Letters to the Editor
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You can eat very well without butter or other milk products
I haven't eaten dairy products in 15 years. That hasn't stopped me from preparing and enjoying gourmet meals.
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What part does dairy play in the Japanese diet?
These things are not a large part of the Japanese diet anyway. Now if they ran out of butter in Wisconsin that would be news.
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Something Similar Is Happening in the US Right Now
Farmers in the Midwest are "putting down" pigs and cattle because they cannot afford to feed them. The price of pork and beef lags behind the price of feed.
If current trends continue, in another year, grain foodstuffs will be a lot more expensive and may not be available at all. Protein from pork and beef will also increase in price if they are available at all.
An associate from India mentioned today that lentils are very difficult to find in the US and India. Lentils are another important source of protein.
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Not likely a long term problem.
As Japan's population continues to decline it will need to import less food. This should also lead to the long-overdue shift in commodity food production domestically.
Japan's agricultural is categorized as "intensive gardening." Anyone who has lived there can describe the pointlessly labor intensive and needlessly small scale of Japan's agriculture. Like India, Japan needed to rationalize agricultural production a couple of decades ago. Farmer population continues to decline, but Japan still has one of the highest percentages of population devoted to at least part-time agriculture. As with India, too many farmers equals too many small farms, and productivity is lower than it should be.
Japan's greatest challenge, like most of the world's, is energy.
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And in today's Doompocalypse News
You've become quite the prophet of doom haven't you? Every day reads like Nostradamus now.
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@Electro Robot
And in today's Doompocalypse News...
Perhaps you could cheer us up by pointing out the good news that is somehow being overlooked?
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Less butter in Japan? Please
Beef and butter are not exactly staples in Japan, and many Japanese go their entire lives without eating either. Beef is atrociously expensive in Tokyo and is a status symbol of the rich. Butter is something used in Western-style restaurants and not part of traditional cooking.
Japan's topography has never lent itself to cattle herding (or herding at all). The Japanese diet, I believe, focuses on rice, vegetables, tofu and seafood--giving them the second longest life expectancy in the world (http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa042000b.htm).
Regarding food, the Japanese are concerned about a much more serious threat to their food supply--the depletion of worldwide fishing stocks. That would be a far graver threat to Japan.
BTW, ElectroRobot--lol!
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The Way the World Doesn't Work??
Yes, I think it is necessary for Leonard to expound just as much on what doesn't work as what does....conventional free market economics has as much dysfunction as function....and the illumination of such practices leads us to realize eventual change.
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Strange conclusions
The traditional Japanese diet is a myth for a majority of modern Japanese. Are you people getting your information from glossy Japanophile cookbooks?
Japanese people eat plenty of beef and butter. They eat tons of fried foods too! Can you believe it! They have Mcdonalds everywhere, and the other popular fast-food chain is basically a beef-bowl restaurant. A heep of thinly sliced beef on top of rice. For like 3 or 4 bucks. Sushi costs a lot more than beef, it's not an everyday food for most Japanese contrary to what some westerners might think.
Go to any grocery store or bar, and you will find many things with butter-soy sauce flavoring. Japanese people eat a ton of pork (often deep-fried!) and nutritionless instant foods as well. Vegetarianism is extremely rare and considered odd.
The 'traditional' Japanese diet is about as widely practiced there as 'traditional' values are actually practiced in America. (Mostly just by really old people in both cases).
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Alkaline
I tend to think of news as news. But based on your comment I can see why the endless whining is so popular. The past present and future are all shit. Everything sucks. We should kill ourselves but then who would be left to compost the corpses.
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piling on
Continuing my tirade...
...And do you know what the most commonly eaten meal is in modern Japan?
If you don't know you can try to guess, but you'll never get it...
Curry. Brown Curry. Made with Chicken or Beef, often cooked in butter with potatoes and carrots before the curry rue is added.
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I'm not sure how you define "staples," . . .
. . . but I'm pretty sure that the Japanese consume more dairy per capita than anyone else in East Asia, and are probably second to S. Korea in beef consumption.
Beef and butter are not exactly staples in Japan, and many Japanese go their entire lives without eating either. Beef is atrociously expensive in Tokyo and is a status symbol of the rich. Butter is something used in Western-style restaurants and not part of traditional cooking.
Actually, very few Japanese go their entire lives without eating either beef or butter (though some Buddhist monks may abstain). Western-style baked goods, particularly French, are very popular, buttered toast is common at breakfast, McDonalds is ubiquitous in the metropolitan and suburban areas where the overwhelming majority of the population is centered, and three Japanese dishes, sukiyaki, shabu-shabu and tenpan-yaki, are made with (among other ingredients) beef.
Japan's topography has never lent itself to cattle herding (or herding at all).
Hokkaido, which very much resembles the PNW west of the mountains, has substantial dairy farms and wagyu, Japanese style beef, which is raised throughout the country, is more like veal thus requiring relatively little space (Japan imports most of its lower grade beef). The same is pretty much true of raising dairy cattle: it doesn't require the acreage you commonly see used in the semi-arid regions of the U.S. (and S. America) for raising beef cattle.
The Japanese diet, I believe, focuses on rice, vegetables, tofu and seafood . . .
The traditional Japanese diet, and rice consumption has declined yearly for a couple of decades now. However, the Japanese, particularly in the major metropolitan areas, are almost on par with N. American in terms of the variety of diet. Some of the best French and Italian (and Chinese, Thai and Indian) food I've ever had has been in Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka and Nagoya.
Regarding food, the Japanese are concerned about a much more serious threat to their food supply--the depletion of worldwide fishing stocks. That would be a far graver threat to Japan.-- cdunlea
This is true. However, they are also one of the primary culprits in this. The waters off Japan have been over-fished for decades. This is why the Japanese commercial fishing fleet travels all over the world.
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politeness
@ikuiku
For someone with a dirty screen name (potentially) your reply was worded a lot more politely than mine.
It's always nice to have some backup though.
Japan is the only country I have extensive first hand experience of other than America. I always wonder based on how far off many people's impressions of modern Japan are how far off my impressions of countries I've never been to are.
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Wow...
I've been schooled here. But seriously, when did the Japanese diet become so much like ours? That has to be recently. I'll admit the last time I was in Japan was 1989, but my travels through the country left me a distinct impression that beef and butter were uncommon. And the emphasis on fish (and lack thereof on dairy) is cited still today as to why Japan has one of the longest life expectancies on the planet.
So, this is a major issue in Japan then?
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@ Cdunlea
Where you in the countryside when you were there? Some of it could be a rural/urban distinction, amplified by continuing youth flight to urban areas. Or if you were there as a tourist you might not have seen the kind of food people are eating in their actual households. You don't see tuna-noodle-casserole in many restaurants in America if you see what I'm saying.
Sorry to be blunt in my reply. I get easily irked for some reason about the disconnect between the common image of Japan and the country that I know from living there. Not in the people that hold it, but in the way it gets perpetuated through media. Believe it or not, just like the food thing, they're not really a nature-loving people either contrary to popular wisdom. Unless you consider concrete natural. It seems like the common perception is based on a buddhist monk living on a rural mountain more than an actual Japanese person living in a city). It's a nice country, I love it, it just ain't that.