Japan's first station bento, sold in 1885, held two rice balls and pickled radish
The humble lunchbox carries a surprising amount of Japanese history. It began as dried rice carried by travellers, got its name in Oda Nobunaga's era, fed kabuki audiences between acts, and once sparked a debate about poverty in schools. There is even a revenge version, packed by angry wives.
Long before anyone said bento, Japanese travellers carried hoshi-ii, rice steamed and then dried so it could be eaten as it was or softened in water; 8th-century chronicles already mention eating packed food away from home. The name arrived during the Azuchi–Momoyama period, borrowed from Song dynasty Chinese slang for convenient, but given a new Japanese sense of preparing something ahead for later. By the 16th century, lacquered wooden boxes were being carried to flower-viewing parties and tea gatherings.
The Edo period refined it. Sightseers tied a waist bento of rice balls wrapped in bamboo, and theatre audiences at Noh and kabuki ate makunouchi bento, literally between-act bento, during intermissions. The Meiji era added ekiben, station bento; the first is generally dated to 16 July 1885 at Utsunomiya Station. Taiwan, under Japanese rule for about fifty years, absorbed the habit so thoroughly that biandang remains everyday language there.
Lunchboxes have also mirrored social divides. In the Taishō era aluminium boxes became status symbols, and as wealth gaps widened after the First World War boom and crop failures in Tōhoku, critics argued a child's lunch exposed the family's fortunes. After 1945, school meals largely replaced packed lunches, until microwaves and convenience stores revived bento in the 1980s. Mothers still face strong social pressure to pack meals that are both balanced and beautiful, sometimes prepping the night before.
The varieties are endless. Kyaraben shapes food into anime characters. Hinomaru bento is white rice with a single pickled plum in the middle, mimicking the flag, and the plum's acid could eat a hole through old metal lids. Noriben tops the sales chart at the chain Hotto Motto, and its name doubles as slang for censored, blacked-out government papers. The black-lacquered Shōkadō box even inspired the design of IBM's ThinkPad.
Source: Bento
