Have you ever stopped to look at and think about the packages you use every day? Not much attention is usually given to them. It would be normal for you to take notice of their contents but give little heed to the packages themselves. And yet, without packages, various foods would never reach you; and without good packaging performance, the quality of the food they contain could not be preserved. Without packages, our present-day diet would not exist. Foods and packages are as closely linked as that.

The package is a natural product of the wisdom garnered during mankind's long history, and packaging technology has grown with the progress of science: earthenware has continued to develop since mankind's earliest period; barrels and pails were used from medieval times until after the Second World War; canning techniques were developed for wartime food supplies; plastics technology has made it possible to reduce the weight of packages; the technique of packaging food in retort pouches came in answer to the needs of astronauts; and so on and so forth. Packaging has developed and advanced with the times to meet the requirements of each new age. And today, our affluent diet would be unthinkable if these "packaging revolutions" had not taken place.

In our own time, packaging must satisfy many requirements: improvements in the functions of food hygiene and food preservation, contributions to distribution, and from the point of view of protection of the environment, the production of packages which apply low loads to the ecosystem and are easy to recycle.

At the Institute, we keep our eyes on all these points and intend to take a fresh look at our food culture from the viewpoint of "packages". In the present exhibition, the meaning of packages and containers will be first examined, a brief overview of the history of Shoyu (Brewed Soy Sauce) containers will be presented, and the barrels typical of shoyu containers from the Edo period onward will be discussed in detail.