TOKYO — The food shortage that has hit Japan is announced by the glaring gap on supermarket shelves next to the margarine and the sour cream and just above the cheese.
The butter shelf is empty. And no one knows when butter will be back.
The rich yellow stuff has all but vanished from grocery stores across the world’s second-biggest economy. Some stores have tried to ration the few bricks that occasionally arrive by limiting customers to a pack or two, but in most places, merchants post signs apologizing for having none.
Even bakeries that buy in bulk are finding it hard to get enough, which crimps their ability to turn out the croissants, cakes and quiches that have shouldered their way into the Japanese diet.
“We’re in trouble,” said Seiko Nakano, 27, who runs Levain, a small but well-known French bakery in a residential neighborhood of Tokyo. She has been told she will not receive any new butter supplies until Tuesday, a month later than expected.
At a time of global food shortages and ballooning prices, Japan’s pastry problems qualify as barely more than an inconvenience. No one expects the famously controlled Japanese to riot in the refrigerated sections of supermarkets.
But the case of the disappearing butter has delivered a psychological blow to shoppers unaccustomed to shortages.
The butter shortage arises from a convergence of market factors that has chased hundreds of domestic dairy farmers out of business in the past two years. The sequence began when Japanese consumers began to drink less milk, a decline that coincided with a deluge of media coverage airing claims that milk is bad for your health.
Experts say consumption also has been affected by a low birthrate, which means fewer elementary school students getting served a free daily carton.
But while declining as a beverage, demand for milk to be used in the production of cheese is expected to jump by 15 percent this year, while demand for the less profitable butter holds steady. The result, the Japanese dairy association explains, is that there is not enough milk left to make much butter.
Last week, the Japanese government stepped in to urge the country’s four largest dairy-product companies to churn out more butter. And the agriculture board is moving up its scheduled purchases of imported butter from Australia and elsewhere by six months.
