The Food and Farming of a Japanese Peasant
In medieval Japan, a usual meal for a peasant was vegetables, rice and fish, which was used to make pottage. Pottage is a thick soup or stew consisting of mainly vegetables and sometimes meat. They gave there first amounts of the meal to their lord, and on a good day they would eat about twice a day. On a bad day, they ate nothing.
Farmer peasants had two types of crops: a spring and a fall crop, the spring crop consisting of vetches(herbs), rice, peas and beans. The fall was mainly rice. The food was also used to feed livestock such as oxen.
Since meat was often too expensive for a peasant family, vegetables such as bok choy and edamame were a very important part of their diet. These root vegetables were eaten by the peasants that were more well off. The poor however, did not have much else than rice.