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Abstract
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On February 1st, 2019, the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EJEPA) entered into force. The agreement was lauded in terms such as “the world’s largest free trade bloc (Nikkei Asian Review, 2018) and “the biggest trade zone ever negotiated” (European Commission, 2018), and quickly coined the “cars-for-cheese” deal: whereas agriculture seems to be the biggest winner on the European side, Japan stands to gain most from the automotive industry. While trade agreements are often described in terms of cold, hard numbers, food has proven a sensitive issue that transcends possible economic benefits as it is rooted in national policy and identity. Indeed, despite its limited actual value, agri-food was a major stumbling block in the negotiations of the focal agreement.
This article focuses specifically on food within the context of the EJEPA on the Japanese side. The corpus consists of 13,026 Japanese newspaper articles mentioning the EJEPA between 2007 and 2019. This was narrowed down to a final sample of 299 articles through three steps: (1) filtering all articles for food-related nouns, (2) limiting the sample to one national newspaper and four newspapers representing different political leanings, regions and industries, and (3) selecting chronologically evenly spaced articles. Then, through a qualitative content analysis, we analyzed how food was featured in Japanese print media.
The focus per outlet is very different. Yet, generally, our findings indicate that while the actual impact of the agreement on Japanese agriculture and food-related industries is rarely mentioned, the symbolic value of food in the discourse is surprisingly high in any outlet. Nevertheless, our analysis found that the perceived threat from the EJEPA in terms of food stems mainly from its conflation with the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its widely mediated impact on agriculture. Often indeed the discourse is placed within a larger social imagery of a new global order and detrimental trade deals. Lastly, beyond a strongly defensive or even victimized narrative in some specialized media, mainstream newspapers also divert attention towards the potential opportunities the EJEPA brings to Japanese exporters and manufacturers.
By identifying narratives in Japanese print media surrounding what at the time of ratification was the largest trade agreement, we provide evidence of the importance of food in public discourse and shed light on the role of media in constructing, informing and influencing the food-related debate in a trade context. This cannot be explained by economic rationales of detrimental effects on Japanese agriculture and food industries, but rather on the sensitive nature of food as an integral part of nations.
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