An incident involving school lunches in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, has recently sparked heated debate. On March 11, a special “graduation celebration” meal including red bean rice and karaage chicken was scheduled to be served to all third-year junior high school students. However, on the morning of the meal, the local Board of Education made a last-minute decision to throw out all 2,100 servings of red bean rice prepared for five middle schools and to replace them with emergency canned bread. This move quickly ignited controversy online.
The incident was triggered by a single anonymous phone call to the school. The caller, who said they had lost a family member in the 3/11 disaster, asked about the reasoning behind serving red bean rice on the anniversary of the disaster. After the school explained it was “to celebrate graduation,” the caller responded calmly that they understood and said, “Please be more considerate next year,” then hung up. The call did not include any demand for the food to be thrown away. However, after being notified of the call, senior officials at the Board of Education themselves determined that “it is inappropriate to eat red bean rice on the anniversary of the disaster” and ordered all of it to be disposed of.
Regarding the Board of Education’s extreme handling of the situation, Iwaki City Mayor Hiroyuki Uchida later commented on the social platform X (formerly Twitter). He stated bluntly that, even taking into account the fact that it was the anniversary of 3/11 and red bean rice might be inappropriate, taking the step of discarding such a large quantity of food was just too wasteful. City personnel also admitted with resignation that the phone call was peaceful at the time, and now that it has turned into a large-scale waste of food, the person who called would surely be shocked to see the news. Whether this decision was appropriate needs to be reevaluated.
Japanese netizens found the situation hard to believe and sharply criticized it. Some lamented that these third-year students were born in the year of the disaster and that farmers had struggled hard to rebuild afterward, so children’s growth should be celebrated. They argued that it is abnormal for the Board of Education to toss out so much food based on a single phone call. Other commenters pointed out that, in Japan, red bean rice has long symbolized the warding off of evil and misfortune and is served at both happy and solemn occasions. The budget for these meals comes from taxpayers’ hard-earned money, so the Board of Education should disclose the decision-making process and who was responsible. While honoring those lost in the disaster is important, they asked: what exactly is wrong with celebrating graduating students by serving them red bean rice?