As if fending off cheap imports from the rest of the world, and odd weather patterns that are playing havoc with their crops, were not enough. Farmers in parts of the country are running into a new, potentially lethal threat to their livelihoods: other farmers.
As autumn kicked in across the archipelago last month, Japan's Meteorological Agency revealed that the leaves were changing colour an average of two weeks later than they did half a century ago. But spring flowers were popping up 10 days earlier, and the all-important cherry trees were blossoming almost a week early.
Not surprisingly, global warming takes the rap for Japan's shrinking winter.
It means grapes are failing to turn the required shade of red, and peaches are coming off the trees with brown flesh instead of the succulent yellow that Japanese shoppers demand. 'If the colour is bad, prices are less than half,' said researcher Takayoshi Yamane, of the Fruit Tree Research Institute at the Hiroshima Prefectural Agriculture Technology Centre.
Farmers are tearing the bark off grape vines in an attempt to concentrate the nourishment in the fruit and help it turn the required deep red. And peach orchards in Kumamoto prefecture, in southern Japan, have been blighted by Mitsu syndrome, in which warm weather turns the flesh of the fruit soft and brown. Some experts predict that, within 50 years, higher average temperatures will make many regions of Japan unsuitable for the crops that bring them fame today.
And, while that may be a creeping threat to the farmers' livelihoods, there is a much swifter and more immediate danger: orchard owners in the heart of Japan's apple-growing region have reached the conclusion that a group of farmers is methodically stripping their trees of their fruit.
