By Leika Kihara
TOKYO, March 24 (Reuters) - Global inflation is taking a bite out of Japan's iconic "hanami" cherry blossom picnics, with an index tracking food and drink costs up 25% since 2020, private think tank Dai-ichi Life Research Institute said on Tuesday.
Around late March to early April of each year, the Japanese fill parks and riverbanks with blue tarps, lunch boxes, snacks and drinks to picnic under blooming cherry trees with family and friends in a custom called "hanami."
The event, a must-do
for many Japanese, is not immune to the hit from rising raw material costs that has prodded companies to charge more for a wide range of food and beverages.
To gauge the degree of pain, Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research, updated an index he created in 2020, using the latest data to track the weighted average price of 14 popular "hanami" items including rice balls, bento boxes, fried chicken, potato chips and beer.
The findings showed the cost of "hanami" was up 4.2% in February from year-before levels, and rose 25.0% from the base year of 2020.
Japanese sweet buns recorded the biggest price rise, up 46.1% from 2000 levels, followed by carbonated drinks at 45.7% and rice balls at 45.0%, the index showed.
"A weak yen and rising global commodity prices are causing cost-push inflation in Japan," Kumano said. "Hanami is clearly facing the negative effect of the global inflationary trend."
After being mired in decades of deflation, Japan has seen inflation creep up since the Ukraine war as a falling yen and rising commodity prices boosted the cost of raw material imports.
Core consumer inflation stayed above the Bank of Japan's 2% target for nearly four years before slowing to 1.6% in February due largely to generous government fuel subsidies.
(Reporting by Leika KiharaEditing by Shri Navaratnam)
