another matter. The Japanese Navy, presumably because it may
find itself far from Japan, has accustomed its sailors to eat bread,
and a case can certainly be made out for the general population not
relying on rice as a grain food. But, as the large quantities of
barley eaten show, there is no such reliance now. Morimoto urged that
while there might be no difference in the nutritive value of wheat and
rice, rice as usually eaten induced