FARMING types are fond of earthy metaphors, and Toshio Yamada, a Japanese lawmaker who champions the agriculture industry in parliament, does not disappoint. That Japan would consider lowering or eliminating import tariffs on some of the five “sacred” farm products, he said this week, was unacceptable. It was as if the country were dropping its knickers, he added, before it was even asked. The special five are rice, wheat, beef and poultry, dairy products and sugar. The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said in March that this group would continue to be protected in “sanctuaries” even though Japan plans to sign up to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a regional free-trade agreement currently under negotiation. But on October 6th, Koya Nishikawa, the chairman of the committee that Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has established to negotiate the TPP, said that tariffs could in fact be eliminated on some of the five. He was speaking in Bali, where APEC and other meetings were taking place. Other senior figures, including Akira Amari, the economy minister, and Shigeru Ishiba, the LDP’s secretary-general of the LDP, broadly echoed his words.

That Japan is being so obliging to its international partners, so soon, is extremely welcome news. It joined the 18th round of talks on the TPP in July. Its membership is a crucial part of “Abenomics”, a three-part plan of Mr Abe’s to revive the economy. The idea is to use trade liberalisation as a way to reform important sectors of domestic industry, such as agriculture, health care and finance. But opposition to it is also strong. Ever since Mr Abe announced that Japan would join, in March, farmers have been howling at the possible damage to their livelihoods.

Overseas Japan has been regarded as one of the chief obstacles to reaching a speedy and ambitious agreement. But now that its negotiators are dropping their insistence on protecting the bulk of agricultural products (those five sacreds include 586 products within tariff classifications), other countries may find it easier to abandon their own “sensitivities”.

Back at home attention is now shifting to questions about what, precisely, the LDP promised of the five sacred areas. Over the summer, when an election for the upper house of parliament was ahead of them, the LDP had feared a backlash from anti-TPP farmers and their powerful lobbying group, Japan Agriculture (JA). It pledged promptly to withdraw from talks on the TPP if the five areas were not to be defended. On the campaign trail in Yamagata, a rural heartland to the north of the country’s main island, Mr Abe wooed the crowds with a promise to protect agriculture in “Japan, the land of vigorous rice plants”.

It worked; despite widespread anti-TPP sentiment in the countryside, the LDP won handily. One reason was that the farmers and JA had no other party to turn to; the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) also backs the TPP, mildly. But this week LDP lawmakers who were elected from rural areas are complaining that their constituents can now accuse them of outright betrayal.

In response, Mr Abe and his government can just about claim that there was always a grey area. Even before the elections in July, observers noted that “sanctuaries” were not quite the same as full “exceptions” to trade liberalisation. And Japan will lower tariffs on as little as it can in order to meet a target of liberalising 95% of products over time. It should be able to achieve that by targeting secondary agricultural products, which are slightly less sensitive. In the case of rice, for instance, that would mean rice flour and rice flakes, rather than the symbolic rice bowl itself.

Nevertheless, the government’s signal on TPP suggests that that Mr Abe’s government is more firmly committed to an ambitious trade agreement than anyone had thought. Farmers and the JA, after all, are by sheer numbers the country’s most powerful vested interest. The statement also speaks well of Mr Abe’s determination to press ahead with economic reform more broadly. If he dares to disappoint the farmers, other vested interests should also tremble.

(Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons)