As the Japanese increasingly turn away from rice, the longtime staple of their diet, baker Koichi Fukumori believes he has found a solution to boost the heavily subsidized crop: Turn it into bread.
The crispy baguettes coming out of Fukumori's ovens look and taste just like the bread the Japanese have grown to love, but there is one big difference. More than 80 percent of his bread is made of rice.
"This is the only way to survive for rice farmers," Fukumori said.
A range of bread made out of rice is offered at his shop, Aoimugi ("Green Wheat"), at a bread theme park that opened Thursday in one of Japan's largest shopping malls, LaLaport, near Tokyo.
Fukumori, who studied under star French baker Raymond Calvel, spent four years developing rice bread at the request of Japan's agriculture ministry to help shore up rice consumption.
"I grew up seeing farmers growing rice," he said. "I thought making bread out of rice would help them out."
More than 70 schools in western Japan have already introduced the rice bread, which also includes wheat gluten.
"If rice bread is used for school meals, it provides long-term support for [farmers]," he said. "It is also important for children to eat food made of locally grown rice."
While it may not be an advertisement for consumers, Fukumori notes that for farmers, there are only advantages to introducing rice bread, as it uses not premium rice but grains that would otherwise be wasted.
The theme park is called the Tokyo Panya (bakery) Street, a collection of eight popular bakeries operated by individuals dubbed "super boulangers" and serving bread fresh from the oven.
The park producer, the Namco entertainment group, bills the area as "a Northern European town in the countryside," with a water wheel going round and the taped chirping of birds playing in the background.
It is the 15th food theme park operated by Namco but the first focusing on bread, which is gradually replacing rice as a staple Japanese food. The park aims to draw 1.5 million visitors in its initial year.
Food theme parks are mushrooming around Japan, focusing on a variety of food ranging from ramen noodles and curry to Western-style cakes and Chinese dumplings.
"Nobody hates to eat," a Namco official said.
"A company boss can hardly ask a subordinate out to Disneyland, but it would be easier to ask someone to come to this park together," she said, explaining the bread park's potential niche.
Some of the customers at Tokyo Panya Street say that bread has completely replaced rice in their diets.
"I don't have any stock of rice at home and have thrown away my rice cooker," said Masako Watanabe, who heads a 3,000-strong bread-lovers' group.
"Bread is convenient," she said. "You can step into a bakery and choose whatever you want from a wide variety, while rice is always the same white thing. You can have bread as a snack or for dinner," she said.
Annual rice consumption in Japan has fallen to a postwar low as different foods enter Japanese kitchens and working women opt for quicker-to-serve bread or pasta meals, according to the farm ministry.
Japanese people ate an average 59.5kg of rice (in terms of uncooked weight) at home or restaurants in the year ended in March 2004.
It was the first time the figure has dropped below 60kg and is a fraction of the peak per-capita consumption of over 110kg in 1963.
Spending on bread rose to ?27,954 (US$266 dollars) per household in 2004 from ?22,100 in 1981, while spending on rice slumped to ?37,934 from ?71,803 over the same 23-year period, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication.
The tradition of rice, however, has ensured that rice farming remains one of Japan's most protected industries, with rice farmers heavily subsidized and Japan fighting tooth and nail against opening up to mass imports of the crop.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had