THE EDITOR – With the world in economic and diplomatic disarray and prices surging back home, the Japanese government has been struggling to keep up with the crises appearing on multiple fronts. Perhaps the most pressing for the average Japanese citizen is the currently inflated cost of rice, an indispensable staple for most, which has skyrocketed to roughly double its price from only a few years ago.
At the forefront of efforts to get rice prices under control was Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Taku Eto.
Read also: Eto Dismissed as Japan’s Agricultural Minister; Chosen Successor Koizumi Vows to Tackle High Rice Prices
However, in a speech on May 18, Eto made the worst possible gaffe someone in his position could when he said: “I’ve never bought rice. My supporters have given me so much rice that I have so much I could sell it.”
Japan News said that It seemed to even give Eto himself a pause to consider that he might not be the best person for this job, and he resigned on 21 May. That same day, his replacement was named as Shinjiro Koizumi, an experienced LDP cabinet member and son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Aside from being a relatively young politician so high in the LDP ranks, Koizumi is most known as the guy who made it so everyone had to pay around three yen to get a plastic bag at stores when he was environment minister. It’s important to know that when we take a look at online comments about the news.
“Oh crap! Now, we’ll have to pay for rice bags.”
“Are they going to charge us for rice bags next?”
“Is anything going to improve because of this? Charging for rice bags?”
“I’m going to have to buy a rice eco bag now.”
“I just hope he doesn’t charge us for the rice bags.”
“He’s probably going to lower the price of rice by charging for the bags.”
“I hope all this talk about charging for rice bags is just a joke…”
You get the idea. In fact, minutes after the announcement was made, “charge for rice bags” (米袋有料化) became a trending topic on Twitter with thousands of posts about it in only three hours, as if everyone was racing to be the first to make the rice bag joke.
In distant second place in terms of jokes were ones about making rice “sexy,” in reference to a comment Koizumi made as environment minister.
He actually correctly used an English term at the time, saying tackling problems like climate change needs to be made “fun, cool and sexy.” Unfortunately for him, that usage of the word “sexy” didn’t land right with Japanese people, some of whom took it too literally and began to think he had some kind of environmentalism fetish.
Throughout his political career, Koizumi has been dogged by accusations that he’s something of an incompetent nepo baby. Regardless of whether the plastic bag charge was liked or not, you have to admit he took action to make a major change in Japanese society and got results, something not often seen in Japanese politics.
On the other hand, he also strikes us as someone who may have “never bought rice” in his life, and this also kind of feels like one of those cabinet reassignments where a loyal LDP soldier is simply brought in rather than someone with some real insight into the agricultural problems Japan is facing.
We’ll see whether Koizumi rises to the occasion or just says some funny things that everyone will nitpick about.
