Sushi. Onigiri. Kare Raisu. Ochazuke. Rice is the sticky, slightly sweet bedrock of countless Japanese dishes, and a symbol of the country’s history and culture. Now, it could cost Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru his job.
A months-long rice shortage has laid bare the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s agricultural policy flaws, ahead of critical elections on July 20. If the once-untouchable party loses control of the upper chamber of Japan’s parliament – as new polls project they will – it would deal yet another blow to Mr. Ishiba’s minority government, and could plunge Japanese politics into disarray.
Party leaders are working hard to smooth things over. In May, they slashed the price of stockpiled rice reserves practically in half, keeping the staple grain on the shelves for now, and have promised to overhaul the nation’s rice policy.
Why We Wrote This
Japan’s ongoing rice shortage is bringing greater awareness to farmers’ issues, and greater scrutiny to the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party, ahead of critical parliamentary elections.
Yet frustrated farmers and longtime policy critics crave greater accountability. It may not be enough to draw back voters, either; an NHK poll released this week shows Mr. Ishiba’s approval rating and support for the LDP each dropped by about 8% over the past month, sinking to 31% and 24% respectively. Indeed, some voters are still trying to wrap their heads around how their staple crop went AWOL in the first place.
“It does not make any sense at all,” says homemaker Nakasone Riki, pushing a cart through a Don Quijote discount market in Oyama, Japan. Inside the cart is a single, precious item: an 11-pound bag of reserved rice, costing $14.50, or about half the average market rate. It’s the first reasonably priced rice she’s been able to find in over a month, and the store limits each customer to one bag to discourage hoarding.
“If a situation like this continues, Japan would crumble,” she says.
Another test for the LDP
The shortage comes after a difficult few years for the LDP, which has ruled Japan for nearly 66 of the past 70 years.
The assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in 2022 put a spotlight on the party’s controversial ties with the Unification Church. A political fundraising scandal the following year led to several high-profile resignations and infighting. Last October, weeks after narrowly being elected leader of the fractured party, Mr. Ishiba tried to restore public confidence in the LDP by fast-tracking lower house elections. It backfired, with the ruling coalition – the LDP and its junior partner Komeito – losing their majority.
If the coalition loses control of the upper house on Sunday, Mr. Ishiba will likely face calls to step down.
In the lead-up to elections, several opposition parties have put rice policy front and center. The biggest, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, has vowed to improve the government’s system of compensating rice farmers for maintaining land and to invest in training new farmers, among other measures. New surveys project them winning in many areas of northeastern Japan, a granary region.
“Agricultural issues have … never come under close scrutiny before,” says Suzuki Nobuhiro, a professor of agricultural economics at Tokyo University’s Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
A former agriculture ministry official, Mr. Suzuki has had a busy few months on the media and public-speaking circuit, as Japanese people try to understand the shortage. He attributes the crisis to Japan’s controversial acreage-reduction policy, which for decades curtailed rice production in order to stabilize prices. On paper, this policy ended in 2018, but farmers say it’s continued unofficially with the government offering subsidies and other incentives to farmers who reduce their active farmland or switch to other crops.
The policy has left arable land abandoned, say critics, contributing to Japan’s worst rice shortage since 1993, when an unusually chilly summer tanked rice yields.
Back then, Japan had no reserve to cope with shortfalls, and was forced to import rice from Thailand, much to consumers’ chagrin.
This time around, the government was able to tap into nearly 1 million metric tons of stored, Japanese-grown rice – but after a few months, those reserves are nearly spent. Only 150,000 metric tons remain, which the agriculture ministry has not decided whether to release to the market.
Japan loves rice, but does it love rice farmers?
“We are facing a national crisis,” says Watanabe Emiri, a homemaker in Tokyo and undecided voter. She says she never thought much about farmers’ situations, and was taken aback by soaring rice prices this spring.
She recently caved and bought an 8.8-pound bag of U.S.-grown Calrose rice at AEON, a major supermarket chain, for about $20.
“It’s not bad at all,” she admits.
That may be music to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ears, as he threatens Tokyo with tariffs and pressures Japan to purchase U.S. rice – but not to farmers like Sugeno Seiju, who tends to sprawling, terraced rice fields in Fukushima.
“I would like the public to understand that rice farmers are working hard to protect the Japanese diet, the environment, and rural scenes,” he says. The average rice farmer in Japan is around 70 years old, and ekes out small incomes amid rising costs of fuel, farming equipment, and other essential supplies.
For Mr. Suzuki, supporting local farmers would mean abandoning the acreage reduction program once and for all. “Then, it would be very important for the government to hammer out measures that encourage efficient and stable farm management, and help retain farmers and attract new ones,” he says.
Mr. Sugeno thinks politicians like Mr. Ishiba and Agriculture Minister Koizumi Shinjiro are trying to save face before the elections – if the LDP pulls through, he doesn’t expect much to change. But he welcomes the attention that the shortage and upper house elections have brought to agricultural issues.
It’s a sentiment shared by Ms. Nakasone, back in the Oyama Don Quijote. She says the silver lining of this rice shortage is that it has exposed more voters – including herself – to rice farmers’ plights.
“We relied too much on the government” to educate us, she says. “Each person should be more aware of the issues.”
