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The story
It was reported that married couple Miki Fujimoto and Tomoharu Shoji covered an elementary school lunch program on Fuji TV’s “Mikiti Dining,” and in discussing the high cost of milk, remarked something like “Wouldn’t water be fine at this point?” On 5ch threads, opinions clashed between those who said milk is necessary for nutrients like calcium and those who pointed out it ignores children with lactose intolerance. Many also raised concerns about the soaring cost of ingredients like rice and vegetables, and the general shortfall in school lunch funding. Additionally, posts repeatedly referenced photographer Ken Domon’s work documenting the poverty-stricken school lunch conditions of the past, reflecting on the contrast with today.
Miki Fujimoto stunned by elementary school lunch budget: “Wouldn’t you think, ‘Isn’t water fine already?’”
Talent Miki Fujimoto (41) and her husband Tomoharu Shoji (50), of the comedy duo Shinagawa Shoji, appeared on Fuji TV’s “Mikiti Dining” (Saturdays, 11 a.m.) on the 10th, where they shared their thoughts on elementary school lunch budgets.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
There's no way water would cut it, that's just an exaggeration.
Sure, if you don't worry about nutritional balance.
It's just armchair theorizing.
Other food and drink items are pricey too because ingredient costs have soared.
Prices should vary by supplier, so they should use cheaper vendors to cover the gap well.
Kids these days eat more than kids used to.
pairing rice with milk is just nuts.
Kids who want milk pay extra on top of the lunch fee.
I never liked milk and always gave mine to the boys, so I'm in the 'milk's unnecessary' camp.
At the very least, she should've said something like 'the budget for side dishes shrank' or 'the number of dishes dropped due to rising ingredient costs.'
Just think of school lunch as fuel to get through studying.
If it's meant to be a full meal, of course it's going to be lame.
Either pay up, or do the job parents are supposed to do.
Weirdly, everyone was still bursting with energy.
Decades back, before school lunches existed, many kids brought their own boxed lunches.
The kids who couldn't even bring a lunch had nowhere to look, so they'd read magazines instead…
A famous photo by the late photographer Ken Domon.
https://stat.ameba.jp/user_images/20210211/10/shigacth0130/6b/5a/j/o0810108014894614749.jpg
'Children of Chikuho'
By Ken Domon
'The Child Who Doesn't Bring a Lunch' (1959)
'The principal is careful not to let the faces of children who don't bring lunch be photographed.
The troubled kids stay home from school when it rains.
It's especially the malnourished-looking children, the ones who need school lunch most, who don't bring a boxed lunch.
The child without a lunch sits looking at a picture book.
Even when the kids with lunches suddenly burst out laughing at something, the child without a lunch never turns to look.
They never turn around, as if it had nothing to do with them at all.'
(From Ken Domon's 'Children of Chikuho')
Seeing photos like that makes you realize just being able to eat is a blessing in itself.
It was a shock to learn there were people who couldn't eat because they couldn't even bring a lunch.
So Japan really did go through times like that.
I didn't even know there was no food during the war until I got to college, and I had no idea life was still that harsh even after the war, not until I saw this photo just now.
Were there no convenience stores back then? Not even half-price unsold bread from a supermarket?
Being born in this era, I guess I didn't know anything.
Also, looking closer at the photo, a lot of them have shaved heads.
Was buzzcuts a trend back then? Not the delinquent kind of buzzcut, but the real, proper kind — everywhere lol
I already knew this photo, but it's still painful no matter how many times I see it.
Now that I have kids of my own, it's even more painful.
I wish hungry children would just disappear from this world.
If the lunch budget is so tight, I think they should at least let kids bring extra staple food from home to supplement it.
Honestly, how much kids eat varies person to person, and I always felt bad for the ones who didn't get enough.
But for some reason that's never allowed.
And yet they're quick to tell parents to suddenly pack a lunch the day after a typhoon passes.
Maybe serve iriko at lunch and just do barley tea for the drink 🥺
Didn't realize there were still places doing home delivery these days.
I've wiped out on a motorcycle before and never broken a bone.
So milk's unnecessary.
It's considered nutrient-dense, but whether it actually gets absorbed is a different story.
I think that could easily fit within ¥360.
Unlike eating out, there's no service staff cost to cover.
It's because they needlessly try to cram in more side dishes that the menu ends up looking so skimpy.
You can buy something nearly the same quality as the national brand for cheaper.
If they did the same thing here, they could keep school lunch costs down.
Tea would be fine, no?
These days people just send their kids off with tea or water in a water bottle anyway.
Being able to drink milk in the morning at all — how rich do you have to be!
Since high schoolers a few years before this photo was taken had this hairstyle,
the generation below them was probably the same way.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/358586826319960/posts/1026944186150884/
> Male high schoolers around Showa 28 (1953), Nagano Prefecture
> A generation that lived through wartime evacuations and air raids.
> Many were rough-and-tumble "bankara" types — all in stand-collar uniforms with shaved heads. On their feet, "hoba" wooden clogs.
> Back when the average male lifespan was 61.9 years, everyone looks older than their age.
If you're interested in the photo book, try borrowing it from a library… and maybe some of Ken Domon's other photo books too, like "Hiroshima."
https://calil.jp/search?q=%E7%AD%91%E8%B1%8A%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81%A9%E3%82%82%E3%81%9F%E3%81%A1
'Children of Chikuho'
Give your local library a search
Calil is a service for searching library holdings across Japan
The large-format complete-works edition from Shogakukan should be held by more libraries.
Everyone's got a buzzcut!
Guess that was just the trend back then?
More surprising to me is that they're wearing wooden clogs.
Japan really did have times like this.
Can't believe it.
Around that era must've been when my grandpa was a kid — must've been a brutal time.
Still, everyone's got an oddly solid build, broad shoulders and all.
Their faces look kind of rugged too.
Not a single Johnny's-looking guy in the bunch. (Johnny's = the talent agency famous for pretty-boy idols)
Looks like I had the wrong idea about this too.
http://www.domonken-kinenkan.jp/domonken/kodomo/
Ken Domon and His Work: Children
Seems like even in cities, not everyone had a shaved head, but short hairstyles were common.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Milk became a fixture of school lunches as a postwar measure against malnutrition, formally established under the 1954 School Lunch Act — a policy background that also helped stabilize demand for the dairy industry. Because of this, the claim that “cutting milk would free up the budget” isn’t so simple: milk itself is actually a relatively cheap item within the school lunch budget, and in recent years it’s the overall surge in ingredient costs — rice, vegetables, and the like — that’s really been squeezing budgets. The thread split along a divide between those who see milk as a necessary source of nutrition and those who see it as a system that ignores individual differences like lactose intolerance — though both sides agreed on a shared frustration over the underlying shortfall in school lunch funding.
※This article was compiled by excerpting and summarizing the 5ch (Geisoku Hōdō+) thread ‘[Entertainment] Miki Fujimoto Stunned by Elementary School Lunch Budget: “Wouldn’t You Think, ‘Isn’t Water Fine Already?’”.’
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