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EconomyJuly – September 1918

Rice Riots of 1918

Also called: Rice Riots, Kome sōdō

As rice prices soared, riots that began in the summer of 1918 among women of fishing villages in Toyama spread across Japan, bringing down the Terauchi cabinet and bringing in Hara Takashi’s party cabinet.

A rice-milling company in Okayama burned by rioters during the Rice Riots — Asahi Shimbun, August 1918
A rice-milling company in Okayama burned by rioters during the Rice Riots — Asahi Shimbun, August 1918

Unknown, originally published in Asahi Shimbun · Public domain · Source

The First World War boom pushed up prices and swelled the cities, and when merchants and landlords hoarded rice ahead of the Siberian Intervention in 1918, its price more than doubled in a year. In late July women in Uozu and other fishing towns in Toyama tried to stop rice being shipped out; the news spread through the press, and in August riots attacking rice dealers and wealthy houses broke out in hundreds of places including Tokyo and Osaka. The government sent in troops to suppress them.

Taking responsibility, the cabinet of Terauchi Masatake, former Governor-General of Korea, resigned in September, and Seiyūkai president Hara Takashi formed a cabinet with party members in nearly every post. Japan set out to cover its food shortage from its colonies, and from 1920 the Plan to Increase Rice Production in Korea shipped large amounts of Korean rice to Japan.

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States and rulers at the time
Japan — Emperor Taishō

People

  • Hara Takashi1856 – 1921

    related figure · President of the Seiyūkai who formed Japan’s first full party cabinet in 1918 after the Rice Riots — the “commoner prime minister”; assassinated at Tokyo Station in 1921

Before and after

Earlier
1915 Japan’s Twenty-One Demands
Later
1919 February Eighth Declaration of Independence

Themes that include this event

  • Republican China and Imperial Japan1912 – 1949

    The age when the Republic of China, born of the 1911 Revolution, passed through warlord division, the May Fourth Movement, the United Front and the Northern Expedition, fought Japan’s invasion and split in civil war — as Japan moved from Taishō democracy through the Manchurian Incident and military coups to the war in China and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and colonized Korea resisted through the March First Movement and armed struggle