26-04-2025
VOX POPULI: A trip down memory lane: When milk came in glass bottles
Writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa was born in 1892. In his 1925 autobiographical novella 'Daidoji Shinsuke no Hansei' (Shinsuke Daidoji: The Early Years), he wrote that he was raised on cow's milk from the moment of his birth.
After all, his father was the manager of a dairy product company that raised cows for milk in Tokyo's Tsukiji and Shinjuku districts.
Milk was delivered daily to the Akutagawa household. As the author recalled seeing glass milk bottles for the first time when he was a toddler, he may well have awakened some mornings to the comforting sound of glass bottles clinking.
Even items that are cutting-edge cool will eventually disappear. Last month, food giant Meiji Co. discontinued the sale of bottled milk and coffee drinks after nearly a century of history.
With demand for these products declining, the company determined that securing a steady supply of glass bottles would become difficult in the days ahead.
I have not had milk in a glass bottle for years, but am really missing it now. It's never easy to break free from nostalgia, I suppose.
The house I grew up in was next to a tofu shop. In the predawn hours when stars were still shining, I would hear the roar of the shop's soybean boiler being ignited. And before long, it would be joined by the rattle of the newspaper delivery motorcycle, followed shortly, as if in competition, by the clinking of milk bottles.
Feeling the heft of the bottle on my fingertips, I would touch my lips to the cool, thick and rounded mouth of the bottle. And while chugging my milk down, I would try to gauge, with my eyes, how much was left.
There is no way I can adequately describe how utterly wonderful milk tasted, straight out of a bottle. What made it so? Milk is milk, whatever container it comes in. Still, the bottled milk definitely tasted different.
A poem by Sasara Kura goes to the effect, 'Swigging milk, I infuse my body with new, pure white hours.'
I fondly recall summer holidays in my childhood when, walking home from school after a club activity and gazing around through a transparent milk bottle, the pure white hours ahead of me felt like they would go on forever.
--The Asahi Shimbun, April 6
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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.
