The Great Sushi Showdown : Japan’s quandary: When is rice not rice but something else?

The Japanese think there’s something fishy about California sushi. It’s not the seafood on the tiny mounds of vinegar-flavored rice, mind you. The hitch is the California rice.

This issue rests not in the palate but in Japan’s longtime protectionist ban on rice imports.

Sushi Boy, a Japanese restaurant chain, is trying to import from the United States frozen sushi produced at its factory in Escondido. The first shipment, 960 pieces, is stuck in cold storage at a Japanese airport while bureaucrats debate whether frozen sushi violates Japan’s import rules on rice.

The finance and agriculture ministries said Friday they would not block the imports. But whether the sushi passes muster will depend on whether it is “rice” or a “semi-processed rice product.”

Such distinctions matter in Japan, where the government is fiercely protective of its inefficient rice farmers. The flap over sushi imports is typical of the informal but titanic barriers in Japan that keep many foreign goods out of the reach of Japanese consumers.

The dispute reflects Tokyo’s long intransigence on its rice policy, adopted for food security and cultural reasons. Japanese rice costs about six times the price of the comparable rice grown in California. The situation seems quite unfair to Japanese consumers, but Tokyo refuses to relax the ban despite pressure from the United States and other trading partners.

Importation of processed rice is allowed if 20% or more of a product’s weight is vegetable or meat. Sushi Boy claims that the fish atop the frozen sushi makes up 30% of the weight. Ah, but there’s another problem: Japan’s National Food Agency, the overseer of such matters, worries that importers would simply remove the fish and sell the rice. That agency will have the final say.

It’s ironic that a Japanese company is taking on Japan’s rice establishment. Sushi Boy wants to serve defrosted sushi just because it’s cheaper for consumers than the freshly made delicacies. Allowing the importation of sushi from California would hardly pose a threat to Japanese farmers and food processors, and it would show Tokyo can be sensible about rice.