TOKYO, Dec. 7 — Members of Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have set up a group to promote pickles in overseas markets on the back of growing interest in Japanese cuisine, apart from that old icon sushi.
Tsukemono are Japanese vegetables preserved in pickling ingredients such as salt, sake or vinegar, giving a delicious and crunchy taste.
The LDP group, consisting of 23 members, will propose a policy to support farmers who grow the key vegetables of tsukemono. These include Japanese radish and Chinese cabbage.
It will also propose a program to create jobs in the tsukemono industry at a time the domestic market has been shrinking.
Japanese tsukemono production amounted 710,000 tons in 2016, down 40% from a peak in 1991.
The government wants to increase agriculture exports and has set a target to boost the annual value of agricultural exports to 1 trillion yen by 2020.