Photo/Illutration Jose C. Laurel V, the Philippine ambassador to Japan, at a news conference in Tokyo’s Minato Ward on June 8 (Sho Hatsumi)

Manga artist Shigeru Mizuki (1922-2015) came home one day, all smiles.

"I bought bananas," he announced with unconcealed delight.

His wife was shocked.

"Where on earth did you find that kind of money?" she snapped.

That was back in the 1960s, when bananas were still a luxury in Japan.

Moreover, Mizuki at the time was an impoverished artist commissioned by rental manga publishers.

He explained that he had scored a real bargain as the bananas were already overripe, brown and starting to rot.

The couple still devoured them, recalled his wife, Nunoe Mura, in her 2008 autobiographical book titled "Gegege no Nyobo" (Gegege's wife).

The luxury bananas of that era were imports from Taiwan, but the fruit became affordable when imports from the Philippines began to flood the market.

Filipino bananas are still the mainstay today.

However, their exporter nation recently made an unprecedented request.

The Philippines Embassy in Japan on June 8 asked the Japan Retailers Association to "sell the bananas at fair retail prices," explaining the survival of the banana industry is being threatened by the soaring costs of transportation and fertilizers.

Eggs have long been considered the "model of price stability," but this is sometimes said of bananas, too.

Their retail price in Japan is believed to have remained stable for the last two decades. Perhaps our excessive expectation for the fruit to retain such a model status is giving the producers a hard time.

In 1982, critic Yoshiyuki Tsurumi (1926-1994) depicted the dire poverty of Filipino workers at banana plantations in "Banana to Nihonjin" (Bananas and Japanese), published by Iwanami Shoten.

That was 40 years ago, but Tsurumi's message--that we Japanese must think about the producers--does not seem to have lost its "weight" today.

--The Asahi Shimbun, June 10

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.