Japanese farmers harvest about 7 million tons of rice each year. With Japan’s climate only allowing them to harvest once a year, they take great care throughout the year to produce delicious rice for us to enjoy.

There is a plentiful supply of water from melted snow off the Yatsugatake Mountain Range to grow rice on this land at an elevation of 700 meters, which is blessed with the beauty of the four seasons as they change. Ryoji Shimooka from Komekono Ltd. tells us how he plants the rice seedlings in spring and maintains the fields through summer, monitoring the water levels and other conditions in each paddy of his 40 hectares of land, making adjustments so the seedlings get the right humidity and temperature for optimal growth until the rice is harvested in autumn. In Japan, rice growing flourishes in the mountainous regions, where the cold water from mountain rivers is mineral-rich and the warm conditions in the basins make for big temperature differences between night and day. That allows growers to produce rice that has plenty of starch with excellent stickiness and sweetness.

Komekono prepares fertiliser mixes optimised for each of the rice varieties they grow, including of course Koshihikari, the go-to choice in Japan, as well as Kazesayaka, a Nagano Prefecture original variety.

Japanese growers finely tailor their efforts in cultivating the different varieties of delicious Japanese rice they produce.

Polishing is the process of removing the outer husk, bran, and other parts from brown rice. It is an important process crucial to the taste of Japanese rice.

In Japan, the government has set a shipping standard so that the moisture content of polished rice is below a certain level. Polishers everywhere have the skills to precisely polish rice, taking into account factors such as the harvest date, moisture content, and outer husk hardness.

CEO Shinichi Katayama runs the specialty rice store Sumidaya Shoten in Sumida, in the heart of Tokyo. He uses a method of polishing rice passed down from olden times that avoids overheating it, spending six to seven times the usual amount of time on polishing, which enhances its inherent rich aroma.

Sumidaya Shoten uses their expertise to judge the sort of rice customers want based on factors such as when they are going to eat it and in what situations they will be eating it, then adjust their polishing processes accordingly.

In Japan, rice polishers are continuously updating their skills and techniques to bring out the best taste of the rice grown in Japan.

This logo was created by the Japan Rice and Rice Industry Export Promotion Association, which champions Japanese rice exports. Mt. Fuji, cherry blossoms, and the sun. Three distinctive images, which, together with ears of rice, as well as a sacred straw rope around encircling clouds, give the logo its Japanese character.

This is the wooden tag that millers who carefully polish Japanese rice have given to stores, as a marker to indicate that they use Japanese rice.

Try looking out for these markers to find Japanese rice.