When you are the Japanese minister of agriculture and millions of citizens conditioned from birth to revere rice are agonising over record-high prices and depleted supermarket shelves, you have a couple of choices.
You could reassure them that their pain is fully recognised at the highest levels of government, that effective relief measures will kick in soon and that fundamental reform is being rushed through to redress decades of misguided policy. Or you could boast, in the manner of Scarface sprawled in his mansion, about the ampleness of your personal rice stash, your surplus large enough to be sold and the political gifts that built your mountain of white stuff.
Taku Eto, the farm minister, went with the latter choice at a weekend fundraiser. And, after rapidly winning the hostility of everyone who pays for rice themselves, he was gone from his post by Wednesday. “I have never bought rice, to be honest, because my supporters give me a lot of rice. I have so much rice in my pantry that I could sell it,” was the precise formula that sealed Eto’s fate.