Grain crash - Diners go cold on rice in haste of modern life

0.5% The proportion of Japan’s domestic rice production that gets sent overseas, despite a fi vefold increase in exports between 2014 and 2021

- Justin McCurry

The Dojima branch of Yoshinoya in Osaka is doing a roaring lunch trade. As one diner vacates their seat at the counter, another takes their place, while staff take just seconds to assemble the next order of the restaurant’s trademark dish: gyūdon.

I joined the rush, ordering a set lunch of seasoned beef and onion on rice, and side dishes of pickled cabbage and miso soup – all for an extremely affordable ¥632 ($4.50).

A bowl of gyūdon is the lunch of choice for time-poor office workers on a budget, even after the chain – which has about 1,200 outlets – raised the dish’s price in 2021 for the first time in seven years.

But the enthusiasm with which they demolish bowl after bowl of the salty, satisfying dish masks an unsettling trend for its staple ingredient: the Japanese are eating less rice than at any time in their history.

And washoku (Japanese cooking) purists are worried. A short walk from the restaurant, a stone sculpture of a giant grain of rice is a reminder of Dojima’s historical connection to the cereal that has long sustained the world’s third-biggest economy.