Ensuring the Future of Food in Japan

Here’s an informative and entertaining video about Japan’s food system. It’s in Japanese with English subtitles and cover the issue of food production in Japan.

Japan produces only 40% of the food it consumes and imports the other 60%, a ratio that is the lowest among developed nations. This is due to the change in the Japanese diet, which has gone from rice, fish and vegetables to what the video refers to as “meat, fat and oil”.

The video proposes very Japanese solutions: going back to more a more traditional Japanese diet, favouring food produced in Japan and for farmers to be more efficient.

The video’s animation style (slightly abstract, isometric-projection-ish and constantly changing zoom levels) and “J-pop” music kept reminding me of the Katamari Damacy series of videogames. I kept expecting to see a katamari roll over the scenery.

For comparison’s sake, here’s some video of the “Sumo Wrestler” level of We Love Katamari, in which you have to roll a sumo wrestler over food items to make him reach a certain weight class before the time runs out: