At a press conference Dec. 9, shortly after an extraordinary session of the Diet adjourned, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe emphatically declared, "We have abolished gentan, a feat many said could not be accomplished by our Liberal Democratic Party." Gentan refers to the government's decades-old policy of curtailing rice production by encouraging farmers to reduce the acreage of their rice paddies in exchange for subsidy payments.
Apparently realizing that he was addressing a press corps rather than making a speech at a political rally, he corrected his statement by saying, "We have decided to abolish gentan." Nothing symbolizes the Abe administration's rhetoric on the subject better than this "minor correction."
Although the prime minister's headquarters stresses a shift in the nation's agricultural policy, what the government has actually done is make a broad decision to abolish gentan five years from now. This is just putting off a true decision and in fact means that the existing gentan scheme will be strengthened, instead of being abolished.