They are the worst, even worse than ours.
Think of the Japanese countryside as one big Colonial Williamsburg human theme park writ large.
Wow, that’s some serious description...
Maybe so, but the Japanese people like it that way. That’s why there is very little support for moves like this, even from the people living in the cities that have to pay the high prices.
Years ago, when Japan struck a deal that required them to buy a huge amount of Thai rice, it sat on shelves for months because no one was interested in buying it even though it was much cheaper. Some stores came up with the idea of tying bag of Thai rice to a bag of Japanese rice and selling them as a set. The Japanese housewives just untied them and bought the Japanese rice.
IIRC, Japanese government ended up buying all the Thai rice, relabeling it, and sending it overseas as food aid, although some might be in strategic stockpiles in case of national emergency.
Japanese like their domestic food products and do not mind paying higher prices for them. I buy Nescafe instant coffee made in Mexico at 396 yen for 200 grams. The Japanese Maxim (on the same shelf) costs 200 yen more. But the Maxim sells much better.
The same goes for a lot of stuff. Imported products are much cheaper, but the Japanese consumer will buy Japanese products by preference regardless.
One other incident. Some years back, a Japanese meat packing house was caught labeling imported beef as domestic. Now me, I love Aussie beef and think it tastes much better, so I am always delighted to see it on the shelves — but the Japanese consumers were furious and the meat packer was fined severely. I think they may have even gone out of business.