Japan's rice price shock, and the strange autumn after it

For a year and a half, the price of rice was the most talked-about number in Japan. This September it's falling so fast that farmers are worried and the new harvest costs less than the old one. Here's the whole arc, from a kitchen that eats it every day.

7 min read · Written 10 September 2026 · Figures from NHK, Nikkei, Tokyo Shimbun and MAFF reporting, listed at the end

Why rice is different here

In most countries, if one staple gets expensive you buy another. In Japan, rice isn't one option among several. It's the word for "meal" — gohan (ご飯) means both "cooked rice" and "food." Nearly every household keeps a rice cooker running, buys rice in 5 kg bags, and has an opinion about which prefecture grows the best. Japan grows almost all the rice it eats and keeps imports tightly limited. So when the price of a 5 kg bag doubles, it isn't a grocery story. It's a national one.

How it doubled

Two years ago a 5 kg bag of ordinary rice cost around ¥2,000 in a supermarket. By spring 2025 it was over ¥4,000 — the highest on record. Nobody planned this. It was a pile-up:

• A brutal summer in 2023. Heat during the growing season left much of that year's crop below the top grade, and supply going into 2024 was thin.
• No cushion. For decades the government paid farmers to grow less rice, to keep prices from falling as the population ate less of it. That policy worked — right up until demand came back.
• A run on the shelves. In August 2024 the government issued its first-ever advisory about a possible megaquake. People stocked up. Supermarkets ran out of rice for weeks, and the phrase "the Reiwa rice riots" (令和の米騒動) — a joke with an edge — entered the language.
• More mouths. A record number of tourists were eating rice at the same time.
• Waiting to sell. Once prices started rising, some in the supply chain held rice back, expecting them to rise further. Distribution — the layers between farm and shelf — turned out to account for a large share of the price on the bag.

The government released its emergency stockpile in spring 2025, first by auction and then, when that barely moved prices, by selling it directly to shops at around ¥2,000 a bag. Those bags sold out in hours. The effect on the overall price was slow. What finally changed the picture was simpler: farmers, seeing high prices, planted more, and the 2025 harvest came in bigger.

Then it turned

This September, the direction flipped hard. NHK reported the supermarket average at just over ¥3,100 for 5 kg in early September, down three weeks in a row. In sixteen prefectures the price is down 20 to 40 per cent from a year ago, and the new harvest is appearing at ¥2,000-something in some regions. Something has happened that nobody here remembers: new rice is cheaper than old rice. Last year's stock, bought at the peak, is sitting on shelves at a higher price than the bags harvested last month.

That's a relief for anyone who eats it. It's also a problem. Farmers who planted more because prices were high are now selling into a falling market, and the word in the farm press is "collapse." The agriculture minister said the price outlook index had hit a record low two months running. On 1 September the government announced it would buy back 210,000 tonnes into the stockpile to put a floor under prices. Whether that's enough is being argued about right now.

What this means if you're eating here

• This is the moment for rice. September to October is shinmai (新米) season — newly harvested rice, which really does taste better: softer, sweeter, more fragrant. This year it's also cheap. If you only eat rice in Japan once, eat it now.
• Onigiri and set meals are getting cheaper, a little. All three big convenience chains cut onigiri prices this month, citing rice. Some restaurants that added rice surcharges are removing them. Don't expect big drops; the rice in a ¥180 onigiri is a small part of its cost.
• Look for the year on the bag. If you buy rice — supermarkets sell 2 kg bags that make a good souvenir — check the harvest year (産年) on the label. "2026" is the new crop.
• Be kind about the price. If a restaurant's rice bowl is smaller than you expected, or there's a note about rice on the menu, that's the last two years talking. It's easing now.

Where it goes from here

Nobody knows, honestly. The old system — pay farmers to grow less, keep prices stable, keep imports out — broke in 2024 and hasn't been replaced with anything. The government is buying rice to support prices at the same time as it says it wants a freer market. Farmers are older every year and fewer. And rice is still what Japan means when it says "food." Expect this to stay in the news.