Hairs in old books isotopically reconstruct the eating habits of early modern Japan.

To complement literature-based historical knowledge of the eating habits of 17th- and 18th-century Japan, we analysed carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios (δC and δN, respectively) of human hairs embedded in cover paper of Japanese books printed during 1690s-1890s, taking regional and temporal variations into consideration. We purchased 24 book sets from second-hand book markets. Twenty-three sets contained enough human hairs, which were non-destructively extracted from the thick, recycled paper of the book covers and used to measure the δC and δN values, found to be identical within each book set.