The history of rice bran

Japanese people have always had rice in their
lives ever since the Jomon period when rice making started up to now.
Ordinary people started eating white rice from the late Edo period as
rice polishing technology developed and because cooking white rice
required less firewood than cooking brown rice.
When you polish rice, you always get some “rice bran.” From the times
when white rice became popular, people started utilizing rice bran in a
variety of ways, like using it as the bed of salted rice bran to make
Nukazuke, and so on.
Other than using it for food, people used to soak the “Nuka-bag” in the
water, a bag with rice bran in it, to wash the body using the bag and
its squeezed juice. Nuka-bags were used as an alternative for soap, and
until soap became available, it is said that bathhouses sold rice bran
and Nuka-bags for washing bodies.
People say that grandmothers who mix the bed of salted rice bran and
Japanese sake brewers have smooth and unwrinkled hands. It is said that
people had the conception that rice bran and rice had the effects to
make the skin beautiful at the time.

First known modern Cedar Enzyme Bath was established in the 1940s in Hokkaido, Japan