At first glance, Yoshio Hachiro and Masahiko Yamada look like they have been cut from the same piece of wood. Both men worked in agriculture for decades before turning to politics.
Sixty-three-year-old Hachiro was a general manager of a rural farming cooperative in Hokkaido, Japan's most northern prefecture. He promoted Imakane Danshaku, locally grown potatoes considered such a delicacy that they are sold individually wrapped in Tokyo's ritzy and posh department stores.
Yamada, 69, is a farmer, a lawyer as well as a veteran member of the Lower House of parliament and a native from an island 100 kilometers west of the southern prefecture Nagasaki. He is the author of several books on the perceived threat to agriculture in Japan, including Japan will be crushed by imported food and Japan to be smashed by China on food. He also published a novel on food security called The Japan-US food war. (Asia Times)
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