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Japan in the International Food Regimes: Understanding Japanese Food Self-Sufficiency Decline

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Feeding Japan

Abstract

Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate was 79% in 1960, but it fell down rapidly and reached 39% in 2011, the lowest among major industrialized countries. The mechanisms of this decline have been mostly explained as the result of the drastic change of dietary habits under a rapid economic growth, since the 1960s: as the economy grew steadily, the consumption of domestically produced food (e.g. rice) has decreased, while the consumption of imported food (e.g. meat, dairy products, oils) has grown constantly (i.e. ‘Bennet’s law’). Yet, evidences suggest that Japan’s foreign policy choices and international environment considerably influenced Japan’s low food self-sufficiency rate. Relying on ‘international food regime theory’, this analysis aims to shed some light on the international political factors that affected Japan’s dependence. This chapter will show how national security interests and international norms and rules that underpin the food regime have played an important in determining Japan’s low self-sufficiency rate.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    MAFF, ‘Shokuryō jikyūritsu to wa’.

  2. 2.

    There are several methods to calculate the food self-sufficiency rate (e.g. in terms of monetary or production value), however the method based on calories is, with minor adjustments, the most widely used in academic papers and policy discussions.

  3. 3.

    Ministry of Agriculture, Forestries and Fishery. ‘Shokuseikatsu to shokuryō jikyūritsu no kankei’.

  4. 4.

    See George Mulgan, ‘Electoral Determinants’, 875–899 and Japan’s Interventionist State (2005); Yamashita, ‘Tokei no hari’.

  5. 5.

    See: Suzuki, Shokuryō no sensō.

  6. 6.

    The target has been reviewed several times, due to the difficulties in achieving it. In 2000, the government announced the Basic Plan for Agriculture and Rural Areas (Shokuryō nōgyō nōson kihon keikan), where it decided to raise the food self-sufficiency rate from 40% to 45% by 2010. In 2010, a new plan provided for an increase in the rate to 50% by 2020. The last plan of 2015 provides, as we have seen, a target of 45% by 2024.

  7. 7.

    See: Shimazaki, Shokuryō jikyūritsu; Suematsu, Shokuryō jikyūritsu no naze?.

  8. 8.

    See: Asakawa, Nihon wa sekai; Hayami, Nōgyō keizairon, and ‘Food Security: Fallacy or Reality?’; Honma, ‘Sekai no shokuryō’, 1–30, and Gendai Nihon no nōgyō; Tashiro, Shokuryō jikyūritsu.

  9. 9.

    Goodman and Watts, ‘Reconfiguring the Rural’, 1–49.

  10. 10.

    Okada, ‘The Role of Japan’.

  11. 11.

    Araki, ‘Fūdo rejīmu ron’, 31–49 and ibid. ‘Senzeki chōsen’, 15–29.

  12. 12.

    Buttel, ‘Some Reflections’, 23.

  13. 13.

    Friedmann, ‘The Political Economy of Food’, 30–31.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 31.

  15. 15.

    Krasner, ‘Structural Causes’, 185–205.

  16. 16.

    Hopkins and Puchala, ‘International Regimes’, 61–93.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 76.

  18. 18.

    Friedmann, ‘The Political Economy of Food’, 254.

  19. 19.

    Aglietta, Régulation et crises du capitalisme.

  20. 20.

    Wallerstein, The Modern World System.

  21. 21.

    Buttel, ‘Some Reflections’, 24.

  22. 22.

    In their first article (1989), Friedmann and McMichael talked about only two historical food regimes, the pre-war and the post-war food regimes. Philip McMichael supposed the emergence of a third food regime in (1992), and its main characteristics have been analysed in later studies. See: Friedmann, ‘From Colonialism to Green Capitalism’, 227–264; McMichael, ‘Global Development’, 265–299; Pechlaner and Otero. ‘The Neoliberal Food Regime’, 179–208.

  23. 23.

    In this chapter, I make use of McMichael’s periodization. Friedmann (2005) prefers to date the first food regime between 1870 and 1914, others between 1860 and 1914. See: Winders, ‘The Vanishing Free Market’, 315–344.

  24. 24.

    Friedmann, ‘From Colonialism’, 242.

  25. 25.

    Friedmann, ‘The Political Economy of Food’, 39–42.

  26. 26.

    Luttrell, The Russian Wheat Deal.

  27. 27.

    See: Friedmann, ‘From Colonialism’; McMichael, ‘A Food Regime Genealogy’, 139–169; Pechlaner and Otero, ‘The Neoliberal Food Regime’; Pritchard, ‘The Long Hangover’, 297–307.

  28. 28.

    Le Heron, Globalized Agriculture, 144.

  29. 29.

    McMichael, ‘Tensions’, 343–365

  30. 30.

    Ōmameuda, Minoru, Kindai Nihon, 89.

  31. 31.

    Ho, ‘Colonialism and Development’, 349.

  32. 32.

    Honma and Hayami, ‘Distortions’, 3.

  33. 33.

    Collingham, The Taste of War, 6.

  34. 34.

    Honma and Hayami, ‘Distortions’, 4.

  35. 35.

    Francks, Rural Economic Development, 170.

  36. 36.

    Ho, ‘Colonialism and Development’, 350.

  37. 37.

    Fumio, Kindai Nihon, 45.

  38. 38.

    Johnston, Japan Food Management, 60.

  39. 39.

    Honma and Hayami, ‘Distortions’, 4.

  40. 40.

    Dower, Embracing Defeat, 93.

  41. 41.

    For a detailed analysis of SCAP’s food measures, see: Fuchs, ‘Feeding the Japanese’, 26–47.

  42. 42.

    Basic Initial Post-Surrender Directive to Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers for the Occupation and Control of Japan ( JCS11380/14), Part II, A. Economic. http://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/01/036/036tx.html.

  43. 43.

    See: Cwiertka, ‘Beyond Black Market’, 89–107.

  44. 44.

    Takemae, The Allied Occupation of Japan, 409.

  45. 45.

    ‘Feed Japan or Face Disorder: Hoover Warns’. Chicago Tribune, May 7, 1946. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1946/05/07/page/1/article/feed-japan-or-face-disorder-hoover-war.

  46. 46.

    Takagi, ‘From Recipient to Donor.’ International Finance 196 (1995): 6.

  47. 47.

    Bernier, ‘The Japanese Peasantry’, 85.

  48. 48.

    Full text available at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/treaty/pdfs/A-S38(3)-252.pdf.

  49. 49.

    Kishi, Shoku to nō no sengoshi, 90.

  50. 50.

    Ohno, ‘Japanese Agriculture Today’.

  51. 51.

    Ibid.

  52. 52.

    Full texts available at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/treaty/pdfs/A-S38(3)-260.pdf; and http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/treaty/pdfs/A-S38(3)-261_1.pdf.

  53. 53.

    Samuels, Rich Nation Strong Army, 150.

  54. 54.

    Kishi. Shoku to nō no sengoshi, 27.

  55. 55.

    Moen, ‘The Postwar Japanese Agricultural Debacle’, 35.

  56. 56.

    United States International Trade Commission. U.S. Embargoes on Agricultural Exports, 5.

  57. 57.

    Hillman and Rothenberg. Agricultural Trade, 46–47.

  58. 58.

    Hongo and Hosono, Burajiru no fumō, 3.

  59. 59.

    See: http://www.maff.go.jp/j/kokusai/kokkyo/toushi/pdf/1304mgj4.pdf.

  60. 60.

    Farrell, Japanese Investment, 105–126.

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    Felice Farina

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  1. Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Andreas Niehaus

  2. Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Tine Walravens

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Farina, F. (2017). Japan in the International Food Regimes: Understanding Japanese Food Self-Sufficiency Decline. In: Niehaus, A., Walravens, T. (eds) Feeding Japan. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50553-4_14

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