Illustrated Japanese Culture
弁当
Bento is a meal arranged in a box for carrying or individual serving. It may be made at home, bought ready to eat or served at a restaurant. Rice and side dishes are common, but bento names describe many different menus, containers and occasions.
01
Rice often sits beside several cooked side dishes. Rice balls, sushi and other main foods also appear. Small cups and dividers keep different foods apart. There is no compulsory menu or fixed proportion shared by every bento.
People carry bento to work, on trips and to outdoor gatherings; shops also sell meals for eating at home. Some schools use packed lunches on particular days, while others provide school meals. A restaurant can serve a boxed meal at the table, so being carried away is not essential.
02
The illustration shows rice balls; early travellers also carried dried cooked rice.
Travellers carried food long before the modern bento box. The Tales of Ise, compiled around the tenth century, includes dried cooked rice taken on a journey. Rice balls offered another portable form.
An early-seventeenth-century Japanese–Portuguese dictionary records the word bento. The term was therefore in use before the later spread of elaborate picnic sets and railway meals.
Travel, flower viewing and theatre outings helped expand the uses of bento in the Edo period. Wealthy users could carry lacquer picnic sets called sagejū, with stacked food boxes, sake containers and dishes. The eighteenth-century set shown here is one such luxury object.
Makunouchi is associated with food eaten between acts. Edo descriptions show rice portions accompanied by cooked side dishes. Today the name generally suggests an assortment of rice and accompaniments.
03
Ekiben combines eki, station, with bento. Station meals developed as rail travel expanded in the Meiji era. Utsunomiya in 1885 is a familiar origin story, but earlier Osaka, Kobe and Ueno claims also exist. The first station and date remain disputed.
Regional specialties gave station meals identities of their own. Their printed wrappers also became part of the experience, carrying place names, food descriptions and illustrations.
04
In the early Shōwa period, the founder of Kitchō adapted a four-part box associated with the seventeenth-century artist Shōkadō Shōjō. The food version was smaller, with higher sides and a lid. The modern meal was developed much later than the man whose name it carries.
A cross-shaped divider gives Shōkadō bento four compartments, allowing several dishes to be arranged without mixing. It can be served at tea gatherings or formal meals. Makunouchi names a different meal tradition; the two terms are not interchangeable.
05
Wartime food shortages brought substitute foods into packed meals. After the war, the expansion of school meals reduced the occasions when many pupils needed a bento, while workers continued to carry them.
Bentwood, woven bamboo and metal containers coexist with plastic and insulated products. A sealed lid or a container that can be heated in a microwave is a product feature, not something every bento box offers. Follow the instructions for the particular box.
Insulated jar-style meal containers appeared from the mid-1960s into the early 1970s. From the mid-1970s into the early 1980s, takeout shops and microwave-heated convenience-store meals expanded. Hokka Hokka Tei opened its first shop in 1976. Buying a bento and preparing one at home remain parallel choices.
Nori bento refers to a meal featuring seaweed over rice; kyaraben refers to food arranged as characters or pictures. Other names identify a shop, region or container. These categories overlap, and decorative character food is only one optional style.
Bento has attracted interest overseas and taken different local forms. A postwar Taiwan Railway aluminium meal box, for example, records another railway-meal tradition. Its return markings also show that this was reusable equipment.
06
Cool heated food before closing the box, remove excess moisture, keep it cool in transit and eat promptly.
Japan’s agriculture ministry advises clean hands, utensils and boxes; thorough heating; and reheating leftovers before packing. Let cooked food cool before closing the box, remove excess moisture and keep the meal cool. For longer carrying, use an insulated bag and cold pack, and eat promptly.
No. It describes a packed or individually boxed meal, with many possible menus and occasions.
Dried cooked rice and rice balls were among the portable foods.
An elaborate portable picnic set that could include stacked food boxes, sake containers and dishes.
Its history is associated with meals eaten between acts.
No. The 1885 account is well known, but earlier station claims exist.
A cross-shaped divider creates four compartments.
No. The meal was developed in the early Shōwa period using a box associated with him.
No. Kyaraben is one optional way of arranging it.
Whether that specific container is suitable for the intended heating method.
Use clean equipment, heat food properly, cool it before closing, keep the packed meal cool and eat promptly.