Japan May Core Consumer Prices: Updated June 21, 2025.

Japan's core consumer prices in May rise 3.7% on surging rice costs

Article source:  https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250620/p2g/00m/0bu/009000c

Ideas

Japan is a resource poor country, which means they have to import much of what the need including gas, oil, and anything needed to make things including some food products.

And then if you add in the weak Japanese yen, that makes imports prices even higher which means Japanese households have to pay even more.

Rice is separate problem as there seems to be something amiss  with rice supply chain in Japan maybe some of the suppliers might be acting like they are a cartel and trying to control the rice prices.

Most central banks would like to keep inflation around the 2 percent level and they feel its a manageable level and its a good gauge of how an economy is operating.

Too high and an economy might be overheating and too low an economy is not operating efficiently.

The Japanese government, years ago, should have put some price controls on key factors that affect everyday Japanese households and a way to relieve the stress on Japanese families.

Something is amiss again with the Japanese economy has maybe other economies have begun to see inflation decreasing but not in Japan for some reason.

There is the possibility that maybe there are problems with some Japan supply chains that are either acting like cartels or the fact that the Japanese supply chains are too multilayered which means each time a product moves from one middleman to another middleman the price goes up on the product and when it goes to the final customer the price has increased a lot.

There might not be a rice shortage if the Japanese government released all of its reserve rice and actually shipped it to supermarkets and not though the normal supply chains channels with increases the price too much.

But then there is the problem of the media supposedly saying the reserve rice doesn't taste as good as the name-brand rice that many Japanese consumers like.

it's possible that the medial suggesting that the reserve rice is/was not as good as the name-brand rice might be the result of traditional rice producers aiding the media to make such comments as a way to get Japanese consumers to keep buying the traditional rice despite the price being very high.

There is also the problem of maybe shipping costs. globally have increased a lot since the pandemic as shipping companies too lost a lot of revenue and also the fact that oil and gas prices have increased a lot for shipping companies.

Then there is the idea that agricultural products are subject to good growing seasons and not so good growing seasons,which might be the reason for the decreases in cabbage prices and also part of the problem for the high rice prices.

Good growing seasons might result in lower prices and not so good growing seasons might result in higher prices.

Rice is supposed to be a main staple in the Japanese diet so what has happened where the main food staple in Japan has seen prices increase so much, as maybe someone or some group is/are acting in their own self interests and not in the interest of Japanese society.

Why has it taken almost a year for the Japanese government to figure out how to solve this problem as the problem originated about a year ago.

Again, if rice in Japan is such an important food staple why has the Japanese government allowed the situation to last as long as it has.

There is the idea of maybe price controls to help Japanese families could have been used a long time ago as a way to lower the price of rice and any other important food staple such as eggs, bread, noodles and some meat not to mention needed fruits and vegetables.

Most likely the high energy prices that climbed 8.1 percent might have been too much for Japanese families and they had to cut back on something such as not buying durable goods such as air conditioners.

All of these prices increases on many products means that some or many Japanese households have less disposable income to use in the Japanese economy which then means less consumer spending to help increase the Japanese economy grow.

The service sector which usually doesn't mean the selling of tangible products but intangible products or services, so they usually don't pass-on their costs to the customer but they do pass on their wage increases to the final customers as service sector companies usually have very thin profit margins and need to maintain those profit margins to stay in business.

Have a nice day!