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The story
Rice that caused such an uproar last year over shortages and soaring prices has done a total U-turn now that this year’s new crop is hitting shelves — prices are falling. The thread filled up with reports of real-world prices like ¥1,980 for 5kg, sparking questions about what last year’s price spike was even about, plus talk of JA futures markets and the government’s stockpile rice purchases.
“New Rice in the ¥2,000 Range” — The Reversal Where New Rice Is Cheaper Than Last Year’s Rice
8/23 (Sun) 12:45 AM JST
TV Asahi (ANN)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
That's dropped a lot, huh.
That's the root of it right there.
There wasn't even a bad harvest to begin with — panic buying spiraled and dealers cashed in by hoarding.
That phase just ended, that's all.
Guess it just exposed what this whole 'inflation' really was.
You mean ¥2,980?
That's basically ¥3,000, don't mess with me.
And that's before tax too, lol
Before the whole rice crisis it was more like ¥1,200–1,500…
They'll either have to mix it in with new rice or just toss it.
Even brown rice loses freshness over time.
This year's new rice is starting at ¥1,980 for 5kg.
How much further do you think it'll drop?
Nori's pricey too (a pun here — 高市/Takaichi, the PM's name, sounds like 高いし, "it's expensive") — free up the Ariake Sea!
Not 2kg — I'd consider it if it were 1kg for under ¥500 tax included.
I stopped eating rice ages ago, so if you actually want me buying again, sell it in 1kg bags and maybe I'll think about it.
Even 2kg is too much for my household.
I'm in the countryside too and thought the same right up until Obon, but it's been dropping day by day.
Still too pricey for me to buy though.
The 2025 harvest was just abnormally expensive — it's still expensive now.
For reference, here are the provisional advance payments for the 2023 and 2024 harvests:
Now that's a fair price.
New Koshihikari rice from Miyazaki, ¥2,299
New Hanaechizen rice from Fukui, ¥1,980
Packed microwave rice is still just as pricey though.
Can't something be done about that?
That's early-harvest rice.
Old rice isn't selling and won't fit in the warehouses anymore, so dealers are probably dumping it at fire-sale prices.
Early-harvest rice at this time of year has always gone for around ¥2,000 for 5kg anyway.
It's just not that tasty.
No dealer can afford to be without new rice,
so they've surely already decided whether to offload the surplus to brokers
or divert it to industrial use.
Because Takaichi is buying up a million tons of it as government stockpile rice.
They're just quietly waiting for the government to buy it up.
It's a war of attrition — the small and mid-size dealers get weeded out, leaving the big distributors you all hate to do whatever they want from next year on.
It's finally starting to undercut even the government stockpile rice.
Back in the Showa-era toilet paper panic, people actually got arrested for hoarding — but in Reiwa, rice wholesalers can stash away mountains of it and the police won't lift a finger. What a lawless country.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s “Reiwa rice riot” began in summer 2024: a hot growing season shrank yields, a Nankai Trough earthquake advisory triggered panic buying, and post-pandemic tourism pushed demand up, sending a standard 5kg bag from its historical ¥2,000-ish baseline past ¥4,000 in many stores through 2025. Because rice is treated as a regulated “staple food,” JA (the national farm co-op) still handles the bulk of wholesale distribution, and the agriculture ministry holds a government stockpile (備蓄米) meant only for emergencies; when 2025’s high prices didn’t ease, ministers began releasing stockpile rice to undercut the market, which is the “million tons” and “Takaichi buying it up” that posters reference.
The thread doesn’t actually disagree that prices are falling — it splits on why last year spiked at all. Some posters (6, 19, 41) insist there was never a real supply shortfall, only speculative hoarding by wholesalers cashing in on panic, now unwinding as that inventory becomes unsellable; others simply note regional gaps, with countryside stores (91, 200) still charging ¥3,000+ while cities see ¥1,980.
What the thread misses is that some of these “cheap new rice” deals aren’t a crisis reversal at all — early-ripening varieties from Kyushu (Miyazaki, Fukui) always hit shelves in August at lower prices before the premium Niigata Koshihikari crop arrives in autumn, a seasonal pattern one poster (157) flags but that gets lost in the outrage. Readers unfamiliar with Japan’s harvest calendar could easily mistake ordinary early-crop pricing for proof the whole shortage was fabricated.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News Plus) thread “[Rice] “New Rice in the ¥2,000 Range” — The Reversal Where New Rice Is Cheaper Than Last Year’s Rice.”
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