when did japanese cuisine start

hi, i’m john green and this is crash courseworld history and today we’re going to talk about world war ii.but we’re not going to look at it as a battle between good and evil, but instead as a warfor resources, particularly a war for food. wait, mr. green, mr. green, what about like rosie theriveter and pearl harbor and nazis and hitler? yeah, me from the past, i mean if the question is was hitler evil? then, yeah.but evil people generally can’t, like, cause massive world wars on their own. so instead of talkingabout, uh, you know, the personality driven model of history, i want to talk about resources,specifically my favorite resource: food. so the story of world war 2 is commonly toldas a narrative of good vs. evil, and it is.

but we can also look at the second world warthrough the lens of resource allocation, and i think if we do it tells a story of bothcauses of the war and one of the ways that it impacted both soldiers and civilians.the presence or absence of food affected everyone involved in world war ii. in the most starkterms, the absence of food led to the deaths, directly or indirectly, of at least 20 millionpeople during those years, as compared to 19.5 million military deaths. now, of course, both the nazis and the japanesewere militaristic and expansionist in the 1930s.and they were both definitely motivated by nationalism, but they were also seeking somethingcalled autarky.

you can remember this term by conjuring thefeeling one gets near thanksgiving: “aw, turkey”.you can also remember it when thinking about the collapse of the ottoman empire: “aw,turkey”. anyway, autarky is a form of self sufficiencyin a world where, increasingly, people were reliant on world trade, and that made nationsmore and more dependent upon each other to meet basic needs.both germany and japan lacked the resources within their borders that they needed to buildtheir growing industrial states, and the resource that concerned them most was food.and this was a big part of what motivated their imperialist expansionism.like, hitler talked all the time about expanding

german territory to acquire “lebensraum,”or living space. but what this meant, of course, was agriculturalland to feed germans, that’s what living space is really about on earth.and most germans of the time remembered the blockade during world war i, which had ledto acute food shortages. for the nazis, to quote collingham, “lebensraumwould make germany truly self-sufficient and immune to blockade and this would eventuallyenable germany to challenge british and american hegemony.”meanwhile, in japan the need for food was also spurring imperial ambitions. if anything,japan’s limited space created a sense of crisis and made colonies seem necessary.like japanese colonies in korea and formosa,

taken in the sino-japanese war of 1894-1895,provided 20% of the japanese domestic rice crop by 1935.and then the great depression and japan’s growing population made the situation appeareven worse and probably led to the decision to annex manchuria after 1931.so the germans’ plan was to open up poland, and eventually parts of russia, to germanfarmers. the japanese plan was to resettle farmers in manchuria to provide food for thehomeland. so if the desire for more food was one ofthe initial causes of world war 2, it also shaped the actual strategy of the war.this was especially true with one of the stupidest decisions of the war, hitler’s decisionto invade the soviet union.

a german agronomist named hans backe put forthsomething called “the hunger plan”, and in doing so convinced hitler that in orderto become self-sufficient, germany had to invade the soviet union.and everyone knows that you cannot successfully invade russia unless you are the mongols. anyway, the plan was the ukraine and westernrussia would be transformed into a huge breadbasket that would feed both the german armies andgerman civilians. this was never fully implemented, because, you know, the nazi’s could neversuccessfully nail down all of the territory, but collingham argues that it was a primarymotive for hitler’s disastrous invasion of the ussr. and then on the western front, the so called“battle of the atlantic” was largely about

shipping arms, material, and food from theu.s. to britain. this was incredibly important in the openingyears of world war 2. like, winston churchill once said that “the battle of the atlanticwas the dominating factor all through the war. never for one moment could we forgetthat everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air, depended ultimatelyon its outcome.” in short, it was britain’s dependence uponother parts of the world that ultimately made it stronger than germany’s attempts at self-sufficiency.starvation never became an issue for the brits, but fear of running out of food, especiallyof running out of food for the troops, led to policies that made starvation a realityfor many people in british colonies.

in british africa, for instance, colonialpolicy forcing production for the war instead of for domestic food consumption meant shortagesthat were only made worse by wartime inflation. crop failure in rhodesia in 1942 meant widespreadhunger and famine. and, in an echo of what happened at the endof the 19th century, world war ii and british colonial policy spelled disaster for india.japan had seized burma in early 1942, cutting off 15% of bengal’s rice supply.and when harvests failed later that year, hunger turned to famine. now, the britishcould have alleviated the suffering but they were afraid to use supply ships that might be neededfor the war effort to bring food to starving people in india.when you take into account hunger-associated

diseases, between 1.5 and 3 million indiancivilians died, more than the total number of indian combatants killed in world war 1and world war 2 combined. in the united states, meanwhile, there wasno starvation, but there was some rationing. and this was, especially relative to mostrecent american wars, some shared sacrifice. americans gave up coffee and chocolate sothat the troops could be well fed. so americans and britons hardly suffered fromhunger. neither did the germans, actually, where memories of world war i made feedingthe civilian population a top priority. of course, millions of civilians weren’tbeing fed because they were being murdered or worked to death in concentration camps.but in britain, world war ii might have actually

improved people’s diets. now, britons largelydespised the whole-meal national loaf of bread, but it was more nutritious than white breadand its flour took up less cargo space. it’s amazing to think that british peoplewould dislike good food when there’s so much of it in their country.stan, this is the part where in the comments all the british people say, “we are nota country, we’re four separate countries!” the “dig for victory” campaign encouragedordinary people to plant gardens, and so they ate more vegetables. full employment and higherwages meant that working class people also had more access to nutritious foods.also, you know, they had the benefit of canada growing like, a gajillion acres of wheat.although both the british and the germans saw

an overall reduction in caloric intake, itwas nothing compared with what was happening in the ussr, japan and china. in russia, dailycaloric intake by the end of the war was half of what it had been in 1940.and i will remind you that things were not great in 1940 in russia, because stalin.the daily caloric ration for japanese women workers fell to 1476 calories, which was bad,but in china, where the corrupt nationalist army was known to sell rice to the japanese forprofit, a famine in guangdong claimed the lives of as many as 1.5 million peasants.and without doubt, much of the civilian suffering in the war was related to the massive amountsof food needed to keep soldiers fighting. let’s go to the thought bubble.

in world war 2, the us and britain made amassive effort to make sure that their soldiers were well fed, and for the most part it paidoff, even though the food that they got was sometimes pretty gross. the british worldwar i diet of biscuits and bully beef eventually gave way to the appetizingly named “compositeration.” american soldiers may have complained a lot about their infamous c and k rations, butthey were the best fed soldiers in the world, receiving a whopping 4,758 calories per day, includingmeat at every meal, because, you know… america. as you can probably guess, soviet soldiersdid not fare so well, especially when the germans invaded because it was their policyto live off the land, which meant scrounging as much food from the russian countrysideas they could. german troops weren’t as

well fed as americans or the brits, but theystill managed to scarf down a respectable 4000 calories per day. no combat soldiers were as consistently hungry,however, as the japanese. japanese soldiers were expected to feed themselves and werenot provided with field kitchens. often this meant that japanese soldiers were fueled bylittle more than rice. and as the war turned against them it became more and more difficultfor japanese troops to feed themselves. on guadalcanal the japanese attempted to re-supplytheir troops with floating barrels dropped from passing ships, but by december 1942 between120 and 130 soldiers were dying of starvation every day. the japanese commander there estimatedthat while 5000 of his soldiers died in combat,

15,000 starved to death. overall, it’s estimatedthat more than 1 million of the 1.74 million japanese military deaths were caused by starvationor malnutrition. thanks thought bubble. so, a quick look atthe history section in your local bookstore or an imdb search will tell you that thereare hundreds if not thousands of ways to tell the story of world war ii.and this is just one history of the war, certainly not a definitive one.but examining the role of resources, especially food, in the second world war tells a storythat has at least one advantage over the narrative of the triumph of allied good over axis evil.because it helps us to see that the war was not only about the soldiers fighting, andit gives us a window into the way the war

affected everyone who lived at the time. it also allows us to see world war ii froma global perspective in a way that focusing on strategy or tactics or pivotal battlesdoesn’t. like very little fighting went on in sub-saharanafrica or most of india, but these places were deeply affected by the war in ways thatdon’t often make it into history books. also, we live today in a thoroughly globalizedworld, but so did the people of the 1930s, and it’s very interesting to see some oftheir responses to it. that hyper nationalist idea, that we can takecare of ourselves and don’t need help from outside, as long as we annex a lot of territorythat’s currently outside of us - that idea

is a response to globalization.but i think history shows us that it’s a horrible response.it’s a dangerous business when humans imagine others as less, when they think their landneeds to become our land so we can feed our people.and in that sense at least, you can’t separate ideology from resource allocation, and aslong as we live in a world of finite resources, the potential for conflict will always bethere. knowing that, hopefully, will help us to avoid it. thanks for watching. i’llsee you next week. crash course is filmed here in the chad andstacey emigholz studio and it's made with the help of all of these nice people and alsowith the help of our subbable subscribers.

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