Bitter Rice

After floods, typhoons and the wettest summer in 50 years, Japan measured her rice crop last week and found it 2,000,000 tons short. The Ministry of Agriculture's verdict: the worst crop in twelve years. Japan, which even in good years must import rice (mainly from Siam), will be able to buy only about 1,000,000 tons, since prices are so high ($213 a ton) and most rice-surplus countries are lagging behind their prewar production.

During the occupation, many Japanese tried the newfangled idea of eating bread for breakfast instead of rice, but are now returning to rice, claiming that bread did not fill them. Tokyo's black-market rice prices are almost double last year's. Alarmed, the ministry announced plans to speed up home production of artificial rice, a compound of wheat, starch and 10% natural rice. The Minister of Agriculture's wife said that she had secretly fed her husband artificial rice for two months, and "he never knew the difference."

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