On December 4, 2013 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) agreed to register traditional Japanese cuisine or washoku to the list of the World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. With its entry to the list, it joined the traditional Mexican cuisines of Michoaca, the gastronomic meal of the French, and the Mediterranean diet, the only other cuisines to achieve this status. For the Japanese government, making the list was a status symbol, once again solidifying Japan’s unique-ness. Registration on the list presumes that efforts will be made to preserve washoku and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF ) along with the announcement included statements regarding the marketing of Japanese cuisine to the world and a desire that Japanese themselves preserve and pass on the traditions associated with washoku for future generations.
The heralding of washoku, coincided with ongoing discussions in the Ministry regarding food sovereignty and the declining consumption of rice in the country. Rice is the central component of washoku, based on a menu of one soup and three dishes. Rice is the main dish and it is supplemented by the other three, as the MAFF Guidebook on washoku states “the purpose of the menu of washoku is to eat cooked rice with soup and side dishes” (p. 18). 1 Making the UNESCO list may afford Japan’s MAFF more maneuverability as the country moves forward with international agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ; because rice is a bulwark of washoku it can be protected. Moreover, it gives the Japanese government the ability to market and promote rice as part of washoku to its own population. These policies are the focus of Chapter 2, where they are presented in detail.
Rice in the Japanese Imagination
Rice is intimately connected to notions of what it means to be Japanese of Japanese-ness in Japan, both in the national consciousness and in national policy (a notion that emerged from the Meiji era specifically called Nihonjinron). These two are interrelated, as historians, sociologists and researchers note, nationalism is driven by policy and it is related to frameworks of identity that are established by governments rather than existing in a separate hypothetical space created by citizen’s imaginations. In Japan, while rice is a recent historical tradition, there are references to rice in Japan’s earliest historical writings, including the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. Ohnuki-Tierney describes a gradual process whereby Japan’s agrarian cosmology and rituals associated with agriculture became the bulwark of the imperial system in her book Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time 2 the only book written on the cultural importance of rice in Japanese culture. The book sets out to examine the importance of rice in understanding notions of Japanese identity and cultural performativity, which the work accomplishes with a focus on historical understandings as well as ritualized cultural practices, the role of the Emperor and the centrality of rice the Japanese diet, at least as it exists in the minds of Japanese people. She also describes the role which agrarian harvests played in the leader’s ability to hold onto power, which is similar to Chinese belief in the relationship between their divine ruler and an abundant harvest.
In Japan, the annual harvest ritual legitimated political leadership which served as the officiant in rituals for the rice soul (inadama no shusaisha). Early rituals (called matsurigoto) that were the basis of the political system (ritsuryou sei) were all related to the rice harvest and so power was associated with rice. Despite the cultural association that exists currently between rice growing and ideas regarding Japanese identity and national policy; the culture of growing rice in small paddies is a fairly recent phenomenon in Japanese history. 3 However, this linkage continues to hold sway over Japanese farmers and rice growers, as well as the traditional ruling elite in Japan (the more conservative wing of the Liberal Democratic Party of LDP ). How did rice come to play such an important role in Japanese culture? And, how will this association hold up as Japanese diets are changing and fewer and fewer traditional rice growers live the rice growing lifestyle? This book sets out to begin to frame answers to some of these large questions. While it may not provide a definitive and complete answer, I hope to at least tell part of the story, from the perspective of rice farmers, their families and the rural areas where more and more abandoned rice paddies are growing weeds. As a farm child myself, I understand the power of cultural associations with the family farm and the impact that changing diets, new international trade relationships and concerns about food sovereignty have upon the existence of family farms which have become almost extinct in the United States.
There is a fascination with the family farm in both American and Japanese culture. The family farm is the cultural repository of wholesomeness, of an almost idyllic existence which probably beckons to our framing of the natural world itself and the myth of an Eden like paradise where humans once lived in harmony with each other and their environment. These seemingly lofty ideas have real political impact, as governments have created policies to preserve family farming and the cultures associated with this lifestyle around the world. While this book does not compare the United States and Japan, the researcher is American and therefore some comparison is implied because my writing is framed by my own experiences. At the very least, I would like to illuminate a lifestyle and document what is happening in Japan today, as rice growers are giving up the farms or simply dying out and taking the narrative of their lives with them, and their experience as rice growing to the grave.
Situating the Argument of the Text
One would not suppose, given its population and lack of arable land, that Japan would be a country devoted to agriculture. Yet, Japan is a country with a high degree of political and social interest in protecting agriculture, some of the reasons for which have been discussed above. Japan’s policies do not treat all crops equally with rice being the crop where devotion is singularly manifested. The policy framework regarding rice is relatively new, with patterns inherited from the pre-WWII period of the 1920s and 30s after a series of bad harvests resulting from drought amidst a brutal tax policy brought famine and political unrest. The current framework, though significantly altered after land laws were reformed post-WWII owes its geneological heritage to this timeframe. This book addresses the major actors in this policy framework, which includes public and private actors, laws, legal norms and policies as well as informal social currencies. The interests and activities of these actors connect and overlap, sometimes diverging, sometimes harmonizing, and despite recent attempts to overhaul them, their strength resonates to local level farmers and their families. The research which examines rice policy from the perspective of farmers in Japan is scant, however, there are a number of well-researched books and articles on agricultural policy with rice as their focus. Foremost among this research are the two volumes written by Aurelia George-Mulgan, whose highly informative and pathbreaking work covers many aspects of agricultural policy. In Mulgan’s first volume, 4 the focus is on the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the interventionist manner in which it has maintained its role in agricultural policy even advocating policies that are to the detriment of the progression of farming in Japan in order to keep power and continue to draw large sums from the Japanese budget. Mulgan’s work also covers the internal dynamics of the MAFF and the close relationship of its bureaucrats work LDP members of the agricultural policy tribe or norinzoku . No other author approximates the highly detailed nature of Mulgan’s research, which if taken as a whole is a lifetime of work shedding light on the agricultural policy arena in Japan, especially the MAFF . Her second volume 5 on agricultural policy presents the context of agricultural policymaking in Japan at the national level, essentially building on the first volume and moving the focus of analysis to a wider discussion that provides the reader with a deep understanding of the national level policy actors and political changes that have informed policymaking. Taken together these two volumes provide a highly detailed analysis of the agricultural policy regime and its most important actors, the MAFF .
The literature on rice farming in Japan in the field of political science is sparse, there is no single study covering the politics of rice growing from the perspective of farmers and the studies of the politics of agriculture are rare. Yoshihisa Godo has written several articles that examine rice farming and the policies which have maintained it with detailed descriptions of the policies and their backgrounds. Godo’s detailed background work on policy examined alongside Mulgan’s work provides an excellent frame within which to understand the basic components of agricultural policy, the role of the MAFF and the overall landscape of rice policy.
Land reform and the importance of land reform for landownership following WWII is the topic of Dore’s, Land Reform in Japan, 6 another work which is pathbreaking. Unfortunately, it is the single publication covering these issues in any depth; it has not been followed up by complementary research in the modern or current time frame. The work, however, provides important background and context for agricultural policies and landownership, without which, there would likely be few farmers for those policies to represent. Waswo and Yoshiaki, in their text Farmers and Village Life in Twentieth Century 7 update some of the information in Dore’s work. Their edited volume presents episodic portraits of the lives of people in rural Japan and some information regarding rice farming and the farmer’s perspective is hinted at although it is not the focus of the research.
Researchers on Japanese politics have noted the centrality of the Japanese state, where power is located mainl...