VOX POPULI: Lowly sprout is an unsung hero

"Aka-chochin" (Red paper lantern), a 1970s hit by the folk group Kaguyahime, has these lines: "When the rain didn't let up for days and you didn't go to work/ We had only a cabbage to nibble on."

Like the group's earlier mega-hit "Kandagawa" (Kandagawa river), the lyrics by Makoto Kitajo are typical of the so-called yojohan folk genre--folk songs about struggling young lovers living hand to mouth in a cheap apartment just four and a half tatami mats in size.

The cabbage was a symbol of poverty when "Aka-chochin" was written. Today, a different vegetable seems to have taken on the image of frugality. When I read a recent newspaper story suggesting that moyashi (bean sprouts) are now what many people rely on to stretch their tight household budgets, I recalled that three-decade-old song.

According to a recent survey of household income and expenditures by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, per-household consumer spending in 2009 fell for the second year in a row. But while people trim their food budgets to cope with shrinking household income, spending on bean sprouts has marked year-on-year increases since the July-September quarter of 2007. In each quarter of 2009, spending on bean sprouts jumped more than 10 percent from a year earlier.

Bean sprouts have a pleasingly crunchy texture, are packed with nutrition and have remained consistently affordable. But good as they are, I wouldn't fancy eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, day in and day out.

Bean sprouts typically play a supporting role in stir-fried vegetable dishes. When making yakisoba (stir-fried noodles with vegetables), for example, bean sprouts come in handy as a "filler" to discreetly add bulk to the dish.

In a novel by Makoto Shiina, the protagonist becomes addicted to bean sprouts after he is warned by his doctor to watch out for gout.

He muses: "Despite their virtue, bean sprouts are treated shoddily as a lowly vegetable, not only when they go into stir-fry dishes but also in most other dishes. This must have something to do with the fact that bean sprouts are cheap."

They are belittled because they are cheap. But it is also because of their cheapness that they are able to come to the rescue of people who have to watch their food bills closely.

I enjoy a good drama in which a supporting actor or actress shines. But when this pale, skinny vegetable takes on the appearance of a "hero," we've got a tragicomedy on our hands. I wonder how our elected representatives--who are supposed to be "heroes"--view this unfolding drama.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 22

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.