youki hirakawa

Intolerance

Intolerance / 2025

Two milk churns

As part of the postwar nutrition improvement campaign starting in 1946, the distribution of powdered skim milk in school lunches—based on LARA supplies—was initiated to prevent children from suffering nutritional deficiencies. Alongside the rapid Westernization of Japanese food culture modeled after the United States, milk and dairy products, positioned as complete nutritional foods, became a central part of school lunches. Children were, in principle, required to drink one 200ml bottle each, a practice that was semi-compulsory for a long time (for many years, leaving any milk unfinished was not permitted). The slogan that milk strengthens bones and promotes growth was accepted unquestioningly and firmly established itself in Japanese society. Indeed, alongside the Westernization of the diet, the average height of Japanese people increased.
At the same time, it is a fact that many Asians—including Japanese—and many Black people are lactose intolerant (in Japan, reportedly as many as 85%), which can cause diarrhea and nausea. Milk, having penetrated deeply into Japanese dietary culture through the chaos of the postwar period, might even today lie within people’s stomachs like an unexploded bomb buried for 80 years, waiting to detonate.

Even now, 80 years later, in many Japanese cities that suffered devastating bombings, numerous large unexploded bombs continue to be discovered. It is said that over 1,800 tons of them still remain. One of these was even found very close to my home.