Nothing But Meals
——The half-year a lone-posted samurai wrote, in the year the chief minister was killed
The third day of the third month, first year of Man'en (1860). Outside the Sakuradamon gate of Edo Castle, the chief minister Ii Naosuke was cut down. That is the year the textbooks call “the turbulent end of the shogunate.”
Two months later, a single samurai came from Wakayama to Edo. Sakai Hanshiro, twenty-seven. A low-ranking samurai with a stipend of thirty koku. In Edo he kept a detailed diary almost every day for half a year. And what is written there is — nothing but meals. How many rice cakes he ate. That his rice came out hard. The night he blundered over eel.
This page retraces the delight of this diary the film (episode 6) couldn't hold, and the “history” behind it, using only verifiable facts.
① A samurai posted alone — who was Sakai Hanshiro 🟢 Confirmed
Sakai Hanshiro was born in 1834. A low-ranking samurai of the Kishū Wakayama domain, with a stipend of thirty koku, he belonged to the Suruga company of the Great Guard. Leaving his wife, Hiro, and his little daughter, Uta, back in Wakayama, he was called to Edo duty on the recommendation of his uncle, Ujita Heizō.
His job was the “emonkata” — the office of dressing the ceremonial robes. And it was idle work. In half a year he reported for duty just forty-seven days; even in August, the busiest month, thirteen days; in July, not once. And the working hours were about two to four hours in the morning. It was exactly this margin of time that gave rise to that enormous food-diary.
Source: the record of Sakai Hanshiro (Kishū Wakayama domain, 30-koku stipend, Suruga company of the Great Guard, emonkata, 47 days of duty total, no duty in July, uncle Ujita Heizō) — confirmed against primary texts, 2026.
What kinban (勤番) was — posted to Edo, alone; which is why the diary is all about food →
② A journey counting rice cakes — Wakayama to Edo 🟢 Confirmed
On the eleventh day of the fifth month, 1860, Hanshiro set out from Wakayama. Wakayama to Edo is four hours by train today. Then it was nineteen days on foot.
He went by the Nakasendō with his uncle. In Osaka he was held up by an unheard-of flood, yet still went sightseeing in the night town, and the next day watched theater all day long. At Kusatsu he had five of the famous Uba-ga-mochi, plus Shinohara-mochi, ankoro-mochi, warabi-mochi — eating rice cakes as he walked. And at Shiojiri Pass, he saw Mt. Fuji for the very first time. Because he walked, it appears suddenly beyond the pass.
The purpose of the trip — do you remember it? But this — the names of the rice cakes, how many he ate — it's all properly written in the diary.
Source: script v2 (the road account, five Uba-ga-mochi, Fuji at Shiojiri Pass) = matched against the transcription in Edo-Tokyo Museum Research Report No. 23. The 19-day journey = script Tier.
③ Three men sharing a row house 🟢 Confirmed
His lodging was a domain row house on Kiinokuni-zaka in Akasaka. With his uncle and a colleague, Ōishi Naosuke, it was three men living together. Cooking alternated day by day with Naosuke. Hanshiro wrote in his diary:
Since arriving in Edo, Naosuke's cooked rice is always like gruel; my own rice is always hard.
Side dishes each made to his own taste, by the rule. A shared house of a hundred and sixty years ago was like this.
Source: diary entry of 10/29, “Naosuke's cooked rice always gruel, my own rice always hard” = matched to the original on p. 86(37) of the Report.
④ A case file — horse mackerel, bonito, and the night of the eel 🟢 Confirmed
The gem of this diary is its many small incidents around food.
- The pilfered horse mackerel: at the end of July, given twenty-five dried horse mackerel by a neighbor, he tried to stew them with kelp for lunch — and his uncle ate half. Saving the rest for tomorrow's treat, the next morning his uncle was first to it and finished the lot.
- Bonito poisoning: at the start of August, a gift of bonito made them sick, and the uncle and Naosuke went back and forth to the privy all night. The diary: “guts turned upside down.” And yet a few days later, when a friend brought bonito again, Hanshiro cooked it and they all ate it clean. They never learn.
- The night of the eel: on 25 October, after two go of sake with a loach-and-pork hotpot, he went to an eel shop at Hitotsugi. Two bowls of eel, and two more go of sake. In high spirits he sang, rambled drunkenly, was scolded roundly by his uncle, sulked into silence, felt sick, threw it all up, and from there on “remembered nothing.” In all his time in Edo, the eel shop was this one time.
I'll say it plainly — this is a twenty-seven-year-old samurai, with a wife and child. …But I do sort of get it. Edo eel, after all.
Source: diary 8/1-2 “guts turned upside down” = Report p. 105(18) / 10/25 “two bowls of eel and two go of sake,” “scolded roundly by his uncle… all thrown up, and after that remembered nothing” = p. 87(36) / horse mackerel, end of July = p. 106(17). All matched by eye against the transcription pages.
⑤ A low-ranking samurai's food criticism 🟢 Confirmed
Hanshiro had a discerning palate. On 18 September, at a chicken-hotpot shop in Nihonbashi, when the meat came out tough, half-rotten, and foul, he sent it back after one bite and had it swapped for clam hotpot. His verdict on the “suiton” (dumpling soup) he tried on the way home:
By no means food for the likes of us.
Two days later, gazing at a riverside restaurant in Mukōjima, unable to pass its curtain on a low samurai's pay, he wrote:
So elegant it cannot be exhausted by brush or paper. Only enviable, entirely.
Even so — cherry-blossom mochi, Asakusa mochi, sushi, Gion tofu. Visiting shrines as he went, he ate, and ate, and walked.
Source: diary 9/18 “by no means food for the likes of us” = Report p. 95(28) / 9/20 “so elegant… only enviable, entirely” = same page. Transcription matched.
⑥ The year of the chief minister's assassination, and amazake 🟢 Confirmed
Here is the quietest highlight of this episode.
The 14th shogun in Edo Castle, Iemochi, had until two years before been Hanshiro's own lord. Iemochi came from the Kishū Tokugawa house of the three branch families (his earlier name was Yoshitomi). In that upheaval where Ii Naosuke was cut down outside Sakuradamon, it was Ii Naosuke and the Nanki faction who pushed this man to become shogun at thirteen. In other words, Hanshiro's domain stood at the very center of Japanese politics.
On the first of the sixth month, newly arrived in Edo, Hanshiro went to watch the castle procession and caught his breath at the train of his lord, Mochitsugu: “Such force that even a bird in flight would fall.” And on that same day, the first formal appearance of the heir of the Ii house — the house whose head had just been killed outside Sakuradamon — was also in that procession. The diary writes of it in a single line, and then — in the next line, he is drinking amazake.
The great tremor of history and a single cup of amazake, side by side on the same day, on the same paper. Most people who lived through the end of the shogunate did not draw a sword or leave a name; they cooked today's meal. This diary tells us that, quietly.
Source: diary 6/1 “such force that even a bird in flight would fall” + “Ii too, the heir went forth from this day; then, drank amazake” = Report p. 118(5). Iemochi = 13th lord of Kishū domain to 14th shogun (Nanki faction, Ii Naosuke's backing) = confirmed from primary sources, 2026.
⑦ After the diary closed
Wakayama →(Nakasendō, nineteen days)→ Edo, Kiinokuni-zaka, Akasaka → the food-walks of Mukōjima and Asakusa / present location = Edo-Tokyo Museum
On the last day of the eleventh month, the diary ends abruptly. Hanshiro finished his duty and went home to his family in Wakayama. Not a journey across the sea like Uehara's or Maruta's, but half a year of one low-ranking samurai who walked the Nakasendō and back. That paper is now in a museum in Tokyo.
…So, this man — what do you suppose became of him? That's in ⑧. It's rather a nice story.
⑧ In more detail — differing accounts, and what could not be verified
A light episode, but we don't cut corners on the certainty of facts. Where things are uncertain, we write “uncertain” and include them anyway.
🟢 Confirmedbacked by primary/secondary sources 🟡 Disputedsources or scholars differ ⚪️ Unverifiedplausible, but without evidence
1. The reading “Hanshiro” is, in fact, a guess 🟡 Disputed
Honestly, from the reading of the name. To read “酒井伴四郎” as “Sakai Hanshiro” is in fact a guess. There is no certain reading in the records of the time (his given name — his true name — is known to be “Akitsune”). The same problem we had with Maruta Toshimichi's “年道” is here too. Even one samurai's name is not simple to confirm.
Source: the record of Sakai Hanshiro, “the reading of the name is a matter of conjecture” / given name Akitsune = confirmed from primary sources, 2026.
2. What survives is half a year 🟢 Confirmed
Hanshiro's Edo duty ran from the sixth month of 1860 to the first month of the next year, but the diary that survives now is the half-year from the sixth to the eleventh month. That we can say “nothing but meals” is thanks to this half-year of record. Part of the diary from his later, second Edo posting has also been found separately. The figure “195 days” is the rough count from his departure from Wakayama; the diary itself has this half-year as its core.
Source: the surviving range of the Sakai Hanshiro diary (the half-year, sixth to eleventh month of 1860 / fragments of the second posting also found) = confirmed from primary sources, 2026.
3. Where it was found is not settled 🟢 Confirmed ⚪️ place of discovery unverified
The story of how this diary came to light, as far as could be confirmed. The historian Hayashi Hideo discovered this diary, entrusted it to Takeuchi Makoto, and in 2008 Takeuchi donated it to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. In 2010 the museum published, in the transcription of Takeuchi Makoto and Ishiyama Hideo, Research Report No. 23: The Sakai Hanshiro Diary — Facsimile and Transcription. This is the base text this article matched its quotations against.
But where the volume was actually found has not been confirmed. There is a tale that “it was found in a secondhand bookshop in Nagoya,” but no firm backing has been found. What is certain is the transmission up to “Hayashi Hideo discovered it, and via Takeuchi Makoto it reached the museum.”
Source: the discovery, donation, and transcription (Hayashi Hideo's discovery → Takeuchi Makoto → 2008 Edo-Tokyo Museum donation / 2010 transcription publication, Takeuchi Makoto / Ishiyama Hideo) = confirmed from primary sources, 2026. Backing for the place of discovery not obtained = ⚪️.
4. The “food-diary” reading was popularized by Aoki Naomi 🟢 Confirmed
The one who made this diary widely known as “a food-diary of the late shogunate” is the food-culture historian Aoki Naomi. His 2005 book Posted Alone at the End of the Shogunate: A Low-Ranking Samurai's Food Diary (later Chikuma Bunko) lit the fire. This article's angle of “nothing but meals,” too, is in the lineage of that reading. Earlier still, in 1972, Shimamura Taeko analyzed this diary in a paper on the realities of low-ranking samurai life. Research came first, and this delight stands on top of it.
Source: research history (Shimamura Taeko 1972 paper in Shien / Aoki Naomi 2005 Posted Alone at the End of the Shogunate / 2014 Documents Relating to the Kishū Domain Samurai Sakai Hanshiro) = confirmed from primary sources, 2026.
5. Why is such a diary valuable 🟢 Confirmed
For samurai, it tends to be the records of activists and lords that survive. But a record in which a low-ranking, nameless samurai wrote down even his daily meals in detail is very rare. And Hanshiro wrote the price of everything he ate. Thanks to that, we can reconstruct both Edo prices and a low samurai's household budget. His income for a year was thirty-nine ryō, his spending about twenty-three ryō, his offerings at shrines four to eight mon. A careful man's household ledger is, just as it is, a source for economic history. Scholars value it across a wide range of fields — political history, information history, tourism history, dress history, food-life history.
Source: the diary's price records and household budget (income 39 ryō, spending ~23 ryō, offerings 4–8 mon) = script Tier check / the scholarly assessment by Fujimoto Seijirō = confirmed from primary sources, 2026.
6. What became of Hanshiro afterward 🟢 Confirmed ⚪️ year of death unknown
Hanshiro's life after the diary closed is also somewhat known. About three years later he took up Edo duty again and also served in the Second Chōshū War. He took part in the fighting against the Chōshū domain but returned to Wakayama without injury. In 1866 he rose to squad leader, and the next year to an inner-attendant post. He lost his wife Hiro to illness, remarried Fuki in 1869, and had a first son. Back home, he passed his time weeding the garden, attending haiku gatherings, and playing go. That samurai who walked counting rice cakes survived the upheaval of the shogunate's end and lived quietly into the Meiji era. When he died, though, the year of death is not known.
Source: Hanshiro's later life (1865 re-posting → Second Chōshū War service, no injury → rose to squad leader and inner attendant → 1869 remarriage) = Shimamura Taeko's paper and others, confirmed from primary sources, 2026. Year of death unknown = ⚪️.
Sources (whole page)
- Edo-Tokyo Museum Research Report No. 23: The Sakai Hanshiro Diary — Facsimile and Transcription (transcription by Takeuchi Makoto and Ishiyama Hideo, 2010) = base text for matching quotations
- Aoki Naomi, Posted Alone at the End of the Shogunate: A Low-Ranking Samurai's Food Diary (2005 / Chikuma Bunko 2016) / Shimamura Taeko, The Realities of a Low-Ranking Samurai's Life (Shien vol. 32, no. 2, 1972)
- The record, transmission, and later life of Sakai Hanshiro (stipend, emonkata, 47 days of duty, discovery and donation, Chōshū service, promotion, remarriage) = confirmed against primary texts, 2026
- Iemochi = 13th lord of the Kishū domain to 14th shogun (Nanki faction, Ii Naosuke's backing) = confirmed from primary sources, 2026
This channel does all source selection, fact verification, and interpretation and final judgment of language by human hands. Parts of production (voice synthesis, image stylization, translation assistance) use AI. See our production principles.
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The facts in this article rest on primary sources and the (verified) episode scripts. The quoted diary was confirmed by matching against the transcription pages of Edo-Tokyo Museum Research Report No. 23. The quoted diary is a document whose copyright term has expired.
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