By Motoko Lezec and Kana Jenkins
At the University of Maryland’s Gordon W. Prange Collection, we are lucky enough to hold a set of souvenir dining menus served aboard trans-Pacific liners before World War II. These came to us as part of recently acquired additional materials from the Japan-America Student Conference (JASC), a non-profit educational and cultural exchange program for college students from the United States and Japan. With the beautifully designed menus as a starting point we will introduce several culinary publications from Japan’s Occupation era (1945-1952) focusing on one unlikely condiment: mayonnaise.
Let’s take a close look at a menu (image) from July 21, 1936. The high speed luxury liner, owned by Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), is the Tatsuta Maru, which departed from San Francisco for Yokohama. Perusing this menu, as well as over a dozen others in the archive, what caught my attention was the salad course, always served right before the dessert course following Continental practice.
The idea behind the salad greens, dressed simply with oil, vinegar and salt, was to aid digestion. Here, though, the chefs perhaps missed the mark in terms of providing a palate cleanser. Offerings include “California Heart of Lettuce” with ketchup and mayonnaise-based “Thousand Island Dressing” or a commemorative “Liberty” salad served on the Fourth of July . The “Sayonara” menu, served on September 20, 1940 aboard the Kamakura Maru returning to the U.S., features a “Mimosa” salad served with mayonnaise dressing (mayo is also served with a cold course of split lobster). I had to look up “My Lady” salad, which apparently belongs to a family of mayonnaise-based salads of East European origin, such as “Russian” salad involving boiled potato and carrot, onion, cucumber and cold meats.
These salads got me thinking about mayonnaise, classified by Escoffier as the French mother sauce of cold sauces. Its Japanese incarnation, Kewpie mayonnaise, created in 1925, is today a beloved condiment with near cult status. During the Pacific War however, production of Kewpie mayonnaise was halted due to supply shortages, and did not resume until 1948, three years into Japan’s Occupation.The Tatsuta Maru was requisitioned by the military and served as a transport vessel for troops until she was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine and sunk. Kewpie’s comeback, on the other hand, can be seen in a newspaper ad that appeared in Nishinippon Shimbun on August 16, 1949.
A number of publications in the Prange Collection provide a snapshot of the state of affairs around mayonnaise during this period.. The first, Akabori’s Cookery Book (1948) is by Akahori Senkichi, a pioneer in the popularization of Western cuisine in Japan. Before the war, Akabori was attached as chef to foreign embassies. Reflecting his fluency in English, the book is bilingual. In the author’s preface Akabori writes that after the war, despite his advanced age, he entered the employ of the family of a U.S. military commander in the Occupying Forces. In the forward, the Commander’s wife Delphine R. Suarez commends the recipes for being “proven and adaptable” and writes they will “prove most helpful in furthering the interest of worldwide cookery.”
Akabori’s recipe for Mayonnaise Dressing is fairly classic; egg yolk, oil, salt, a touch of mustard, and a splash of vinegar. A pair of chopsticks is used to create the emulsion. He also included novelty versions such as Green Mayonnaise (with spinach) and Red Mayonnaise (with beet) for color variation when presenting hors d’oeuvres, speaking to the fact that a large part of his function was to create visually striking party menus for entertainment. What, then, was served for everyday meals? What is Served in an American Family – Cooking Guide for Japanese Homemakers (1948) by Matsumoto Keiko offers this perspective. Matsumoto, known as the Japanese translator of Little Women and mysteries by Agatha Christie, writes in the bilingual preface that the recipes were collected while visiting the home of an American Occupation family and represent basic recipes for a family of four, substitutions encouraged. As such, a “slow” (slaw) dressing recommended for raw cabbage involves simply cooking together flour with milk and a beaten egg as a creamy vehicle for seasonings.
Both of these cookbooks were published in 1948, when Japan was in its third year of reconstruction after the devastations of war. Food shortages were severe and despite thriving (though illegal) black markets, the spectre of starvation was real for much of the population. While the aforementioned cookery books have brightly colored, modern designs, other publications that came out just one or two years prior are printed on drab-colored paper of poor quality. How to eat imported food supplies (1947, author’s translated title), for example, published by the Hiroshima Prefecture Association for Funshoku, is a malnourished-looking pamphlet printed on yellowish brown paper.
“Funshoku” refers to a diet based on processed grains as opposed to Japan’s traditional diet of whole grain rice. Included are suggestions and advice for how to get the most out of emergency relief supplies such as cornmeal, milo meal, soybean meal. Interestingly, in the “salad” section, a substitute mayonnaise recipe is given: cooking soybean meal in hot water to achieve a creamy consistency, before letting it cool and adding flavorings of salt & pepper, mustard powder and vinegar. This was to be mixed with whatever plants that could be found, including wild weeds. Delicious ways to eat wild grass, 1946, author’s translated title) gives a recipe for dandelion salad with aster leaves, dressed with oil, salt and a boiled egg.
But better times lay ahead. By 1948, Kewpie was back in business and magazines for housewives were full of cheery, child-pleasing recipes such as edamame suspended in gelatin, served with sliced cucumber and apple, store-bought mayo on the side. Nothing screams mid-century quite like a jello mold. Spreading to other parts of Asia and crossing back to America, we’re seeing a “boom” of Japanese-style “sando” – egg salad, potato salad, macaroni salad and the like, all slathered with Kewpie mayo, a non-negotiable ingredient, and sandwiched between slices of shokupan milk bread. The iconic cherub logo has certainly come a long way.
As curator of the Gordon W. Prange Collection at the University of Maryland Libraries, Kana Jenkins assists with research and course-integrated instruction focusing on the Allied Occupation of Japan. Kana is eager to showcase the newly acquired items in the Prange Collection.
Motoko Lezec works as Collection Coordinator in the Gordon W. Prange Collection. She holds a BA degree in Political Science from International Christian University in Tokyo, and an MA in History of Art & Architecture from Harvard University. She has held curatorial positions at the USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, CA and the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington DC. While her research centers on modern and contemporary Japanese prints, she is an avid consumer of writings about food – history, memoirs, poetry– as well as its representations in art and film. Her food-related posts on the Prange blog include topics on bread and pastries.