Seafood up 9%; households' real seafood spending down 6%, splitting the shelf by item

A short article put out by the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) on September 25, 2026 reports that household spending is not keeping up with the rise in Japanese seafood prices. The headline's '9%' and '6%' are figures that become material for negotiation directly for the Japanese side sourcing seafood raw materials from Vietnam. But the two are not figures of the same nature. Going back to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' published values clarifies the line between what rose and what fell.

That 9% is about retail prices, and the subject is July 2026

The consumer price index's 'seafood' is up 9.0% year on year, and fresh seafood 12.4%

In the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' consumer price index (2025 base, nationwide), July 2026's seafood rose 9.0% year on year. Within it, fresh seafood was 12.4%, far exceeding food overall at 3.5% and the all-items index at 1.9%. The '9%' and '12.4%' the source article cited match these published values exactly.

What should not be mixed up is the stage of the indicator. The consumer price index is the retail-stage price buyers pay at the store, a different yardstick from farm-gate at the producing region, export FOB or wholesale quotes. It is not that the Vietnamese side's shipping price rose 9%. And it is year on year, not month on month.

In the August figures it rose further to 9.9%

In the August 2026 figures of the same mid-category index, seafood rose to 9.9% and fresh seafood to 13.5%. It is not a movement that stopped in July; the upward trend continues to the most recent data. However, the monthly Family Income and Expenditure Survey's latest is the July 2026 figure, and the August figure has not yet been published. To match price and spending, both have to be aligned at July.

The 'real 6% decline' was not purchasing power but spending on seafood

In the Family Income and Expenditure Survey, seafood is JPY 5,683 per household, down 6.1% in real terms

Opening the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' Family Income and Expenditure Survey (income and expenditure section) for July 2026, monthly seafood spending for two-or-more-person households was JPY 5,683, with a real change of minus 6.1%. The source article's wording that 'real purchasing power may fall 6%' is not a figure pointing to households' overall purchasing power but nearly overlaps with the actual value narrowed to the item of seafood. Overall real consumption spending by households in the same month was down 3.6%, a figure separate from the 6%. The source article gives its source as a 'compilation' and does not write who calculated the 6%.

The source is Table 2 of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (two-or-more-person households, July 2026). The average picture is a household of 2.86 persons with a household head averaging 60.9 years old.

The 6.1% is the figure resulting from dividing by 9.0%

The Family Income and Expenditure Survey's real change rate is derived by dividing the nominal spending amount back by the corresponding price index. Checking with food, dividing a nominal 2.2% increase by a 3.5% price rise gives 1.3% decrease, matching the published real change rate. For consumption spending too, dividing a nominal 1.5% decrease by the 2.2% rise in the all-items index excluding imputed rent of owner-occupied dwellings gives a 3.6% decrease.

Seafood is made the same way. Restoring the 9.0% price rise to the real 6.1% decrease gives a nominal increase in the 2% range, meshing with the source article's statement that 'spending is up about 2%.' The 9% and 6% are not two indicators to line up and compare; the 6% is the result of dividing by 9%. Reading it as 'fish rose 9%, and separately purchasing power fell 6%' double-counts the same price increase.

Households' overall real consumption spending is down 3.6%, continuing for eight months

Consumption spending was JPY 301,245, down 1.5% nominal and 3.6% real. The real decline has continued for eight months from December 2025 through July 2026. However, July's 3.6% decline is weighed down by minus 1.29 for transport and communications (of which minus 0.97 is purchases of automobiles and the like) and minus 1.08 for housing, and consumption spending excluding housing and the like stays at a real 1.4% decline. Bringing out the 3.6% as-is in a discussion of how food spending is tightening makes the story stronger than the reality.

Tuna at 20.4% against shrimp at 1.8%: the ways they rise differ too much

Items that rose sharply in July and items that barely moved

Lining up the year-on-year changes for July 2026 in the item-level price index (nationwide), the way they rise differs completely even within seafood.

The source article writes that salmon is in a relatively stable position because it is widespread, easy to cook and suited to home meals. This is a spending-side matter, but on the price side too, salmon is 5.8% and salted salmon 0.7%, differing by an order of magnitude from tuna and squid in the way they rise.

Canned, pickled and tsukudani barely moved

In July, canned seafood was 0.1%, pickled seafood 1.2%, and seafood tsukudani 1.8%. These three are smaller than food overall at 3.5%. On the other hand, among paste products chikuwa was 3.1% and kamaboko 5.0%, above food overall, and among salted-and-dried, salted mackerel was 29.6%, dried horse mackerel 11.5% and dried whitebait 9.9%, rising on a par with fresh. It cannot be summed up as 'processed goods do not move.' Shrimp was 1.8%, moving differently from fresh oily fish. In the August figures too, shrimp was 4.6% and canned seafood 2.8%, with the gap from tuna's 24.4% still wide.

Did it lean toward home cooking, or flow to dining out

Dining out up 5.9% real, prepared foods down 3.2%

The reading that as price increases advance, people lean toward cooking at home is not borne out by the July Family Income and Expenditure Survey. Dining out was JPY 17,432, up 5.9% real, and general dining out up 6.6%. On the other hand, prepared foods were JPY 14,259, down 3.2% real, confectionery down 3.7% and beverages down 6.7%, with much of what is eaten at home declining in real terms. Not everything eaten at home declined: rice and bread, dried goods and seaweed, and fresh meat were positive in real terms. The shortage of whitefish seen from the dining-out procurement side was the gap that Vietnamese pangasius opens in Japan's dining-out sourcing as dealt with there, and the July figures overlap with that context.

In seafood, the only real positive was 'other processed seafood'

In the seafood breakdown, the only real positive was the 1.5% increase in other processed seafood; fresh seafood down 7.8%, salted and dried seafood down 5.7%, and fish-paste products down 8.0% all fell together. Split by household attribute, working households' seafood was down 8.2% and no-occupation households down 4.8%, with working households cutting back more. If the explanation that people leaned toward convenient items is used, the basis is the JPY 880 slot within seafood, not the movement of food overall.

What a buyer sourcing seafood from Vietnam can confirm from the July figures

Build the cost for the shrimp shelf on the premise that prices have not moved

If shrimp at Japanese stores rose only 1.8% in July and even 4.6% in August, the room to pass import-raw-material price increases into retail prices is not as wide as for tuna or squid. Bringing out 'Japanese fish is up 9%' as the basis in price negotiations with the Vietnamese side diverges from the reality of the shrimp and processed-goods shelves. Taking the item-level figure rather than the mid-category 9.0% makes the discussion faster.

The processed-goods shelf had barely moved in price as of July. To supply here, the discussion leans less on pricing than on making cost through yield, size specification and packaging form. Dam Doi's 721 ha of ASC-certified black tiger prawn When teaming up with a region that differentiates through certification, as in this case, you should decide in advance at which transaction stage's price the certification cost is loaded.

The idea that Vietnamese product grows because Japanese consumption shrank does not come out of the July figures

In another article VASEP put out on September 23, Vietnam's shrimp exports, by Vietnamese customs' tally, were US$3.3 billion in January-August 2026 (up 12%), with Japan at US$388.5 million (up 6.1%). China and Hong Kong, at about US$1.12 billion, up 35.9%, led the growth, while the United States was US$436.1 million, down 11.7%, and the EU US$355.3 million, down 3.6%.

The 6.1% increase for Japan is a dollar-denominated export value, a different yardstick from Japan's retail prices or households' real spending. Material for saying, by lining these two up, that 'Japanese consumption shrank so it was replaced by Vietnamese product' is written in neither article. With crab up 34% and shellfish up about 31%, reliance on shrimp is breaking down It is also such a phase, and attributing the increase for Japan to a single reason is a stretch.

Which column of which statistical table to look at

The mid-category index and the item-level price index contain the monthly time series as-is, so both lining up July and August and tracking the movement from January are done with the same table. Table 2 of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey is built so that the real change rate and contribution degree sit side by side; when you want to know the nominal, you cross-check with the nominal change rate in Table 1.

What to do before next week's negotiation

For the item being proposed, pull one applicable item from the item-level price index rather than the mid-category seafood 9.0%, and try replacing that figure as the premise for the price revision. For an item like shrimp that did not even move 2% in July, recasting the proposal to make cost through specification changes or packaging review, rather than a price-increase negotiation, gets through more easily. What can be said from the July figures extends only to seafood overall rising 9.0% at retail and households' seafood spending falling 6.1% in real terms; the step beyond, 'therefore to Vietnamese product,' has to be confirmed by yourself.

Materials referenced

• VASEP, 'Seafood prices surge in Japan, real purchasing power could fall 6%' (September 25, 2026)
• VASEP, 'Shrimp exports January-August 2026' (September 23, 2026)
• Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Family Income and Expenditure Survey (income and expenditure section), July 2026
• Ditto, Table 2, income and expenditure per household per month
• Ditto, Table 1, main household indicators
• Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2025-base consumer price index, nationwide, August 2026
• e-Stat, 2025-base consumer price index, detailed results tables