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Japonica, Indica: Rice and Foreign Trade in Meiji Japan
- The Journal of Japanese Studies
- Society for Japanese Studies
- Volume 41, Number 2, Summer 2015
- pp. 317-345
- 10.1353/jjs.2015.0033
- Article
- Additional Information
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This article examines the largely unexplored topic of Japan’s foreign trade in rice during the Meiji period. In the middle decades of that era, japonica-type rice became a major Japanese export, highly esteemed in Western countries. In the 1890s, however, Western markets for Japanese rice shrank as the price of the grain rose; meanwhile, crop failures in Japan, combined with the ready availability of cheaper, long-grain indica varieties from Southeast Asia, prompted huge imports of rice; and the steady increase in per capita consumption drove Japan to become a chronic net importer of the commodity after the turn of the century.