Rice Bowl Tales

First broadcast February 2007

In this special series we look into a food stuff that many of us take for granted and buy from a supermarket without much thought. We're talking about rice.

Rice Bowl Tales is a series of four programmes exploring the importance of rice to Asian economies, and how the crop contributes to a sense of national identity.

The series is a co-production between BBC World Service and ABC Radio National in Australia.

Part Four - Japan

In the final programme of the series Tony Barrell is in Japan, where rice has been the country's staple crop since time immemorial.

But behind the myths, the attitudes and rituals there are misconceptions and contradictions.

Rice is at the centre of an ongoing struggle about national identity, religion, cure, environmental survival and good old money politics.

Tony Barrell examiness the way rice farming has been used to create and sustain Japan's most powerful institution - the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

We meet the mandarins of the Ministry of Agriculture, hear the cultural theorists and visit a distant agricultural experiment in the north which was supposed to bring western methods to Japan farming but has turned out to have consequences nobody ever dreamed of.

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