Japan Households and Rice: Updated March 28, 2025.

Amount of rice bought by Japan households up despite soaring prices

Article Source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250323/p2g/00m/0na/002000c

Ideas:

As usual, even globally, anytime there is a fear of a shortage consumers/households will try to horde as much as they can. This was very common during the pandemic with things like tissue and or course face masks. 

It happened during the summer of 2024 when the Japanese government issued a potential earthquake warning and Japanese citizens rushed to the supermarkets to horde their favorite items or needed items out of fear, and rice was one of the biggest items that was horded.

Rice is an important food staple in Asia, and especially in Japan rice is almost a cultural product and its market is highly protected against foreign rice and there is significant tariffs on foreign rice imported into Japan.

It had been suggested that the younger generations were actually eating less rice that previous generations preferring to eat western style food over rice meals, but it might be a small and less significant idea at this time.

It can't be said that rice in Japan is cheap or inexpensive as it seems that the domestic rice market is heavily protected and because there is less competition based on price, domestic rice suppliers in Japan can charge as much as the market can bear in Japan, which of course might put a heavy burden on Japanese households and having to buy domestic rice, as again because of tariffs on foreign rice it costs too much, for the most part, to buy foreign rice so Japanese households are left with high-priced domestic rice.

To be fair, no one is forcing Japanese households to buy the expensive domestic rice, but maybe if given a choice, based on price, some might begin to buy foreign rice if it was much cheaper.

But like anywhere in the world, globally, consumers have preferences and maybe some or many feel Japanese domestic rice is superior to foreign rice and or they are used to eating Japanese domestic rice and don't want to try foreign rice or risk buying it.

In some countries, for some people, it might like consumer nationalism, meaning buy only Japanese products, but the world, for the most part, has changed and most countries have products, including food products, from countries everywhere these days.

In the summer of 2024 there was of course either a rice shortage due to not so good growing seasons, along with bad weather and some suggest bugs that affect rice crops might have been a problem.

And then there might have been a lag in response by the Japanese government and or are lack of communication in releasing the Japanese government rice reserves into the Japanese rice market as a way to stabilize rice prices.

You would think, based on basic supply and demand principles that once the rice market was flooded with the Japanese government rice reserves, then the prices of rice in Japan would begin to decrease, but that hasn't happened as maybe whomever is still keeping prices high in the market as a way to gain more profits.

And yes, as mentioned earlier, consumers worry about buying what they need and they begin to panic and begin to horde products such as rice in the summer of 2024.

In articles from the summer of 2024, it had been said that supermarkets had to impost limits on the number of bags Japanese consumers could buy such as one bag per customer, but that doesn't really prevent customers from returning later in the day and buying another bag of rice.

Sometimes consumers/customers are not logical, as they act out of fear for what they need and don't think about other consumers or citizens as there have always been articles and stories of consumers arguing over Christmas gifts, and maybe even during the pandemic arguing or fighting over face masks and or any other products that might have been short supply.

Most likely Japanese households/consumers were still worried about a rice shortage or the potential of another rice shortage as the reason for purchases exceeded the previous year's levels.

At the same time, even though new rice entered the market which should have reduce the price, prices didn't decrease most likely due to suppliers worrying about supplies so they kept the prices high on rice just in case.

Finally, maybe in December the worry about the supply among began to decrease so Japanese consumes might have stopped trying to horde rice at super markets.

The idea of an alternative staple might be because in the mindsets of many people once they find a food they like and enjoy or even need, they don't think there is any other foods that can satisfy them.

For example, in South Korea, many South Korean tourists feel they have to eat kimchee everyday and they bring it on vacation trips as they think they need to eat it daily. 

Of course the same maybe can be said about any other ethnic group and the foods they feel they need or want such as some Americans and McDonalds.

It might have been a good strategy to release Japanese government stockpiles, but other article have suggested the new supply of rice didn't bring down the price as it was reported some suppliers were actually holding back their rice supplies hoping the rice would go up.

This might have been completely avoided if the government had either released government supplies earlier and or put price controls on rice in the market to help Japanese households and especially those in the lower middle income, and low income, and fixed income groups in Japan.

Have a nice day!