If you are an economist monitoring dozens of indicators to assess Japan’s consumption, beware! You may soon lose your job, and this is not because of AI. Furikake is coming.
Furikake is a Japanese inexpensive and tasty dry condiment. It typically consists of a mixture of seasoned dried fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, freeze-dried salmon, egg, etc. The Japanese use it to garnish their cooked rice, but they now seem to have turned it into an economic indicator.
As recent article by the Nihon Shokuryo Shimbun (Japan Food Journal) noted that furikake shipments began to increase in September 2022 and have been in an uptrend ever since. Incidentally, food prices within Japan’s CPI accelerated their ascent from 105.6 to 121.3 over the same period, with rice, households’ staple food, 50% more expensive in 2024 than a year earlier.
This seems to indicate that some of the side dishes, which typically come with rice in a Japanese meal, are being replaced by furikake, which is much cheaper, to save money. History supports this assumption as the furikake market always expanded during food crisis periods, such as the “rice riots” (when Japan faced a significant shortage of rice due to abnormal weather in 1993) and the bubble economy’s burst which led to a decades-long crisis.
So, should we now look for a decline in furikake sales to try and predict the next recovery in Japanese consumers’ real spending?
KH – Jan. 16, 2025