Today we welcome a new title into the Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute series: Nourishing Life: Cultures of Food and Health in Early Modern Japan by Columbia PhD Joshua Schlachet, published this week by the University of Hawai’i Press.
Joshua Schlachet is an assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. A historian of early modern Japan, he specializes in the cultural history of food and nutrition; Nourishing Life is the culmination of more than a decade of research into the history of Japanese food culture.
The book traces the rise of popular interest in dietary advice that overtook Japan in the 18th and 19th centuries as a wave of pamphlets, brochures, and other publications promoted a form of well-being known as “nourishing life,” which eventually grew to encompass moral cultivation and economic productivity.
Nourishing Life is only one manifestation of Dr. Schlachet’s interest in food and culinary culture. In late 2025 the University of Arizona awarded him its $20,000 Dorrance Dean's Award for Research & Entrepreneurialism for the project “Eating Right Everywhere: Toward a Unified Program for Culinary Humanities.” The initiative aims to unite scholars in the humanities with practitioners in health and nutrition to reimagine healthy eating in a worldwide context.
Dr. Schlachet earned a PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in 2018 and holds an MA (Japanese Studies) from the University of Michigan and BA (History) from Cornell University. His previous publication is the co-edited volume Interdisciplinary Edo: Toward an Integrated Approach to Early Modern Japan (Routledge, 2024), a collection of 14 essays on the Tokugawa period (1603–1867).
A hearty Omedetou gozaimasu to Dr. Schlachet on the release of Nourishing Life! Watch this space in the weeks and months ahead for more on his book and other new titles in the Weatherhead Studies series.
