According to experts, the custom of consuming milk as part of theJapanese diet unexpectedly goes back to as early as the Asuka period (from 592 A.D.). It later became popular among aristocrats in the Heian period (from 794 A.D.). The custom waned in subsequent periods, although it is said that Tokugawa Yoshimune, the 8th shogun of the Tokugawa family reign in the Edo era (from 1597), kept milk cows and customarily drank milk. In 1863, the first commercial pasture was established in Yokohama, and the sale of milk started up at that time. Though ice cream debuted around that time as well, it was too expensive to gain popularity among common people.

It was after the Second World War that milk consumption finally took firm root throughout the population. In 1946, not long after the war had finished, the visiting American Educational Delegation pointed out the poor nutritional state afflicting students. Then, when former US president Herbert Hoover came to Japan soon afterwards, he was similarly surprised by the malnutrition among students, and instructed General Douglas MacArther to resume the provision of school lunch to Japan’s children. From the following year, skimmed milk was included with the school lunches for three million students nationwide, supplied free of charge by the United States. By 1952, bread was also added and, from 1963, the skimmed milk was replaced with whole milk. People who were born in the early 1960s are unanimously quoted as saying that one memory of their school lunches is that the skimmed milk was not very tasty.

As opposed to the diet before the War, in which rice was always at the center of the dining table for every meal, bread and milk are now quite common sights at breakfast time. The milk and bread combination also continues to be provided in school lunches, often alongside other more traditional dishes. With other dairy products also very common in households, milk has become an indispensable element of the modern Japanese diet.

The physique of Japanese people is rapidly becoming more like that of westerners. While per capital milk consumption per person in Japan is still lower, there is no doubt that the ever increasing consumption is nevertheless playing a role in this. To increase the consumption further, various movements aimed movements aimed at this are gaining momentum nationwide, reflecting the abundant nutrition available in milk.