Japan's Rice Woes Are Far From Over

This is a moment of reckoning, demanding a re-evaluation of long-held beliefs about food security.

- Walter Sim

Rice is so central to the Japanese identity that the word gohan means both "cooked rice" and "meal".

Yet with prices skyrocketing at home, some Japanese citizens travelling abroad are buying back bags of short-grain japonica.

The country's spiralling crisis stems from a perfect storm of factors: extreme weather, natural disasters, rising demand, anachronistic farming policies that seem misguided today and import barriers on foreign rice. Even tourists have been blamed.

Facing domestic prices of 4,260 yen (S$38) per 5kg of rice—the average nationwide price for May 19 to 25, as reported by the agriculture ministry—some travellers willingly endure the hassle of heavier luggage and Customs red tape for cheaper rice.

Counterintuitively, japonica rice is now cheaper in supermarkets in Singapore and South Korea than in Japan.

Despite this, Japan on May 30 announced ambitious plans to increase rice exports nearly eightfold to 353,000 tonnes in 2030, from 46,000 tonnes in 2024.

There are two objectives: to promote washoku (Japanese cuisine) abroad, and to protect farming livelihoods amid declining domestic consumption as dietary habits change and the population shrinks.

Still, rice has historically nourished generations, and remains an expected staple on dining tables and in bento boxes. This makes the ongoing shortage of shinmai (freshly harvested rice), which has dominated headlines since it began in August 2024, an emotive subject that can potentially turn sentiments against the government.

Japanese stores typically sell home-grown shinmai, with the 2024 harvest available from October 2024 to September 2025. But a poor harvest in 2023 has created a lingering shortage.

In a seismic change, this has prompted consumers to turn to less preferred komai (literally "old rice", or rice from previous harvests) and imports.