Japan Rice and Imported Rice: Updated March 29, 2025

Tariffed imported rice still popular, cheaper than Japan's domestic grain

Article source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250315/p2a/00m/0bu/007000c

Ideas:

As domestic prices continue to increase in Japan and especially as rice prices continue to increase, despite the government attempt to increase rice supplies price remain high.

There is something amiss related to continue high rice prices in Japan as the governments attempt to increase supplies which should, in normal supply and demand, begin to lower prices.

So Japanese households and consumers are beginning to look for rice substitutes such as the cheaper Vietnamese rice products seem to getting more popular as Japanese rice prices are not decreasing.

Globally, maybe still for some consumers, domestic products are preferred but these days all countries and economies have available to them more choices than ever before, including a variety of foreign products.

And as Japanese rice prices continue to remain very high, Japanese consumers maybe have had enough and they need and want cheaper rice, even if its foreign rice.

There is the ideas or absolute and comparative advantage, and if something can be made in another country, of similar quality at a lower cost, why not buy that product, such as again, rice made in Vietnam.

It seems, according to the article, that Vietnamese rice has become very popular as maybe Japanese rice, for some or many has prices itself out of the market for some Japanese consumers, and it seems it has become so popular that the company selling it has to limit the amount sold to customers.

The question remains what do Japanese suppliers of rice think about companies now selling foreign rice in Japan, as for a very long time, the rice market in Japan was highly restricted to only Japanese rice and or the tariffs of foreign rice was so high Japanese consumers couldn't afford foreign rice, so the market was for the most part a Japanese rice product market only.

|Most likely Japanese restaurants buy a lot of foreign rice as it cheaper than Japanese domestic rice, which helps to keep the cost down for their customers.

Most likely, before the rice shortage of the summer of 2024, most Japanese might not have thought about buying foreign rice as they preferred Japanese even though foreign rice is cheaper even with the tariff on it, or maybe have even thought the taste of foreign rice was not as good as Japanese domestic rice.

It, again, prices can change people mindset and even preferences and as the price of rice continue to b high in Japan, maybe for example the middle class, the lower middle class, and the fixed income groups are now looking for foreign rice to buy as its cheaper.

According to the next paragraph is it seems to import rice that the Japanese government sells at auctions has become very popular as Japanese households, Japanese restaurants are buying a lot of foreign rice as again the price of Japanese domestic rice just continues to remain very high for most Japanese households. 

Lets hope that Japanese rice suppliers and those selling foreign rice in Japanese supermarkets are not going to get greedy and increase the price, too much, despite demand increasing for foreign rice.

And lets hops the Kanematsu Corp. will also not get greedy with the selling of Calrose, US rice, as if the company starts to get too greedy it defeats the purpose of providing a good product in the market at a reasonable price for all in society.

Perhaps one of the good things to come out of the summer 2024 rice shortage and continued high prices of rice as it became an incentive for Japanese households and Japanese restaurants to find alternatives to the high priced Japanese rice and the foreign rice that was being imported has now become popular with some customers and maybe in the future it will give Japanese households a variety of choices too buy instead of just Japanese domestic rice.

Yes, again, it seems the rice market is almost in a state of market failure as for some reason, despite the attempt of the Japanese government to import foreign rice and the Japanese government releasing its store of rice reserves the price of rice in the rice market continues to high despite supplies improving.

In a market failure the normal workings of supply and demand are constrained by one or more other actors related to the market. It could be rice suppliers, it could be auctioneers at auctions it could other middlemen who are forcing the rice prices to remain high despite the increased supply which should in normal supply and demand actions bring the price down.

Have a nice day!