Japan’s recently released Fishery White Paper for the 2023 fiscal year showed that per-capita seafood consumption in the country continues to drop, leading Japanese seafood producers to turn toward exports as the domestic market becomes ever more unreliable.
The fiscal year 2023 report highlights that per-capita consumption of edible fish and shellfish sank to a new low of 22 kilograms; nearly half of the 40.2 kilograms per-capita consumed in 2001.
Consumption of meat in Japan first surpassed that of seafood in 2011 and has consistently risen year over year since. Seafood’s decline has been steep, and correlates with a rise in consumer price index, signaling it is not only the Westernization of diets behind a reduction in seafood consumption but also its higher cost.
Backing that up, the report emphasizes that price inflation from 2022 to 2023 was particularly high for seafood at 9 percent, mainly due to depreciation of the yen and a rebound in demand after Covid-19 related restrictions were lifted. Using 2019 as a baseline, fresh seafood prices rose 40 percent by 2023, much more than the increase for fresh meat (23 percent), prepared foods (19 percent), and all food products (18 percent).
The white paper listed which seafood species were most popular in 2023 by per-capita purchase volumes.
Salmon has held the top position in Japan firmly since 2004. Tuna is now in the second spot, displacing squid, which has fallen over the past few decades as catches have dwindled and prices have risen. Yellowtail also moved higher, taking over the number three spot and displacing such species as saury and squid over the years. Shrimp, mostly imported from Southeast Asia, has been in the top five consistently as of late and ended 2023 in the fourth spot. Squid is now in the fifth spot.
Among seafood items that were formerly in the top five but have fallen in popularity, horse mackerel was sixth, having last made the top five in 1999. Pacific saury stocks have crashed, so much so that the fish, which was fourth on the list in 2009, is now a rare purchase for Japanese consumers as the species becomes a higher-priced item.
Because Japanese consumers have eaten less seafood, the country has imported less by volume, but imports measured by value have actually risen, reflecting increased purchasing competition from other countries. The country paid over 25 percent more in yen terms in 2023 to import slightly less by volume than it had in 2020.
As for exports, the best year in volume terms for Japan was 2018, when it shipped around 713,000 metric tons (MT) of seafood around the world. That volume plummeted to 480,000 MT in 2023, though, after China closed its market to Japanese seafood over the release of treated cooling water at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor plant.
Similar to import totals by value, although seafood exports dropped by volume in 2023, by yen terms, they reached a new high of JPY 390.1 billion (USD 2.77 billion, EUR 2.56 billion in 2023).
The Japanese government has analyzed the trends in domestic seafood consumption for the last few decades and have strategized accordingly.
Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Japanese government set ambitious goals in 2013 to increase seafood exports as part of a broader economic strategy to boost Japan's global trade and improve its import/export balance. The plan set a target to more than double the value of seafood exports by 2020, so the government aimed to improve market access through trade agreements and negotiations. It also planned marketing campaigns to highlight the safety, freshness, and premium nature of Japanese seafood and gave incentives to companies to improve their logistics and infrastructure.
However, disruptions such as the Covid-19 pandemic shut restaurants down, and volumes have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. Additionally, China’s ban dealt a hard blow to scallop and sea cucumber exports in particular, with the ban unlikely to be lifted soon.
