>>nakajima: rice does have special meaning to us. rice is god! the bounty of the heavens, brought tous by human hands. >>reporter: that reverence has translated into unwavering political support for japan's rice lobby... farmers enjoy subsidies and steep barriers to all but a trickle of imports... >>...even so, the heavens have not been smiling on japan's antiquated and cloistered agriculture sector... >>kingston: about 60 pct of farmers are over 65. and about two-thirds of farmers are now part time. so you don't have many young fulltime farmers in japan. what you have are a lot of small, inefficient uncompetitive producers. >>craft: i am in kasumigaseki, the heart of japan's bureaucracy. behind me is japan's ministry ofagriculture... and right next door, japan's trade ministry. despite the geographical proximity, in terms of mind set the two ministries couldn't be further apart. the farm bureaucracy says that undera free trade regime the japanese farmers would go extinct. the trade ministry bureaucrats says the entire economy is being held hosta

earlier, james tengan got some insight from nhk world's political commentator, masayo nakajima. >> masayo, a tumultuous end to japanese 2010 politics. how is ozawa's testimony and his possible cabinet reshuffle affecting kan next year? >> the prime minister might be able to regain some public support by dealing with the two unpopular politicians, ozawa, the democratic party's power broker and sengoku, his chief cabinet secretary. at the same time, he would be appeasing the opposition parties, because they have criticizing the two politicians for their scandals. kan is the dpj leader, so he needs to calm the intraparty confrontations between the two men. sengoku tried to oust ozawa and force him to testify in the diet which could damage ozawa politically. for his part, ozawa has been pushing kan to get rid of accept goe cue out of his cabinet saying the chief cabinet secretary has decreased kan's approval rating with his gaffes. the prime minister is still unpopular because some people feel that he has mishandled foreign affairs and domestic policies. so dealing with ozawa and the oppositi