You don't have to be paranoid to conclude that the recent series of food-labeling scandals represents the tip of the iceberg. With the Japanese market continually opening itself wider to food imports, and the government still unable or unwilling to untangle the tight, complicated interrelationships that form the distribution system, domestic food companies find it both necessary and tempting to fool all of the people some of the time in order to maintain their economic position.

However, much more than consumer trust is at stake here. Japan's famous food culture is itself being challenged, but this time from within. Faced with evidence that meat distributors purposely misrepresent the products they sell because they know that no one can really tell the difference, the citizens are slowly starting to question certain assumptions that they previously considered inviolable.

In last Monday's letters page of the Asahi Shimbun, a 72-year-old retired gentleman wrote that the scandals have caused him to wonder how so many restaurants and stores can sell the famed Matsuzaka beef from Mie Prefecture, when the reason the meat is so expensive is that only a few thousand head of cattle are raised every year.