For Japan’s rice growers, postwar policy shifts yet to deliver stable future
Japan’s rice policy has swung repeatedly since WWII—rising output after wartime shortages, then curbing surpluses under *gentan* quotas from 1970. Demand fell as diets westernized, halving farmers and acreage. After a 1993 “rice panic” and 2024 heat-driven shortages, officials now urge planting more. Farmers, skeptical of abrupt shifts, demand fair prices, exports, and clear plans.
After decades of sharp policy swings since World War II, rice farmers are greeting the government’s latest call to boost output with skepticism.
In the war’s aftermath, returning servicemen and repatriates swelled the population while farm production lagged. Rations fell short, and the government raced to raise output — concentrating on rice, the national staple.
As reconstruction made progress, however, surpluses emerged and policy flipped to production controls known as gentan, the paddy field reduction program.
Now, amid renewed tightness in supply and a spike in prices, officials are urging farmers to plant more, marking yet another policy reversal.
Here’s a closer look at the policy shifts from the wartime years through the high-growth era and beyond, with accounts from individuals involved in the farming sector.
Prowling for food
In the closing days of World War II, Japan’s daily rice ration fell to about two gō per person — two cups, or around 300 grams of uncooked rice.
“The nation was approaching a state of starvation,” notes a Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries history marking the entity’s first century.
After the war, black markets sprang up across the country as inflation surged, and even official rations often failed to arrive. In Tokyo, deliveries met only about 70% of the planned allocation. Trains out of cities were crammed with people heading to rural areas to barter for food.
Koichi Miyata, 74, now head of JA Fukui Goren, an umbrella group of five Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) organizations in Fukui Prefecture, remembers the women who came in search of rice.
“To evade the food control law, they traveled from the cities of Kyoto and Maizuru with kamaboko and chikuwa fish cakes to trade,” he recalls. “They hid the rice and carried it back” on the train, he says.
Surpluses
In 1952, the government formulated a five-year plan to boost food production, with a strong push for increased rice output.
As part of this effort, a major land reclamation project began in 1957 at Hachirogata, a major lake in Akita Prefecture. Designed as a model for large-scale agriculture, the new village of Ogata opened in 1964.
Yet as production capacity expanded, domestic demand was already peaking. Largely due to the westernization of Japanese diets, rice consumption — including for processing and other uses — rose to a threshold of 13.41 million metric tons in 1963 and then began a steady decline.
By the late 1960s, output far exceeded demand, saddling the government with excess inventories and placing a heavy burden on public finances.
In theory, overproduction should have driven down prices. Instead, farmers organized campaigns for price increases. But they were far from affluent, Miyata notes. Overall costs rose, harvests fluctuated with the weather and profits remained precarious. “Farmers are weak when agriculture is thrown into a capitalist economy,” he says.
In 1970, the government introduced gentan, a policy that allocated production quotas to farmers aiming to curb rice output and balance supply and demand. Around that time, Toru Wakui, now 76, left Niigata Prefecture for the reclamation village of Ogata.
Determined to “create agriculture in which young people can have dreams and hope,” he soon ran up against the policy. Rice he produced in defiance of the quotas was shunned as “black-market rice,” Wakui recalls. “We were subjected to all sorts of restrictions,” he said with a grimace.
With production capped, he said, “the number of farmers across Japan plunged to one-tenth of the pre-control total, while the area under rice cultivation was halved.”
Disastrous harvest
In 1993, the rice heartland of the Tohoku region was struck by the cold easterly wind known as the Yamase. The unusually cool summer led to a disastrous harvest, with domestic rice output falling to 7.83 million tons, down 25% from the preceding year.
The ensuing shortage sparked what became known as the rice panic of the Heisei Era (1989-2019), as domestically grown rice vanished from store shelves.
In response, the government introduced a stockpiling system and abolished the food control law, which had allowed authorities to regulate rice supply and prices.
Even after the crisis ended, consumers continued to move away from rice. Annual consumption slipped below 8 million tons in 2020. Although the acreage reduction program was formally scrapped in 2018, production remained restrained under the leadership of the JA group, and state subsidies encouraged farmers to switch to crops such as wheat and soybeans.
“Production adjustments to curb staple rice output continued throughout,” recalls Masaaki Okuhara, 70, a former vice agriculture minister. Japan’s farm policy, he notes, has long been shaped by a mindset of “protecting weak agriculture,” but its ultimate goal is a stable food supply.
“It’s important to embrace a strategy of ‘building strong agriculture’ and to develop the sector’s export competitiveness,” Okuhara says.
Latest turmoil
Long a staple of Japanese culture and cuisine, rice is back in the spotlight. A severe supply shortage that surfaced in the summer of 2024, widely attributed to the preceding year’s punishing heat, sent retail prices soaring to more than double their usual levels, dealing yet another blow to household budgets already strained by inflation.
In response, the government announced plans to increase production, in a bid to bring rice prices to what it considers “appropriate” levels.
Farmers and industry officials are unimpressed. Miyata is blunt about his frustration with decades of postwar agricultural policy that have left farmers at the government’s mercy. “We can’t ramp up production overnight. There aren’t enough farmers,” he says.
Miyata also stresses the need for follow-up measures, such as government purchases of surplus rice for export. “Unless prices are set at levels that motivate farmers, there will be no successor growers, and rice culture in Japanese cuisine will wither,” he warns.
Even Wakui, who supports boosting production, concedes, “I know it won’t be easy.” He has a request for the government: “I want them to clearly lay out the process.”
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