For Tokyo-based condiments maker Kagome, and perhaps for the government, the challenge of breaking with a decade and a half of deflation boils down to the price of a bottle of ketchup.
The country's most popular ketchup brand is hiking prices for the first time in 25 years in April, the kind of inflation that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic policies are aimed at encouraging.
But Kagome, like most companies, fears consumers are not ready to pay more.