Sweetening the Empire: Sugar and Western-Style Confectionery in Modern Japan and Taiwan

This dissertation examines how Western-style confectionery such as caramel, chocolate, chewing gum, and other sweets became intertwined with Japan’s empire-building from the Meiji period (1868–1912) to the early postwar years. While there have been extensive studies on sugar labor, empire, and capitalism, this dissertation focuses on what happened after the sugar was harvested until it was manufactured into delicious confectionery goods. Using a wide array of sources from colonial and corporate archives, science magazines, trade journals, films, artworks, oral history, and diaries, I examine three major confectionery companies—Morinaga, Meiji, and Niitaka—and how the production and marketing of their commodities were entangled with Japan’s imperial expansion. The production process reveals the unexamined colonial networks through which these companies sourced raw materials like sugar, cocoa, and banana powder from Japan’s tropical colony, Taiwan. When these products were sold across the empire, they were marketed alongside messages that embodied Japan’s imperial ambitions and colonial ideology. During the total war (1937–1945), sugar and confectionery continued to play a significant role by sustaining soldiers’ stamina on the battlefield and enticing enemy children to develop affection toward Japan. Altogether, this dissertation argues that Western-style confectionery should be understood as a commodity of the Japanese Empire: its production expanded alongside the empire, while its sweetness, in turn, helped sustain imperial power by functioning as a form of “soft power.”