In Case of Emergency, Eat Saigaishoku

​​The shōgayaki (ginger pork) was on the chewy side and the udon noodles were mushy. The ginger-and-plum mackerel could have used more soy sauce, while the onigiri (rice ball) was a tad salty. But these are minor complaints when you’re in the middle of a natural disaster.

These dishes didn’t emerge from a restaurant kitchen but from pouches and cans of saigaishoku (disaster food), emergency rations my family had kept in our home in disaster-prone Japan for years, in case an earthquake, tsunami, or some other catastrophic event trapped us for days. I decided to dig in, not out of necessity but curiosity. Could I actually survive for days on this stuff if I had to?

I had plenty to choose from. Japanese disaster food — which also goes by the names bōsaishoku (disaster-prevention food), bichikushoku (food reserves), hozonshoku (preserved food), and hijōshoku (emergency food) — is wonderfully diverse. There’s dehydrated mushroom risotto, freeze-dried chicken stew, and canned mackerel in miso and sesame. Ready-to-eat food packets range from Japanese classics like nikujaga (beef and potato stew), oden (fish cakes and vegetables in savory-sweet broth), and curry to more globally recognizable dishes like pasta carbonara and beef stroganoff. Some meals come with a built-in heating unit. One company claims that its meals will keep for 25 years. For dessert, there’s Toyo Foods’ canned matcha cheesecake, Izameshi’s anko mochi (pounded rice cakes with sweet red bean paste), or Imuraya’s yōkan (sweet jellied red bean paste), which won an award from the Disaster Prevention Safety Association.

Japan has a long tradition of preserving food — miso, konbu (dried kelp), niboshi (dried sardines), umeboshi (pickled sour plums), and kōya-dōfu (freeze-dried tofu) share some of the same functions as saigaishoku. But the diversity of modern canned and vacuum-sealed dishes is relatively recent.

“I’ve noticed that there’s a much wider variety of disaster food available lately,” says Hiroki Hara, a disaster aid expert with the Ajinomoto Foundation in Tokyo, “and more public awareness about the importance of having emergency reserves at home.”

When I broke into my emergency stash, I figured I’d be joining a niche group of disaster victims and eternal worrywarts for whom saigaishoku are either a necessity or a balm against anxiety. What I found instead was a widespread cultural fascination with foods of last resort.

Natural disasters are routine in Japan. The archipelago sits along the Ring of Fire, a seismically and volcanically turbulent arc in the Pacific Ocean. Rarely does a week go by without tremors rattling some part of the country. In the government’s best-guess forecast, there’s a 70 percent chance that a major quake will hit Tokyo in the next three decades, potentially killing thousands of people, destroying buildings, and leaving the city without power, gas, and water for days. Officials recommend that every household keep enough food and water on hand to get through three to seven days.

Yet, fewer than a dozen products were sold as saigaishoku before 1995, according to a study by the Japan Disaster Food Society. That year, a magnitude 7.2 quake pummeled Kobe and other parts of western Japan. Two weeks later, more than 320,000 people were crammed into emergency shelters, surviving on handouts from government agencies. Many of the evacuees, particularly the elderly ones, complained to reporters that the hardtack biscuits were too bland and hard for them to sink their teeth into.

Government officials went in search of alternative sources of saigaishoku. They turned to Onisi Foods, a Tokyo-based company known for its alpha rice, a type of dehydrated rice that can be quickly reconstituted. Founder and former naval submariner Haruyasu Onishi invented the product in the 1940s, and for decades the lightweight, inexpensive rice went into rations for Japanese troops and high-altitude meals for Japanese expeditions to the Himalayas.

Nagatanien

But troops and mountaineers knew it had a tendency to go rancid quickly. The problem, according to Hideaki Ito, Onisi general manager of product development, was that oil on the rice spoiled as oxygen seeped into the packaging.

“We switched to higher-quality rice and new airtight packaging and added oxygen-removing inserts, which also extended the products’ shelf life,” Ito says. The company came up with the solution just as regional and national government officials came knocking. After Onisi landed the contracts, other food producers began selling their own alpha rice. Today, alpha rice accounts for 40 percent of all disaster food and drink sales, and Onisi remains the top producer.

The spike in demand for dehydrated rice triggered a flood of new products. At first it was small food brands selling familiar dishes like beef curry, nikujaga, and hamburger steak. After tremors shook Niigata Prefecture in 2004 and a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated the northeastern Tohoku region in 2011, more products appeared. Vegetable soups, juices, stews, ramen, muffins, desserts, and potato chips showed up alongside items for people with dietary restrictions: canned liquid formula for infants, okayu and zōsui (rice porridge) for toddlers, easy-to-swallow gelatinous chicken and fish filets for seniors with dysphagia, allergen-free strawberry-flavored rice-flour cookies, and halal-certified nasi goreng (a type of fried rice popular in Southeast Asia).

Government offices, businesses, nursing homes, and hospitals were the main buyers for all these new items, but a series of recent quakes and floods, official calls for better disaster preparations, and the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning in 2020, led to a shift in the market.

“During the pandemic, many consumers bought disaster food in case a family member caught the virus and had to stay at home,” says Ikuo Nishina, a spokesperson for Satake, the Hiroshima-based producer of the alpha rice brand Magic Rice. Consumers now make up roughly 20 percent of the market, and surveys show that more than half of households in Japan have food reserves. By 2027, sales are forecast to be nearly 32 billion yen ($210 million), more than double the tally a decade ago, according to the Yano Research Institute in Tokyo.

Not all of the demand for saigaishoku comes from people prepping for the worst or stuck in disaster zones. Researchers living at Japan’s base on Antarctica and Japanese astronauts visiting the International Space Station eat disaster food. So do hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts.

“I’m Japanese. I want to have rice even when I’m in the mountains, and I’m not alone,” says Ken Noguchi, who became the youngest person to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents in 1995. “Climbers from other countries tell me how much they love Japanese disaster food. I know South Korean teams that fly to Japan to get their food before heading to the Himalayas. I take extra meals for my Sherpa guides.”

Yoshinoya

More recently, saigaishoku have become popular with busy parents looking for easy weekday dinners. They can browse hundreds of recipes for turning disaster foods into everyday meals on sites like Cookpad and Kurashiru, follow cooking courses and how-to handbooks, or find suggestions from food brands like Kagome and Ajinomoto. And then they can scroll through YouTube tasting videos, TikTok meal hacks, or Instagram storage guides.

Or they could just go out for a meal at Izameshi Dish in Tokyo’s central Ginza district. The restaurant, opened in 2021, serves the Izameshi brand’s 65 types of disaster food as hot dishes and sells the packaged products so anyone can recreate these meals at home.

That’s exactly what the Japanese government wants. In the last few years, it has been trying to get citizens to incorporate saigaishoku into their everyday lives and explore dishes in depth to better understand what to buy for their home supply. Agencies have encouraged people to build a “rolling stock” of canned and packaged foods, constantly using and replenishing their cache, and schedule themed saigaishoku dinners prepared under mock-disaster conditions.

When I asked Hara about this, he held up a container of what looked like canned tuna.

“Canned yakitori,” he said. “It’s a tasty snack that I can pop open if I’m having drinks. But in an emergency, it’s a valuable source of protein. There’s a limit to what you can do once a disaster hits. It’s better to constantly prepare or at least have in mind how you can adapt your lifestyle to an emergency.”

By the fifth day of eating disaster meals, I was feeling bloated. All of my saigaishoku were flavorful but oilier and saltier than I was used to. I was dying for a salad. I had to stop.

When I described my experience to Hara, he nodded knowingly. Months earlier, he delivered supplies to people in temporary shelters in Ishikawa prefecture following a powerful 7.5-magnitude quake.

“They had food, but it was a lot of rehydrated rice and curry, canned bread, and deep-fried food in bento boxes –– carbohydrates and oily food. That’s what local officials were giving them,” he said. “Eating this way for months can lead to constipation and loss of appetite. It’s a pattern we’ve seen repeatedly for decades.” To compensate, Hara’s group passed out vegetable juice boxes, vitamin supplements, and tofu that could be stored at room temperature for months. In 2019, the Ajinomoto Foundation, National Institute of Health and Nutrition, Japan Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters, and other groups launched an initiative to lobby municipalities to add food with fiber, vitamins, and minerals to their disaster reserves.

Onisi

Despite those efforts, news of the Ishikawa earthquake sparked a traffic spike on fast-food chain Yoshinoya’s e-commerce site, as people snapped up a canned version of gyū-don (beef bowl) with a three-year shelf life. It was a gut reaction by people who wanted to make sure they were stocked with dishes they liked to eat. Though their purchases may seem ill-advised, focused on just the sort of food that I had grown tired of eating from my family’s food reserves, bowls of gyū-don may be critical to have on hand in a disaster.

“Having familiar food can be a source of relief,” says Kazuko Okuda, professor emeritus at Konan Women’s University. In a disaster, a favorite food is among the few creature comforts available.

On a recent weekend, the lunch crowd at Izameshi Dish skewed young, a sign of the multigenerational appeal of saigaishoku. I considered the koji-marinated chicken and onions, but decided on the beef stew with chunky vegetables, rice, watercress, and a dollop of herb cream cheese. It was more of a watery gravy than a stew, but it wasn’t bad. I thought about how satisfying it would taste for a family at home without electricity, gas, or water. And it was a far cry from the oily, salty saigaishoku that previously filled my pantry.

Before leaving, I bought packets of ready-made ginger-pork, mackerel simmered in plum and ginger, and mochi with adzuki (sweet red bean paste) for my stash at home. Better safe than sorry.

Kenji Hall is an American journalist based in Tokyo. He is working on stories about rice culture in Japan for a book.

Additional photo illustration credits: hamburger steak packaging courtesy of Amano Foods; choco yokan package coutesy of Imuraya; biryani packaging coutesy of Onisi; onigiri package coutesty of Onisi; canned beef courtesy of Yoshinoya.