Taking lunch from home to school or work is a habit in many parts of the world. Watching the Japanese bento in anime, you may well find things that look a lot like your own lunch.
On the other hand, the pink stuff on top of the rice, the sausages cut to look like octopuses, the boxed meals people eat on trains: those probably deserve a bit of explanation.
So let's use real anime scenes as a way in, and look at what goes into a Japanese bento, and at the relationships that form around it.
At school, at work: bento is everyday food
A bento is a meal packed into a container so you can carry it. In Japan it's the normal lunch students take to school and adults take to work.
Many people picture rice with tamagoyaki (rolled omelette), karaage (fried chicken) and some vegetables. A classic of children's lunches is the tako-san wiener, "Mr. Octopus sausage": a small sausage slit at one end so the "legs" curl out when it's fried. But there's no fixed form. It can be onigiri or sandwiches, or last night's dinner packed into a box. Sometimes a family member makes it, sometimes you make it yourself. A lunch bought at a convenience store or a bento shop is a "bento" too.
One thing worth knowing: Japanese students don't all bring a bento every day. Most elementary and junior high schools serve school lunch (kyūshoku). The bento lunch break you see in anime is mostly a high school scene. (See: MEXT, school lunch implementation survey.)
Bento scenes in anime
My Neighbor Totoro — a family's life in a lunchbox. Satsuki makes a bento not just for herself but for her little sister Mei too: rice topped with fish, beans and pink sakura denbu, sweetened fish flakes dyed pink, a common way to add colour to a lunchbox. A simple lunch. With their mother in hospital, it shows how much of the household Satsuki has quietly taken on. For Mei, it's a small box made just for her. The food tells you about the sisters as much as about lunch.
Toradora! — is a bento a cooking contest? The OVA Bentō no Gokui ("The Secret of Bento") is an episode built around lunchboxes. Ryūji, a skilled cook, gets competitive when Kitamura shows up with a lunch made by his grandmother, and throws himself into making bento. How impressive a lunch is as cooking and how happy it makes the person eating it aren't always the same thing. Watch it asking "who is this for?" and it leaves a warm feeling.
Sweetness & Lightning, episode 1 — a cherry-blossom bento, and who you eat it with. Kōhei and his daughter Tsumugi meet a high school girl, Kotori, while out viewing cherry blossoms. Her mother was supposed to come with her but couldn't, so Kotori is eating her bento alone. A good lunch, and an empty space where someone should be sitting. The scene shows how much the person beside you matters.
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train — Rengoku's bento and the railway trip. Plenty of people remember Kyōjurō Rengoku eating bento after bento and shouting "Umai!" ("Delicious!"). His gyūnabe (beef hot-pot) bento has even been recreated in an official collaboration. Before the fighting starts, the story stops for something completely ordinary: opening a lunchbox on a train.
Once you start looking, bento turn up in almost every anime about school or family: Sailor Moon, H2, Crayon Shin-chan, Chibi Maruko-chan, Sazae-san, Atashin'chi, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War and many more.
The fun of not knowing what's inside
The best thing about a bento is that you don't know what's in it until you lift the lid. When a parent packs it in the morning, you often have no idea until lunchtime. If your favourite is in there, the whole afternoon gets better. Mine was beef.
Then there's the onigiri. The nori wrapped around it in the morning has gone soft and damp by noon, and I loved that soggy, clinging seaweed. It's nothing like the crisp nori on a convenience-store onigiri. You only get it from a lunch made at home.
Swapping side dishes with friends was part of the fun too. One piece of omelette for one piece of fried chicken: a small lunchtime trade.
A homemade lunch, and still jealous of yours
A character who brings a bento every day will sometimes gaze longingly at a friend's bakery bread or convenience-store onigiri.
I was exactly like that. I envied friends who bought lunch at the convenience store, because they got to eat things that never fit in a lunchbox, like cold hiyashi chūka noodles or pasta.
It isn't necessarily that the bento tastes bad. You want something different, something you chose, the same thing your friends are eating.
In school anime you'll hear about the gakushoku (school cafeteria) and the kōbai (the school shop). The moment lunch break starts, students sprint for the most popular bread rolls. Those scenes turn shopping into a school event, and the ferocity of the bread war is part of the fun, exaggerated as it is.
It works the other way too. The character with the bought lunch dreams of a friend's homemade one. Everyone else's lunch looks a little special.
Embarrassed to open it?
Someone eats with the lid propped up, hiding what's inside. When you see that in an anime, ask what they're worried about.
Maybe they think their side dishes look plain. Maybe a cute, decorated lunch feels childish at their age. Maybe they made it themselves and don't want anyone to see.
There was a kid in my class who ate like that, lid up, keeping the contents out of sight.
A bento shows what a family eats and what the person who made it likes. Opening it in front of everyone means letting people see a little of your life at home.
What "let's eat together" means
In lunch scenes, who you eat with can matter as much as what you eat.
Bocchi-meshi is casual slang for eating alone. Eating alone doesn't mean someone is bullied or lonely, though. Some people want a quiet break; some just don't line up with their friends that day.
Benjo-meshi, "toilet lunch", means eating in a toilet cubicle. Anime sometimes ties it to bullying or isolation, and behind it can be the feeling of not wanting to be seen eating alone. It is not a normal habit among Japanese students. (See: Benesse Educational Research and Development Institute, survey on university students' lives.)
When an isolated character is finally asked "Want to eat together?", it hits hard, because an invitation to share lunch also says I want to spend this time with you.
Field trips, picnics, and ekiben
Bento isn't only for school and work. It's the food for days out: school trips, sports days, picnics, cherry-blossom viewing. The same omelette and onigiri taste special when the view and the company change.
On journeys, there's ekiben: bento sold at stations, made for train travel. Many use local meat, seafood or regional dishes, so you can taste a place on the way through it. You open one in your Shinkansen seat and eat watching the scenery go by. Rengoku's "Umai!" belongs to that same pleasure. (See: JR East's ekiben listings.)
The day after a marital fight...
A bento can also carry the cook's anger.
The day after a fight, a husband opens his lunchbox at work: plain white rice and nothing else. Or the word hansei ("reflect on yourself") spelled out on the rice in nori. Lunches like this get talked about as shikaeshi bentō, "revenge bento". It isn't a habit every household has. Think of it as a funny story, anger made visible.
The usual side dish is missing, and that alone tells you yesterday's argument isn't over. On the other hand, if his favourite is still in there the day after, maybe that's an apology. A bento can say what words don't.
We grew up on bento
Next time a bento appears in an anime, look past what's inside: who made it, where it's eaten, and who's sitting next to the person eating it. The look on someone's face as they lift the lid might be holding their whole story.
A bento on a school trip, a bento at school, a bento at work, a bento on a train, a bento on a mountaintop, a bento in the park, a bento after club practice. We grew up on bento.
Tokyo Station sells ekiben from all over Japan. If you visit, pick one out and find your own favourite.
More everyday Japan through anime: why anime characters meet at the station, Japanese school club culture, why so much anime is set in school, the food-tero anime that make you hungry.
Sources and notes
- School lunch (kyūshoku) in elementary and junior high schools: MEXT (Ministry of Education), school lunch implementation survey
- Eating alone and benjo-meshi: Benesse Educational Research and Development Institute, survey on university students' lives
- Ekiben: JR East ekiben listings
- Rengoku's gyūnabe bento: official Demon Slayer collaboration
Scene descriptions are from the episodes named. "Revenge bento" stories are a popular joke and a talked-about phenomenon, not a common household practice.