Price of rice in Japan falls below ¥4k per 5kg

But as someone who's tried many varieties of Japonica, there is a difference between the best Japan-grown rice and non-speciality rice grown elsewhere, as well as a difference between fresh (Japanese enjoy eating new rice, which is different from many rice-eating cultures) and old rice.

I pay somewhere around AUD$14/kg for Japanese rice in Australia, but I also don't eat it that often and I'm not that price sensitive.

But also, the average Japanese eats around 1kg of uncooked rice per week. That's ¥800 at the rates in the article (~USD$300/year). Japan's cost of living is generally pretty low, but I doubt +/- $100/year is effecting many people.

That's gonna be crunchy

Also as an East Asian I can somewhat understand reluctance to change rice. It’s just such a staple in your daily life. If I had eaten one type of rice for my entire life (and the price of the rice has remained stable for the last 40 years) and suddenly I can’t afford that type of rice, it would be a shock.

the rice demand in Japan is extremely inelastic, they would rather eat less than consume foreign brands, and a lot of this comes from the trust they have in their industries.

hardly something to ridicule Japan or suggest they depart from their cultural values.

On asking them where it comes from and it's always either local to the restaurant, or to the prefecture the owner grew up in.

There's a lot of local patriotism for rice in Japan, I even find it admirable most of the time.

Rice price is obviously important and probably linked pretty highly with inflation numbers in Japan. It's price is currently being artificially manipulated higher by JA, and that sucks. But I think ultimately most of these articles and even the local discourse with other Japanese is just a socially acceptable topic to grumble about.

But when the average bowl of rice is smothered in curry, demi-glace or egg, soy & sugar I don't think you could tell.

a 10kg bag of (AU-grown) koshihikari at Hanaromart (some Asian supermarket) is around 43 AUD right now IIRC. Could I tell the difference in blind tasting between it and just "normal" koshihikari off the shelf off a Japanese supermarket? Maybe, but maybe not. Not an argument for removing trade barriers, but the gap right now seems pretty stark.

I do feel like it's worth thinking about how you're saying 800 yen, but that might be per person. So for a 3-person family that's almost ~120k JPY per year. If you could cut that down to 90k JPY per year thats an extra 2500 JPY per month you can spend on food.

If you're the kind of person who only goes to the discount shops, an extra 2500 JPY per month can go a decent way on food. If you are on a pretty strict/limited food budget that 2500 JPY could go a long way.

Though of course like with eggs, etc, all food prices are just more obvious as well. And Japan has had really nasty inflation with energy + the weakening yen as well, so this is yet another thing that saps away at a budget where you're probably not saving that much to begin with.

Calrose does but its not as good as the japanese rice I've had. Though I dont live in Japan and its possible only the better quality rices are exported?

But as I also said, I can afford to pay more. I don't think the average Japanese is going to be effected. But as I mentioned, if you're budget conscious, not even considering non-Japanese rice is ridiculous.

Yes, but it's like somewhere between mineral water and coffee. That is, most can tell the difference when directly compared, and may even prefer one over the other, but in many cases they are interchangeable.

> Is one generally considered better tasting than the others?

IMHO, no, but you tend to prefer the type you eat most often. Going back to the coffee analogy, most people have a roast / style they prefer, but few would claim that it's better.

The equivalent is like French wine fans saying no good wine could be produced in California. Obviously that wasn't true, and there was a lot of propaganda trying to lead people to believe that it was.

I live in Japan, and my girlfriend is an atypical Japanese that doesn't like rice that much. For her, the madness is that people here won't even consider other sources of carbs like pasta, potatoes, or bread.

I actually appreciate Japan's strong preference for domestic foods; the positive health aspects, the cultural ties, the community building, and so on.

I don’t know if that is a drop in the bucket compared to their total consumption but their does appear to be an increasing appetite for foreign rice at the price points Japan is currently experiencing

[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Agriculture/Japan-s-May-ric...

I bet Japan's going to be internally forced to expand rice exports, not imports. Farmers must pay bills or else they go away, and people aren't going to eat imports. So farmers has to stay by either completely subsidized a la defense production, or by scaling out at paces permanently exceeding inflation. Maybe both. Extra production has to go somewhere but population is on decline, so it has to go somewhere beyond the seas.

Unless iPhone moment happens and the country's hit by vastly superior rice, which iOS was - iPhone had worse hardware with worse integration than any of local phones back then, but UI/UX was literally 5-10 years ahead of everything else, and it completely replaced the entire Japanese phone market helped by blatantly illegal marketing tactics. That's not happening so far with rice.

Can you tell the difference between Japanese brands or only between Japanese and non Japanese origin rice?

Is rice a significant percentage of food cost in Japan? Coming from a culture that uses less rice, the cost of price verses the cost of protein makes it just about a rounding error when cooking.

Now butter on the other hand has just about become a luxury good in New Zealand when it was once cheap, plentiful and extremely high quality.

If you told me to eat rice instead of bread I would probably be just as horrified

In the context of someone who is budget conscious typical meat prices likely place the vast majority of it entirely out of the question. Similarly a much larger proportion of calorie intake is likely to be made up by a nonperishable staple under those circumstances.

Granted familiarity itself can play a role when considering something unfamiliar. But when it comes to both rice and coffee I purchase what I do because I significantly preferred it to the variants I tried before it.

But in general, I’ve not found non-Japanese rice that tastes as good, although we don’t have much variety of non-Japanese Japonica around (I won’t get into the general homogenization issue of products in Australian supermarkets).

That sounds interesting - what did they do?

Domestic rice is a national security concern, not a financial one. Being fed by another country, even an ally, can turn pear-shaped very quickly. Is it that hard to imagine Trump threatening to starve Japan if they don't bow to his demands?*

> But also, the average Japanese eats around 1kg of uncooked rice per week. That's ¥800 at the rates in the article (~USD$300/year). Japan's cost of living is generally pretty low, but I doubt +/- $100/year is effecting many people.

Why the doubt? The average price of rice literally doubled YoY. For families that can be hundreds of dollars per month (yen equivalent) that they have to pull out of thin air, and that's in a country where the median wage is half of Australia.

* Yes, Japan already imports over half of its food, but rice is where the government decided to draw the line in the sand.

At the height of rice prices, rice cost about the same per kg as domestic chicken thighs. That's a problem when rice is meant to be an affordable staple food.

But it's Japan, so I imagine there's plenty of Showa who think all change is to be valiently fought and that not eating rice prevents you from being "proper" Japanese.

I'd used coffee as an analogy, because it's something that almost everyone drinks, has many varieties, but most generally aren't too picky about it. Alas, I'd underestimated the population overlap between HN readers and picky coffee drinkers. :-P

There's no absence of non-rice main meals in Japan; Wafu pasta is an entire category of Japanese pasta dishes whose name literally means Japanese Style Pasta. Udon, Ramen and Soba abound, and Kansai in particular has a large number of Konamon, flour-based meals and snacks (resulting from Allied food aid after the bombings).

In some ways, the reaction to suggestions of swapping out rice are like that redneck uncle of yours who is mad his Cardiologist told him to cut down on red meat because "what else am I supposed to eat?!" even though his wife does all the cooking and they already have pork/chicken/fish 3 nights out of 7. It's an identity thing; in some ways to eat rice is to _be_ Japanese.

This rice in Japan is cheap because it's coming out of storage.

I have deep Thai roots, and I don't think the same thing really exists there. Rice is just rice, and there are both old[0] and new[1] types of popular rice that are substantially different from the "standard" steamed white rice.

Maybe someone who’s Thai-Thai could chime in

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutinous_rice

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riceberry

Perhaps one strategy would be to find some economic use for the byproduct biomass from rice farming. Bioplastic is going to be the highest value-add; biofuel, except possibly aviation fuel, has a low price ceiling. This could effectively subsidize rice production without drawing from the public till.

Interesting to find out Thai doesn’t have something similar.

less farmers, hardly any automation, people moved to cities

I used to buy the rice grown in Fukushima prefecture because it was sold at a significant discount, during the short and financially disastrous period where I tried to immigrate there.

Imagine you have exactly 1 newborn in the latest generation. Then the prior generation must be composed of 2 ~20 year olds, 4 ~40 year olds, 8 ~60 year olds and 16 ~80 year olds. So you end up with a total ratio of 24:7 old (defined as 60+):young and a 24:6 or 4:1 retirement:working age (after we remove the 1 newborn). By contrast a fertility rate of 2 means each generation is the same size as the one prior so you end up with a 1:1 retirement:working ratio. And with positive population growth you have an exponential system with more workers than retirees

This is one of the main mechanisms through which fertility collapse drives economic collapse. Not only does your population shrink far more quickly than most realize, but you end up with the overwhelming majority of your remaining population being elderly. So yes - you have fewer people consuming resources, but you also have exponentially fewer people working those resources.

It's not, it's a consequence of some land reform policies that made sense after WW2 to take power away from the rich, but has meant that economies of scale for rice farming has suffered later on.

The median rice farm owner in Japan only is in charge of single digit acres, whereas in EU/US it's like tens or hundreds of acres. So it's harder to justify mechanisation since the economies of scale don't work out and the children of farmers don't want to continue working the farm after their parents are no longer able to because the ceiling of what the farm can produce is low and economic and social prospects are better elsewhere.

That's without even getting in to the JA and the fact that a lot of these farmers are part time.

It's a really complicated issue without a simple fix or cause like labour costs. Realistically these farms are going to have to get consolidated, which is something that is happening, but slowly.

I love Japanese food culture to bits, but figuring out when a bowl of rice is vital for a meal to even be considered a meal and when it is not is still a mystery to me after observing my wife and in-laws for more than a decade. Having been taught the "food pyramid" [1] line of thinking as a child, it just makes no sense to this gaijin how we can not substitute one source of carbohydrates with another, but I suppose that is what culture is for you.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Guide_Pyramid

Since 1995 Japan has been forced by the WTO to import a certain amount of rice tariff-free every year. Much of it doesn't even go to Japanese consumers, but rather to animal feed and strategic reserves. Prior to 2024, virtually all imported rice in Japan was imported to satisfy this requirement. Presumably that also includes the $63M of rice imported from Australia in 2023.

The tariffs do indeed have a massive impact, and until recently it was very difficult for consumers to even find imported rice in supermarkets.

[1] https://archive.is/0heNf#selection-2761.52-2761.373

PS -- We nearly always have rice with lunch and dinner, though. Japanese-grown. IMHO, it tastes very different from imported rice, and we HAVE tried.

Citation needed.

But if I lived somewhere where there are noticeable varieties of rice with local characters, it seems more fun to at least be open to trying them rather than stick with one for my life. Same with fresh pasta variations, olives etc in Italy, say.

Even for things like bread and coffee, I'll usually buy different kinds just to mix things up. Sourdough and Columbian today, rye and Ethiopian next week. I don't really have a "usual" of anything much that I'd be disturbed by changing to an alternative. Sometimes you get hits and occasionally misses, but that just means the you appreciate the hits more!

Primary reason: Trump. Secondary reason: quality.

This is my personal gold standard for yakisoba: https://sanyofoodsamerica.com/products/sapporo-ichiban-chow-...

But I’ve also seen “yakisoba” served up in US military mess halls and correctional institutions as little more than spaghetti noodles and hamburger as well.

I do like to use Japanese rice when making congee it tastes so much better.

It works out to 25% of the calorie need, ironically close to the amount supplied by beer in an estimate of a European medieval monastery.

https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+consumption+of+rice...

Same-same.

Interestingly, similar quotes seem to have been attributed to other royalty of other countries, well before the revolution.

Food isn't a commodity. I won't happily substitute nutriloaf for my lunch today.

That comes to about $1 a gallon on gas, which I have two thoughts about: (1) I don't think it would change people's behavior that much -- gas has been $1 higher at times in the past and it didn't discourage me from driving and I'm not rich, I wouldn't consider spending more than $25k on a car whereas I know people who think nothing of buying an $80k truck. (2) I think Americans are highly sensitized to price increases right now and I think it would politically impossible to add $1/gallon to the price of gas, people would complain they are all out of spoons or it is the straw that breaks the camel's back or something. I think even 10 years ago it might have been easier, but right now, forget about it.

[0] https://www.mashed.com/650241/the-mcdonalds-breakfast-item-y...

Neither English nor Indian and I would rate Naan bread right at the top if I had a choice.

That said, someone out there is purchasing the $1k gold audio cables and similar items. So I'll acknowledge that not all people fit that description.