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Even after Western influences began from the mid-19th century to penetrate Japanese culture, traditional pickles continued to be an indispensable accompaniment, almost like butter is to bread, to the staple rice or barley diet of the Japanese populace. There would be a large pot of salted rice-bran paste in every kitchen yard, and the pickling of plums in summer, and various vegetables at the end of autumn was part of the annual routine of every housewife.
After the 1960s, the advent of supermarkets, mass retailing, and refrigerators in every household had a big effect on tsukemono. With the spread of supermarkets, self-service superceded assisted over-the-counter service, and the pre-packaging of small quantities of food became increasingly standard practice. The odor and wetness of pickles used to make them a very troublesome foodstuff to deal with, but the emergence of polythene and other synthetic wrapping materials enabled not only the packaging of small quantities for easy carriage, but also low-heat sterilization of the packaged product. By providing long-term protection against decay, these technologies had the effect of vastly expanding the market for tsukemono. And with speedier distribution facilitating the marketing of regional varieties nationwide, many uniquely flavored home-made tsukemono which had been limited to particular localities underwent transformation into mass-produced products of nationwide appeal. Over the past ten years, the average annual production of tsukemono has been between 1.1 to 1.2 million tons. In monetary terms the market is about 1.5 times the size of that for bread or chocolate, and 3.7 times that for cheese, which goes to show how deeply entrenched tsukemono are in the Japanese diet. |
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| Vacuum packing makes it possible to preserve the freshness of local pickle varieties, made with locally grown vegetables, while delivering them to households throughout the country. |
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