If you were a rice farmer in Japan before the 17th century, your life was one of constant toil, uncertainty and suffering. Although the costs of rice farming were more or less fixed, seeds, fertilizer, water and manpower, the ultimate price that you’d get at the market was like a game of Pachinko (a Japanese recreational arcade game that is typically used for gambling). During periods of bumper harvests, price of rice would fall and farmers would sometimes be left with less than the cost of their production (there is only so much sushi you can eat) and at other times, during poor harvests, rice prices would soar and farmers would get rich (provided they had survived the previous good harvest).
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