Japan

For decades, Japanese economists referred to the egg as the "honor student of prices" (bukka no yūtōsei) — the one grocery item that rarely seemed to become more expensive. That reputation was undermined in the 2020s: repeated waves of avian influenza, including a record 2022–23 season in which well over ten million birds were culled, pushed wholesale prices to levels the country had never seen and even forced restaurant chains to withdraw egg dishes from their menus.

Japan's market has two unusual features. First, the country is almost entirely self-sufficient in shell eggs, so domestic supply shocks translate directly into prices. Second, a large share of eggs in Japan is consumed raw — in dishes such as tamago kake gohan and sukiyaki — which requires an exceptionally strict hygiene and cold-chain regime, adding costs that consumers in most countries do not bear.

Wholesale pricing centers on a daily reference price set by the egg division of JA Zen-Noh, which the entire trade uses as its benchmark. The figure for Japan currently comes from market-level price data rather than from supermarket shelf prices, and it is therefore ranked only against other market-level sources — one of the disclosure rules this site follows to avoid mixing incomparable figures.