Rice May Be Part of Japan’s Culture, But Fewer Are Buying It : Food: Japanese are eating less rice every year. One group is fighting back with an ‘I Love Rice’ campaign, promoting new products like rice pizza.

“Rice is the Japanese culture that has lasted for several thousand years. It is the Japanese people themselves,” Tomio Yamamoto, Japan’s new agriculture minister, declared as he took over his job.

Rice, however, is no longer the culture it once was. Indeed, Japanese are eating less of it every year. Farmers themselves are cutting consumption even faster than city dwellers. Not even 15 years of campaigns to promote rice consumption have halted the decline.

Now, the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives (Zenchu), with the backing of Yamamoto’s ministry, has turned to modern American rock ‘n’ roll to bolster rice’s fading fortunes.

Launching a three-year “I Love Rice” campaign at six major railway stations nationwide, young women performed aerobics to rock music played at disco-level decibels on a stage in front of nine video screens. The purpose was to attract commuters to displays of pamphlets, new rice-based products and samples of new rice dishes to propagate both the cultural and the nutritional value of rice.

Between performances at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo, an announcer declared that “rice is used in Japanese, Chinese, Southeast Asian and Western food, but bread is used only in Western food. Rice is nutritious for you.”

Among the pamphlets handed out to a crowd of about 200 commuters were “Rice and the Japanese” and “You, Too, Can Be Slim.”

After the aerobics, the audience was encouraged to participate in a quiz for prizes that included the question: “It is said that among Japanese, as compared with Americans, there are few obese people. Why? a) because Japanese sleep on tatami (straw mats); b) because rice is the main course of (Japanese) meals; c) because Japanese eat much meat.”

The correct answer: b.

The comparison to Americans was particularly appropriate because the United States is giving farmers major worries by pressing for an opening of the rice market. Japanese politicians have pledged not to allow “so much as a single grain” of foreign rice to enter.

American pressure, however, is a relatively minor problem compared to the one that the aerobic dancers were trying to combat.

“If we didn’t make efforts to promote the consumption of rice, the decline probably would be even more precipitous than it is now,” said Yoshiharu Fujii, consumption countermeasures director of Zenchu.

Since reaching a post-World War II peak in 1960 of 253 pounds per capita, annual rice consumption has been falling steadily. In just the fiscal year that ended in March, 1989, it fell 1.3%, to 156 pounds per capita.

Consumption now amounts to only 58% of the average in neighboring South Korea, where demand also is declining.

Fifteen years ago, when pro-rice propaganda began, agricultural cooperatives targeted wheat products as the enemy and banned bread from restaurants that they ran. But in 1980, when wheat consumption stopped increasing, the cooperatives discovered that the real culprits were dairy products and meat.

For the first time, Japanese in 1987 consumed more milk and dairy products than rice. Each citizen ate 166 pounds of milk and dairy products in that year, twice the amount consumed in 1965, compared to 158 pounds of rice, about half of the all-time rice-consumption record set in 1939.

In percentage terms, consumption of meat has been growing even faster--tripling since 1965 to reach 60 pounds in 1987.

It’s not that the Japanese liking for rice has changed, said Katsushi Hashimoto of the Food Management Agency’s rice consumption countermeasures section.

“But after eating all those dairy products and meat, there’s no room left in the stomach for rice,” he complained. Calorie intake, at about 2,600 a day, is just about what it should be from a dietary viewpoint, he added.

Despite the convenience of automatic rice cookers, young people in their 20s who live alone before marriage think that cooking side dishes that go with rice is too much trouble, Fujii said.

Children are eating more “junk food,” and many women still mistakenly believe that rice is fattening, he added.

In a declaration at a “rice summit” that Zenchu sponsored last December, 16 food experts abhorred recent trends toward overeating and imbalanced diets and complained that Japanese “seeking rationality and simplicity” are “forgetting the healthy, nutritious, cultural and traditional” superiority of rice.

“Let’s maintain balanced Japanese-style eating customs . . . and pass them along to the next generation,” the declaration read.

Many Japanese turn to rice in their 30s after they marry and start eating as a family, Fujii said. For men, he said, having a wife as a cook makes all the difference.

“Even I didn’t eat much rice when I was single,” said Fujii, 41, who grew up on a rice farm in Fukuoka prefecture (state).

Now, however, an increase in families with working wives has decimated the ranks of older rice eaters as more Japanese go out to eat, Fujii bemoaned. Rice consumption in restaurants has been showing only small gains, he added.

Even farmers, many of whom also work in factories, are eating less rice because they, too, are eating out more, Fujii said. One goal in Zenchu’s campaign, he noted, is to persuade each farming family to increase its consumption by one 132-pound bale over a three-year period.

Already the government has induced farmers, through special subsidies, to retire about one-third of their paddy land from cultivation. Any further reduction, Fujii said, could take a toll on farmers’ morale.

Annual production hovers around 10 million tons, compared to a capability of producing as much as 13 million tons.

Despite U.S. rice growers’ promises that they could deliver high-quality rice to Japan at about one-fourth of the price of domestic supplies, high prices do not appear to be a major factor in the march away from rice. Indeed, higher-quality, higher-priced rice varieties have steadily been gaining popularity.

Nonetheless, the Agriculture Ministry says it wants to lower prices and has announced a “vision” to promote larger-scale rice farming to raise yields and reduce production costs--from the current 82 cents a pound to as low as 40 cents a pound.

Consumer prices here range from $1.10 a pound for the lowest grade to $1.84 for the highest grade.

Fifteen years ago, the gloomy outlook for rice spurred efforts to invent new products, many of which were exhibited in the “I Love Rice” campaign.

One was a fast-food breakfast made of rice, ham, crab, vegetables and a soup base wrapped in aluminum foil. “Heat it, and it expands like popcorn,” said an explanatory sign. A fried egg, to be added by the consumer, sat on top.

Rice pizza, rice and mashed potatoes, canned rice gruel and instant red rice--”it cooks in 2 minutes in a microwave”--also were available.

Designed to last for six months, dried seaweed-wrapped rice balls ( o-nigiri ) packaged in individual plastic containers and prepared by dipping in hot or cold water were aimed at overseas travelers.

Elsewhere, small shops have concocted rice ice cream flavored with the aroma--but not the alcoholic content--of three brands of sake. One shop in the Yoga section of Tokyo reports that “rice cream” sells well--”about the same as vanilla, strawberry and chocolate.”

Some new products--especially bath liquids, dishwashing cleansers and cosmetics made from nuka (rice bran), which geisha for centuries have used to keep their faces looking youthful even into old age--appeared to have the potential to sell well. But the food agency’s Hashimoto acknowledged that none have become hits.

The cooperatives’ Fujii said many of the new products are too expensive. But he conceded that his organization has failed to market them aggressively. “All we have ever done is to market rice itself,” he said.

What many see as the dark future for the “core of Japanese culture” was summed up by Nakaeyo Naruse, 22, a saleswoman at the special products counter at the Shinjuku “I Love Rice” campaign display.

She acknowledged that she doesn’t eat much rice, but said, “I’m trying.” She also said that of all the rice products available for sale in the campaign, the best-selling one was traditional rice cakes ( sembei ), which, unlike the new inventions, are available everywhere in Japan.

After Japan eliminates quotas on imports of beef and citrus fruits on April 1, 1991, rice consumption may fall even faster as the beef supply expands.

“No matter how much beef the Japanese may eat in the future, it won’t go to the level consumed by Americans,” Fujii said. “I don’t know how much more beef the Japanese will consume, but when beef consumption hits its peak, that’s when the decline in rice consumption will stop.”