Rice for the masses: food policy and the adoption of imperial self-sufficiency in early twentieth-century Japan

Abstract

The adoption, following the Rice Riots of 1918, of a policy of 'imperial self-sufficiency' in rice is generally regarded as a triumph for Japan's ­industrial interests, securing as it did lower food prices for wage-earners, and as a major cause of the 'agricultural problem' of the inter-war years. However, when viewed against the background of developments in the rice market and in Japan's international trade in rice from 1890 onwards, it can also be seen as a response to, on the one hand, shifts in the pattern of food demand as consumers became better off and adopted 'urban' life-styles, and, on the other, the emergence of ­bureaucratic support for the protection of the small-scale, rice-cultivating farm household in Japan. In this light, what turned out to be a costly solution, in both the short and long terms, to the food supply problem of industrial Japan can be argued to have been less a 'defeat for agriculture' and more a compromise between industrial interests, consumer demand and the prevailing structure of ­agriculture.