Food Education and Rural Resilience in Japan

Food education initiatives exist worldwide, but Japan remains unique with its food education law known as shokuiku. The country’s impressive health metrics — high life expectancies, low obesity, and affordable health care — often lead observers to praise this approach. This book presents a more nuanced analysis. First, it challenges the assumption that food education is wholly a “good thing” by exposing underlying power mechanisms. Through food diagrams, food fairs, and school lunch programs, government ministries promote both nationalism and traditional gender roles. Second, it explores how food education operates in Japan’s rural regions, where educators champion resilience and food self-sufficiency to alleviate depopulation and economic decline. This emphasis on local food persisted even in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Using Foucault’s concept of governmentality, historical contextualization, and extensive fieldwork in rural Japan, this study reveals the complex political agenda driving food education in a non-Western society.

Assmann Stephanie :

Stephanie Assmann’s research interests are foodways and culinary politics, life in rural Japan, employment and diversity. She is co-editor of Japanese Foodways, Past and Present (with Eric C. Rath, 2010, University of Illinois Press) and editor of Sustainability in Contemporary Rural Japan: Challenges and Opportunities (2016, Routledge).

"Assmann demonstrates how Japan’s 'food education' (shokuiku) campaigns do more than promote healthy eating but respond to manifold problems including the country’s low food self-sufficiency rate, the decline of rural communities, and natural disasters. Her book is essential reading for understanding the connections between food and politics in modern Japan."
– Eric C. Rath, University of Kansas

"Stephanie Assmann’s meticulous research sheds new light on the ways in which food education in Japan has been a powerful force in shaping national identity and revitalizing rural communities. This groundbreaking study provides essential insights for all those with an interest in Japanese food studies, cultural politics, and rural sociology."
– Jon Morris, Daito Bunka University