It is highly unlikely that Commodore Perry or any other of his crew had epicurean tastes, but the arrival of the Black Ships in 1853 signaled the start of an influx to Japan of foreign -- specifically Western -- food. With the subsequent opening of treaty ports and the Meiji Era's heady days of "bunmei kaika (civilization and enlightenment)," Japanese eating habits would never be the same.
Chocolate, ice cream, beer, wine, butter, soup and curry: A host of "exotic" foods made their first appearance in Japan at this time, though not all of them gained immediate popular acceptance.
However, no change was bigger than the erosion of the taboo on eating meat, especially after the emperor himself proclaimed in the early 1870s that he considered the shunning of animal flesh "an unreasonable tradition." Restaurants serving gyu-nabe and its close successor, sukiyaki, became the height of fashion for Japan's growing middle class.