Booming inbound tourism and another blistering summer combined to send rice retail prices skyrocketing at supermarkets across Japan, causing myriad problems for households that rely on the food staple.

“I can’t buy rice at this price,” a woman in her 70s muttered as she walked away from the rice section at a supermarket in Koshigaya, Saitama Prefecture, during her morning shop on Aug. 5.

The shelves at the Super Marusan’s Koshigaya-hanata store were almost stripped bare of 10-kilogram bags of rice, regardless of variety.

Only a small number of 5-kg packages remained, and some varieties had already sold out.

The shelves that used to hold 10-kg bags of rice were now stocked with 2-kg bags.

“People must be hoarding,” said a 69-year-old man as he pondered the shortage of 10-kg packages. After comparing the prices of rice on the shelves, he decided, “I better not buy now because it will be too expensive.”

Yoshiki Yagi, the 52-year-old supermarket manager, noted that the purchase price of rice has increased sharply since last year, forcing the store to raise the price of a variety that was selling for 1,480 yen ($10.20) for 5 kg, excluding tax, by 1,000 yen.

To ease the burden on consumers, the store has begun selling California rice, which is about 1,000 yen cheaper than domestically produced grain.

“I’d really like to make (California rice) a centerpiece of the store’s bargain sale, too, but that’s not going to happen,” Yagi said.

PURCHASE LIMIT

In the meantime, there are growing calls to set “purchase limits” on rice.

OK Corp., which is headquartered in Yokohama and operates supermarkets in the Kanto region, began limiting rice purchases to 10 kg per family or group per day, starting from July 15.

Other major supermarket chain operators, such as Tokyo-based Life Corp., Saitama-based Belc, and Saitama-based Yaoko Co., have also imposed restrictions on the number of rice packages purchased per family.

“Overall, demand for rice is dropping off compared to the past,” a farm ministry official noted. “New rice should be hitting the market in August, so there should be no problem with supply and demand.”

However, retailers do not share that optimism.

Hiromi Morita, president of long-established rice specialty store Morita-ya in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward, said: “The ministry says there is no problem with inventory, but the people who sell the rice do not feel this way. The burden is on the rice dealers at the end of the line.”

Rice stocks in the Morita-ya store are only about one-third of what they were in previous years. The purchase price for additional rice is 22,000 yen per 60 kg, about 8,500 yen higher than last year.

Although new rice will start arriving soon, the purchase price is expected to be higher than usual, Morita said.

Morita recalled that in 1993, when a record-breaking cold summer caused what are known as the “Rice riots of the Heisei Era,” the store could not obtain rice from wholesalers, so the store was closed temporarily while someone traveled to the Tohoku region to expand the company’s supplier base.

“If we close the store, it will affect the store’s credibility, so we will continue to purchase rice even if prices are high,” Morita said.

Recently, the store has seen customers from outside Tokyo, such as neighboring Kanagawa Prefecture, coming to buy rice.

Sometimes, shoppers try to buy 20 or 30 kg of rice, saying they planned to send it to relatives or are buying for other family members.

In an effort to discourage hoarding, the store has set a limit of 5 kg per person.

Customers have been OK with the restriction and are buying because rice is in short supply right now, Morita said.

“But will they continue to buy?” Morita wondered. “This year has been hot again. I’m worried about the stable supply of new rice.”

NO LETUP IN RICE PRICES

Last year’s heat wave and an influx in foreign visitor numbers to Japan are seen as the underlying causes of the rice shortage.

According to the farm ministry, the quality of rice deteriorated in 2023 due to nationwide heat wave and drought, resulting in “cloudy” rice and cracked grain. This resulted in a supply shortfall.

Private-sector inventories of staple rice held by agricultural cooperatives and wholesalers totaled 1.56 million tons at the end of June this year, down 410,000 tons from the same period last year.

This marked a record low, down from 1.61 million tons in 2008, the lowest level since 1999, when comparable date became available.

Surging visitor numbers from overseas have also contributed to the increase in rice consumption, according to the ministry.

A national association of rice merchants comprising 2,000 or so rice stores and related entities nationwide, found that 85 percent of respondents in a survey it carried out from April to May this year were purchasing less rice or were unable to purchase more rice. This was based on 307 valid responses.

More than half of the respondents said the purchase price per 60 kg was more than 3,000 yen higher than the same period of the previous year.

Rice harvesting in areas with high yields will begin around the end of August.

However, the price of new rice is indexed to the most recently traded price, fueling fears the price will be high.

Even after the new rice reaches the market, supply will not catch up with demand until around the fall, so high prices are expected to continue.

“The situation will change greatly depending on how this year’s harvest turns out,” said a representative of the association. “We will have to see how far consumers will go to keep up with the high prices.”

Nobuhiro Suzuki, a specially-appointed professor of agricultural economics at the University of Tokyo, agrees with the ministry that the main factors are “the decline in rice quality due to the extremely hot summer and the supply-demand crunch caused by the rapid increase in the number of foreign visitors to Japan.”

But Suzuki also points to a long-term policy failings.

“The central government has adopted a policy of reducing the number of rice paddies by, for example, turning them into fields, citing excessive rice stocks and future declining demand. As a result, the farming industry has been exhausted to breaking point.”

He called on the government “to think of ways to ensure that agriculture can continue, despite the aging of the population, the issue of income and other problems.”