Conscription was not the only powerful factor in homogenizing taste preferences in Japan; home economics education was also influential in disseminating a national standard for home cookery. This transformation, like that
of the modernization of the armed forces, was grounded in the reforms of
the Meiji government. The newly launched ideal of womanhood, known
by the rubric ‘good wife, wise mother’ (ryo¯sai kenbo), promoted housewifery as the crucial symbol and the sole aspiration for adult women. It was
part and parcel of the modern ideal of the home that revolutionized family
and gender relations in Japan. The legal foundation of this transition was
laid in the Meiji Civil Code promulgated in , and persistently, though
gradually, the rhetoric of reform was put into practice