"The impetus behind the dramatic 'Food May Day' demonstrations of mid-May 1946 came from neighborhood rallies such as this, in which local housewives protested the government's miserable food delivery system. The straw-mat banner, reading 'Feed us enough so that we can work,' has a distinctly indigenous feel--calling to mind the rice riots that wracked Japan in the wake of World War I and that also were ignited by by grass-roots protests led by housewives."

From: Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999; 260.