As dusk falls on the western Tokyo suburb of Kichijoji, the smell of barbecued pork, chicken and beef wafts from the open front of ZuZu Bar.
Like the managers of countless other izakaya - cheap-and-cheerful Japanese pubs that serve food as well as alcohol - Kenta Nakahara hopes the aroma will lure workers spilling out of nearby offices. But he reckons he has an advantage over the others: his pork and chicken come from local farmers.
'I'm from Kagoshima prefecture [in the south] so I know how good the food is there, and how safe,' he says during a break from serving behind the bar. 'I want to let my customers know too.'
But until recently, Nakahara had to tell his customers verbally that 60 per cent of ZuZu's ingredients were homegrown. However, he now has a bright green lantern hanging outside that says: 'Our shop supports locally made produce.'
Conceived in Hokkaido three years ago by a small group of volunteers alarmed at Japan's growing dependence on imported food, the paper chochin lantern symbolises a self-sufficiency movement whose growing strength has amazed even its organisers.
Nearly 1,300 pubs and restaurants across Japan have now replaced their traditional red chochin with a green lantern to signal that at least half their fare is sourced domestically. That represents a 13-fold rise within the year.
