The ruling party Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan strenuously vowed to keep everything within Japan "as is" before the July 20, 2025, Upper House (House of Councillors) elections.
The Upper House functions as the Lower House's "rubber stamp."
As ruling party incumbents will do everywhere, the LDP put on its kabuki show of toughness on immigration and generosity with (unflatteringly tiny) cash handouts.
In soothing tones, the LDP cooed that voters' tax money is in good hands with the LDP. Furthermore, the LDP claimed that it is the only party that will protect Japan from President Donald Trump and his tariffs.
Voters were not fooled: the LDP went in on election day as the majority party and emerged as a minority party. With this election, the current LDP managed to sink to its lowest level of voter support in its history. At the same time, a few truly conservative groups have grabbed a few more seats this round.
Before election day, the establishment Japanese media incessantly denounced non-LDP groups, such the Conservative Party of Japan and Sanseito, as "right-wing" and "xenophobic."
This noise is all too familiar to Americans who have endured the invectives spewed by the establishment U.S. media, especially during the Biden administration and the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign. Determined Americans paid no mind to the establishment media and its pet presidential candidate and voted anyway for "right-wing" and "xenophobic" Trump and the Republicans.
The rise of political groups outside the mainstream attracting Japanese leftists and mainstream media vitriol deserves a closer look.
In any event, the LDP was very capable of losing its majority grip in the Upper House all by itself, without the help of "right wing," "xenophobic" groups.
Japanese voters, as most voters everywhere, signaled exasperation with the majority party's corruption and on pocketbook issues, including the government's too-little-too-late attempt to stem the recent skyrocketing cost of Japan's core staple, rice.
The average price of a 5 kg. bag of rice rose from about JPY 2,300 in January 2024 to about JPY 3,000 in September. By January 2025, the price rose to about JPY 3,500. At the end of March, 5 kg of rice was JPY 4,206, more than double the price at the end of March 2024.
Beginning in March, Prime Minister and head of the LDP Ishiba Shigeru decided that he and his party will grab the gratitude of the nation by bringing the price of rice back down to earth. Ishiba flooded the market with the government's strategic reserve of rice which is stored in case of a national natural disaster.
The LDP's initial attempts hardly moved the needle. The Asahi Shimbun, Japan's premier, leftist, establishment newspaper, dutifully reported on April 19, 2025 that by April 18 a mere 0.3% of the government's rice reached consumers.
Agriculture ministry officials were mystified: "There were no obvious bottlenecks," but blamed "logistical problems" anyway.
On May 21, 2025, The Asahi chirped that the amount of stockpiled rice that eventually reached consumers was 7.1%.
Ishiba could have, perversely, claimed success, stating that market access to government rice increased 2,400%.
The LDP needs any win they can get.
Also on May 21, Ishiba declared that "rice should be in the 3,000 yen range (per 5 kg)."
In June, following several months of release of government-stockpiled rice, the average cost of a 5 kg bag of rice was JPY 3,920, off 2025's high but still much higher than June 2024's average price of 2,198 yen.
The Asahi Shimbun on June 24, 2025 misinformed readers, quietly forgetting Ishiba's May 21 pledge and applauded him: "… Ishiba's pledge to bring rice prices below 4,000 [emphasis added] yen appears to be bearing fruit just after three weeks." Later in the article, The Asahi reported that "brand-name rice … remained at 4,338 yen." According to this Asahi article, the price of rice both dropped and rose. For what it's worth, in the past, the Asahi had serious problems keeping the facts straight in other subjects.
The media has ascribed the recent acute increase to global warming (the media's go-to for any socio-economic problem), to too many foreign tourists eating rice and to panic hoarding due to a bogus "massive earthquake" warning issued by the Japan Meteorological Agency in August 2024.
While rice yields have fluctuated over the past four years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there is, in fact, an overall 10-year trend of declining yields. Japanese government records show a decline in acreage (20.4%) and yield (16.3%) between 2006 and 2023. At the same time, Japanese taste for other sources of carbohydrates, such as bread and pasta, has increased, with demand for rice steadily declining. Per capita rice consumption is "now less than half of its peak in 1962." Rice supplies have been declining well before the current global warming hysteria.
Ishiba did hint, albeit vaguely, at the real source of Japan's cost spike: ""structural problems" of the government's rice policy."
The Japanese distribution system, an eternal source of U.S.-Japan trade friction, plays no small role as well.
On May 21, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Eto Taku resigned because of a wisecrack he made on May 18 at a Saga Prefectural LDP chapter fund raiser. He said, “I have never bought rice, to be honest,” and, further gloated, “Because my supporters give me a lot of rice [,] I have so much rice in my pantry that I could sell it.”
Eto was appointed agricultural minister by Ishiba in November 2024, because he was "deemed qualified." Rather, Eto was the candidate of choice of subsidies-hooked farmers and the Japan Agricultural (JA) Cooperatives.
On Dec. 20, 2024, Eto showed who his true masters were: farmers and the Japan Agricultural (JA) Cooperatives. He supported the high cost of rice: "It would not be right for the government to intervene in the market price."
In March, Eto piled government rice into the same distribution system that was contributing to the scarcity of rice and its inflated price, instead of releasing it to directly to consumers or retailors (e.g., supermarkets), bypassing the numerous middle men demanding their cut which further inflates the price of rice and everything else in Japan. Eto's comments clearly illustrates his and the LDP's disdain for their vassals.
To be fair, the rot goes beyond the LDP, into the government bureaucracy, which has a revolving door relationship with private interests. Retiring members of the Ministry of Agriculture have a lucrative position in the JA waiting for them. The JA serves as a bank, saving not only farmers' income but also the government subsidies to be distributed to farmers. The JA is a one-stop monopoly for part-time farmers, who make up the vast majority of farmers in Japan. The JA sells farm equipment and fertilizer, at inflated prices, and sells crops -- at inflated prices. Thus, the JA Group as well as farmers are keenly interested in keeping things the way they are right now, forever.
Interestingly, Japan's current policy in dealing with the spiraling cost of rice mirrors that of U.S. policy from almost 100 years ago. Why the Japanese government (and the U.S. media for that matter) has not learned anything from history highlights the fact that repeating past mistakes is a government forte.
In an effort to get the U.S. out of the Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt paid farmers not to grow crops with his 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). The thinking was that fewer crops would increase prices, thereby increasing profits for farmers. FDR paid farmers to kill their stock, plow back crops and burn grain in their fields--while at the same time the U.S. imported these commodities.
FDR's Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace, channeling Josef Stalin, dourly stated that this destruction was necessary in order to "clean up … the wreckage from the old days of unbalanced production."
The Japanese government has yet to reach the FDR-and-Wallace level of state capitalism, but since World War II, it has set the price of rice, buying surplus rice at a guaranteed price, hording it and setting production quotas for each prefecture.
Back to Depression-era America, through scarcity, U.S. food prices increased but farmers' income dropped precipitously -- broke consumers were not buying. Following the passage of FDR's AAA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that the average American diet during the early Depression was at the level of "minimum", one level above "emergency (below subsistence)."
Said historian and commentator Thomas Woods, "it took a special kind of mind to conclude that the best approach to this disaster would be to make food more expensive."
The so-called pro-free market Trump administration continues FDR's tradition, with over $42 billion in farm subsidies expected in 2025.
Japan's version of FDR's AAA has deliberately kept the price of rice "stable" by paying farmers not to grow rice. Just as in the U.S., consumers have suffered. Inefficient, small scale farmers and part-time farmers have done well, thanks to government and JA collusion.
There appears to be little, if any, leeway for Japanese farmers "to make production decisions based on their own management judgements."
Obviously, rice farmers now like the price as they are now but face losing consumers to less expensive rice and to other carbohydrates. If demand is soft at home, then Japanese farmers could export their product. However, the government has for so long subsidized farmers not to farm and further complicated the export of rice with its entrenched subsidy program. Farmers that received subsidies for crops for domestic consumers cannot export them. Japanese farmers also receive government subsidies for crops destined for export -- which the World Trade Organization expressly forbids.
So, for now, the LDP -- possibly all other political parties -- will continue to pay lip service to consumers but leave the government's and JA's grip on agricultural pricing and the subsidy system, "as is."
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