Japan’s School Lunches: Learning Through Eating

Going Local

After the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble in 1991, the country went into a long slump. The government started administrative and fiscal reforms to reduce expenditures, and school lunches were not exempt from these cuts. In 1997, the cabinet decided to gradually scale down systems established to ensure stable supplies for lunches. The government’s abolition of discounts for rice used in school lunches in March 2000 was among measures that brought an end to the centralized supply system that had been in place since the early postwar years. From that point onward, foods used in schools came to reflect the character and conditions of their prefectures.

Influenced by the “eat local” movement, in fiscal 1998, Saitama’s Board of Education adopted a slogan promising to bring “the blessings of local flavors” to school lunches. A teacher involved at the time recalls that it was not smooth going at first. “We struggled to get people to understand our ideal, so we started by going directly to farmers, persuading them, and asking them to supply food directly.”

Children learn about how rice is grown and the route it takes to get to their school. (© School Lunch History Museum)

In Imizu, Toyama, an initiative by the fisheries cooperative association put high-grade local specialty red snow crab on school lunch menus. Representatives spoke to children about the crabs, including fishing methods and how to eat them, combining a chance to try a famous regional food with learning about it.

Food Education

For some time now, it has become more difficult for families to have meals together, as children attending cram school get home late, and more households have two working parents. The increase in fast food restaurants and convenience stores has also made getting a quick bite cheap and easy. The many rapid changes in how people eat have led to concerns about children’s unbalanced diets.

The government has sought to tackle this problem through food education via school lunches. This aims to teach children about food and instill desirable habits to foster healthy ways of eating. A first step was the introduction of nutrition teachers in April 2005, while the Food Nutrition and Education Act was passed in July of the same year. In June 2008, an amendment to the School Lunch Program Act stipulated the importance of shokuiku, or food and nutrition education.

The following six areas are major points of emphasis in this education.

1. The importance of eating at mealtimes
2. Effects on physical and mental health
3. Being able to choose appropriate food
4. Cultivating a spirit of gratitude
5. Fostering social skills
6. Understanding food culture

The overall target is to nurture skills that allow children to live well through eating well throughout their lives ahead. Efforts to use local ingredients and create menus responding to internationalization both come within this context.

A re-creation of a Cameroon-themed lunch served in Nakatsue, Ōita, which hosted the Cameroon national team at the time of the 2002 FIFA World Cup held in Japan and South Korea. (© School Lunch History Museum)

Years when there have been major sporting competitions in Japan have seen diverse dishes served at school lunches. During the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the 2019 Rugby World Cup, and the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021, areas hosting visiting teams incorporated those countries’ dishes into meals offered to children.

Local governments have also offered menus based on those of overseas cities with which they have friendly ties. This leads to differences such as, for example, more use of beans and tomatoes in recipes from the Americas or meat and potatoes in European dishes. Even though foreign travel has become more common, there are opportunities to try new foods from parts of the world more difficult to visit from Japan, with big learning benefits.

A school lunch prepared for studying Italian food culture. (© School Lunch History Museum)

Rising Costs

We can roughly divide the ways school lunches are provided into three main categories. The first is for schools to make their own lunches in dedicated kitchens, while the second is to have school lunch centers make meals and distribute them to multiple schools. The third includes other methods, such as delivery by private operators.

Each method is adapted to the local situation. In all cases, safety is a major prerequisite, with thorough hygiene standards covering areas including facility management and food handling and preparation. To tackle risks like unexpected norovirus outbreaks and increased food allergies among children in recent years, there are ongoing systematic measures, such as updates to manuals and the introduction of appropriate management systems.

Various kinds of bread served at school lunches. (© School Lunch History Museum)

The cost of school lunches is commonly borne together by local governments and parents or guardians. Authorities pay for facilities, repair, labor, and utilities, while families pay for the food. Issues like concerns over grain supply following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, soaring crude oil and animal feed prices, abnormal global weather, and the proliferation of avian influenza have had a great impact. The spike in ingredient prices over the past two or three years already meant that expenses could not be covered by the payments from parents, and high rice prices have been an additional burden since last summer. New support measures are needed.

According to a survey by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), as of May 2023, school lunches were provided to around 9.2 million children at 29,204 elementary and junior high schools across Japan. Meanwhile, a 2021 Cabinet Office survey found that 14% of children, or around one in seven, received some kind of public assistance to ensure they received school lunches. As I wrote previously, the school lunch system is based on the ideal of ensuring meals for all, regardless of their home conditions. This is true even in what is now seen as an age of plenty.

Reducing the Burden

Another MEXT survey revealed that as of September 2023, around 30% of municipalities, or 547 in total, were providing completely free school lunches to public elementary and junior high schools. This was around seven times as many as when a similar survey was conducted in 2017, reflecting a movement toward free lunches as part of efforts to encourage residents to have children by reducing the financial burden.

Since January 2025, school lunches have been free in all of Tokyo’s municipalities. However, there have been criticisms about the disparity in whether children get free meals or not based on where they live, with some maintaining that providing free lunches should be the responsibility of the national government. This has become a major point of discussion in the Diet. While this is an important issue, to maintain Japan’s school lunch system, we also need to think about what makes for good meals for children.

I am the director of the School Lunch History Museum, which displays replicas of past school lunches and photographs related to the topic. These indicate the social and economic background, as well as the food situation at the time, conveying how today’s school lunches are the result of the great enthusiasm, hard work, and overcoming of obstacles by the people who provided them. We see how these people wished for children to enjoy healthy growth and a bright future.

Visitors from Taiwan involved in providing school lunches look at exhibits on the history of these meals in Japan. (© School Lunch History Museum)

I want children to enjoy today’s school lunch with a smile, and look forward to what they will eat tomorrow. I also want them to learn the value of their own lives, and think about the people who produce the food and prepare the meals, as well as society and the world as a whole. As someone with a role connected to school lunches, I will do what I can to make this a reality.

(Originally published in Japanese on March 8, 2025. Banner photo: A fisheries cooperative representative explains to elementary schoolgirls about how to remove the shell from a red snow crab served at school lunch in Imizu, Toyama. Photo taken on October 8, 2024. © Imizu Board of Education.)