The controversial history of the bento box

It’s not another middle class DIY project. The bento box is a staple of Japanese culinary history.

The history of bento is far deeper than Pokémon cafés and Pinspiration. The Japanese lunch container evolved from utility to status symbol to kawaii over the past 15 centuries. In fact, during times of economic uncertainty owning a bento box was downright controversial.

In the 5th century, Japan’s farmers, hunters, and warriors packed their lunches in sacks or boxes and brought them to the fields. The design is derived from a farmer’s seed box, and usually features multiple compartments for different dishes, such as rice, vegetables, and fish.

From there, bento spread across countries — China, Korea, the Philippines, and more. The word “bento” was actually derived from the Southern Song Dynasty slang term biàndāng, which means “convenient.” Each culture adopted its own dishes for the box, but the idea of a varied, balanced lunch remained constant. Bento became a favorite for cultural gatherings and social events, such as festivals, theater, and religious holidays. Boxes themselves could be made of lacquered wood or basket material. When the aluminum bento became popular during Japan’s Taishō period beginning in 1912, bento suddenly went from lunch to luxury.

After World War I, Japan grappled with economic inequality. While its newfound hegemony in Asia grew Japan’s industry, farmers and more traditional laborers contended with unstable crops. The wealth gap trickled down to Japan’s children. Wealthy parents sent their kids to school with shiny bento lunches, neatly packed with nutritious fare; poor families could no longer afford the once-simple bento.

“My mother was older than the other kids’ mothers and she filled my lunch box with tiny, traditional porcelain dishes and cups. The other kids had modern lunch boxes with jelly sandwiches and wieners cut to look like bunnies,” writes Gaku Homma in The Folk Art of Japanese Country Cooking. His mother was relieved when the school lunch program began.

Initiated in the late 19th Century, the Ministry of Education recommended nutritious meals for all schoolchildren. The school lunch later became standard in 1954, during World War II reconstruction. Homma remembers those lunches typically contained a cup of milk, koppepan (a loaf of bread), a pat of butter, rice, and a bowl of soup. Each kid brought a large cloth napkin to eat on. (The napkins also became status symbols, just as bento had, stitched on new sewing machines with tulip or butterfly designs.)

Bento’s popularity resurged in the 1980s along with TV dinners and other “convenience” dishes. By this time, the US and other Western nations had already been introduced to bento’s charm. Japanese-American sugar plantation workers were the first to bring the bento lunch to the US.

In the 1990s, character bentos (kyaraben) were born and are still incredibly popular today, with fantastic, edible creations that are as delightful to Instagram as they are delicious to eat. Besides Pinterest, parenting magazines and back-to-school blogs the world over have featured bento recipes, ideas for shaping rice balls into baby pandas for kids’ lunches.

A scroll down the bento subreddit reveals just how many cultures have taken to creative bento preparation. Little Miss Bento (née Shirley Wong) is a Singapore-based artist whose formal sushi instruction now informs Little Mermaid rice balls and Pikachu egg sheets. In fact, the bento box has merged with a core element of some Japanese art, which prizes not just a work’s outcome but the process itself, which should be intentional and precise, a craft honed over years of study. The philosophy manifests in everything from calligraphy to umami to plastic food.

It’s not uncommon for some mothers to spend up to 45 minutes per child’s lunch, according to Christopher D. Salyers, author of Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes. Again the bento meal has become a marker for social status, with the most popular children unboxing the most elaborate bento.

In Japan, bento is served virtually everywhere, from Sailor Moon cafés to train-station food carts. And the original intention — a quick, portable, nutritious lunch — still holds strong.