JAPAN WATCH : Rice Wars

In America, they throw rice at the bride and groom. In Japan, Americans and Japanese throw rice at each other.

Yes, Tokyo is being stubborn about American rice again, in a way that is basically pretty petty and unfair.

At dispute: a display of rice exhibited by the USA Rice Council at an international food and beverage show in Chiba last week. Officials of the Agriculture Ministry angrily demanded that the rice be removed on the grounds that it violated Japanese law banning commercial imports of rice. They raised the same objection at last year’s trade show and succeeded in getting the rice removed.

Not so this year. U.S. Embassy officials refused to pull the rice from the exhibit. They maintained that their reading of Japan’s Food Control Law revealed nothing that forbade a rice display for informational and educational purposes. Japanese officials maintained the exhibit served chiefly commercial purposes at the industry trade show. Japanese farmers, meanwhile, filed a complaint with police against the U.S. rice-growers group.

Japan’s ban on rice imports has long been a sore point with the United States, which has been pushing hard to open the market to American growers. Tokyo maintains the sanctity of rice in the name of both Japan’s traditional culture and food security. In fact, Japan’s rice consumption has been declining but prices are kept artificially high to protect and appease politically powerful farmers.

Politics more than religion is behind all this. In electing to face off over the rice exhibit, the Japanese government trivialized the issue.