ECONOMIC FACTORS ENSURING FOOD PRODUCT PRICE STABILITY: EVIDENCE FROM JAPAN
Keywords:
Food price stability, Japan, rice price crisis, food CPI, import dependency, yen depreciation, MAFF, monetary policy, food security, economic factors.Abstract
This article examines the economic factors determining food product price stability in Japan, with particular emphasis on the dramatic price instability experienced during 2024–2025. Japan presents a uniquely instructive case: a high-income, technologically advanced economy that has simultaneously confronted its highest food inflation in decades — a rice retail price surge of over 100% year-on-year by May 2025, food CPI rising to +6.8% in 2025, and the Engel coefficient reaching a 44-year high of 28.6% — alongside deep structural vulnerabilities rooted in a 38% calorie-based food self-sufficiency rate, a depreciating yen, and a rapidly aging farming workforce. Drawing on 2024–2025 data from Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIAC), the Bank of Japan, MAFF, the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, and academic and policy analyses, this paper analyses five categories of economic factors — macroeconomic conditions, import dependency, supply-chain structure, monetary policy, and institutional reform — that govern food price stability in Japan. The analysis is supported by two statistical tables and a causal framework diagram. The findings reveal that Japan's food price crisis of 2024–2025 was not primarily caused by a production failure but by the intersection of structural import dependency, market rigidities in the rice distribution system, yen depreciation, and insufficiently calibrated monetary policy. The paper concludes with evidence-based policy recommendations for strengthening Japan's food price stability architecture.
