Have you ever seen or purchased "fair trade" products? Recently, major Japanese confectionery manufacturers have introduced fair trade chocolates, and they are gradually gaining attention in Japan. If you pay a little more than usual for those products, you may feel like you are doing something good. You may be surprised to learn that fair trade products, which have a strong image of "social contribution" in Japan, are sold in supermarkets as commonplace daily necessities in the United Kingdom and other Western countries. I wonder how much people in Japan are aware of and pay attention to fair trade, which is in a sense "unusual" in Japan. Also, is the media coverage related to the difference in the level of attention between people in the UK and Japan? In this report, we will analyze the actual situation of fair trade in Japan by comparing the amount of money in circulation and the amount of media coverage with that in the UK.

Clothing items for sale at a fair trade store in New York City (Henry Bellagnome/flickr)[.CC BY-SA 2.0]

What is Fair Trade?

Before analyzing the actual situation of fair trade in Japan, we first explain how fair trade works. In general trade, before raw materials from developing countries reach the hands of consumers in developed countries as processed goods, they are subject to multiple layers of intervention by major trading companies and subcontractors, and only a small percentage of the sales proceeds go to the producers. In many cases, the products are the result of dozens of hours of work by producers in poor working conditions, and the consumers, people in developed countries, purchase them at very low prices, so-called "unfair trade" as a matter of course. Fair trade was introduced to improve this unfair situation as much as possible. Direct partnerships are formed between producers and the companies that use their raw materials,International Fairtrade StandardsFair trade is a trade that is not based on exploitation, in which producers receive a reasonable income for their labor by trading in accordance with the trade standards set forth by the International Fair Trade Standards (IFTSS). The international fair trade standards set minimum prices for each product as well as the labor patterns of the producers, and only when these are adhered to can the product be considered a fair trade product.Fairtrade InternationalFairtrade is officially certified by the Fairtrade Association of Japan (FTAJ). Typical products such as chocolate, coffee and tea, as well as everyday cotton products, are among those promoted as Fairtrade products, but Fairtrade must be applied to all products, not just these specific products.

Bananas with Fair Trade certification mark (Thinglass/shutterstock.com)

Japan's Fair Trade Market

So, how much Fairtrade products are distributed? The distribution amounts of Fairtrade products in Japan and the United Kingdom are as follows.

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Looking at this, one can see at a glance that the amount circulated in Japan is far less than in the UK. While Fairtrade products are distributed on an enormous scale in the UK, why are they only being handled on such a small scale in Japan, even though the number is gradually increasing? To begin with, how well is Fairtrade recognized in Japan? The following table compares the level of awareness of Fairtrade, the level of recognition of the Fairtrade certification mark, and the percentage of people who are in favor of buying Fairtrade products, even at a slightly higher price, for the sake of fair trade, in Japan and the UK.

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In every category, the percentage in Japan is much lower than in the U.K. It can be said that fair trade is not well established in Japan. This means that not many people in Japan are aware that the affluent lifestyle they take for granted is based on exploitation of developing countries. In other words, the reason why the recognition rate of fair trade in Japan is low and the amount of money in circulation is also low is probably because there are not many opportunities to learn about the poverty and exploitation occurring in other countries on a daily basis. So, to what extent do the media, which are supposed to provide us with information about other countries and serve as a window to other countries, report on fair trade?

Fair Trade and the Press

Before the coverage of Fairtrade, there has been little coverage of poor countries and their people in Japan to begin with. The percentage of words reported on the least developed countries by the three national newspapers is only a fraction of the total international coverage.Around 5%This is only the first time that the word "fair trade" has been used in the United Kingdom. In addition, over the 10-year period from 2007 to 2016, there were 376 articles containing the word "fair trade" in the UK national newspaper The Times of London and 837 articles in The Guardian (10-year total), while in the same three Japanese newspapers, there were 93 articles in the Asahi Shimbun, 86 in the Yomiuri and 74 by the Mainichi Shimbun. Furthermore, when narrowed down to those articles in which the main topic of the article was fair trade (i.e., treated as the overall theme of the article), only a small number (23 in the Asahi Shimbun, 23 in the Yomiuri Shimbun, and 26 in the Mainichi Shimbun) were found. In addition, approximately 17% of these were pitches from readers calling for the expansion of fair trade.

In addition to the number of articles, there were also considerable differences in content between Japan and the UK. Many of the articles from the two British companies reported on the current situation of producers in developing countries and what changes have been brought about in the field of producers through Fairtrade, providing more opportunities than in Japan to consider the more realistic reality of exploitation of poor countries. The problems that Fairtrade faces are also pointed out, and the appropriateness of Fairtrade is discussed. On the other hand, the Japanese press has rarely covered the realities of poverty among producers and the problems of Fairtrade as reported in the UK, but instead, it has had one interesting feature. The results of our analysis of the main subjects of articles on Fairtrade were as follows.

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This shows that Japan's fair trade reporting is biased toward introducing corporate initiatives and products, with little coverage of the producers and their lives actually affected by fair trade.

Fair trade coverage with no visibility of the production site

The main focus of Japan's fair trade coverage is the "social contribution" of people and companies engaged in fair trade. Special features on companies, products, and markets introduce new forms of business opportunities in which "social contribution" itself is a product, as well as the stories of companies that have introduced fair trade, while those focusing on student activities highlight how dedicated students are to fair trade. In addition, after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, there were several articles that treated reputational damage countermeasures as "fair trade," such as calling for sales of products from the affected areas without discrimination and featuring handicrafts created by the victims. As mentioned at the beginning of this report, this is due to the image that people in Japan generally have of "fair trade = good thing," and at the same time, it reinforces this image. In analyzing the articles of each company, we frequently found the phrase, "We can give our thoughts to the producers in developing countries through Fairtrade products," but the Japanese media focuses only on "us" who can give our thoughts to the producers and hardly understand the current situation of the producers, which is the most important part of the story. In other words, what we see through the media is what is happening to the producers. In other words, what we see in the media is the service nature of the fair trade activities themselves and the dedication of the activists, with little information about the actual effects on the local producers and the unresolved issues.

Not for charity, but for "normal everyday life.

So, is fair trade actually the dedicated service that the Japanese media praises it to be? As mentioned earlier, what is done in fair trade is to purchase goods produced in developing countries at a "fair price," which in other words, is nothing more than returning the negative status quo of exploitation to zero. In other words, it is not a service to the have-nots, but an activity to help those who we have driven into a have-not situation to be on the same starting line as us. It is also debated whether the value standards that make a trade "fair" also deserve to be called fair, in that they are from developed countries on the consumer side. Looking at the lives of the producers of Fairtrade certified products, poverty has been somewhat reduced compared to the past, but it is still far from the standard of living in developed countries on the consumer side. However, despite some problems, fair trade is a very important initiative as a first step toward achieving fair trade throughout the world. If we can raise the level of global trade transactions to the current level of fair trade, we can expect further development of trade standards, using this as a new starting point. Rather than promoting fair trade as "a support activity undertaken by a few companies and students," the world will truly begin to move forward when the media report fair trade as "the first step toward changing the unfairness of global trade" that will encourage everyone to take advantage of the products.

A woman picking tea in the strike-hit Darjeeling region of India (Maximum Exposure PR/shutterstock.com)

Writer: Yuka Komai
Graphics: Yosuke Tomino/Yuka Komai/Virgil Hawkins