TOKYO — Liz Truss traveled with a small jar of Stilton cheese — the kind you find in the 18th-century London department store Fortnum & Mason — when she flew to Tokyo to ink Britain’s first post-Brexit trade deal five years ago this week.
For Truss, then Britain’s trade secretary, this was personal. In 2014 she famously called it a “disgrace” that Britain didn’t export more cheese. In the final weeks of the talks with Tokyo, she had fought hard to open up market access for Stilton and cheddar.
As a token of her appreciation for liberalizing the Japanese market, Truss presented then Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu with the pot of Silton as they signed the deal on Oct. 22, 2020.
While it was largely a rollover of the EU trade deal with Tokyo that Britain had access to as a member of the bloc, it also sliced Japan’s cheese tariffs (from 29.8 percent in the case of cheddar) to zero by 2033.
Buxton Blue, Swaledale Ewes, Teviotdale Cheeses and five others also now have their brand names protected in Japan.
Yet five years on, Japanese consumers aren’t buying British. The value of U.K. cheese exports has shrunk 66 percent since Truss signed the deal, as a weak yen pushes up prices.
No British food explosion
“There’s been no explosion of British food,” said Mark Spencer, as he showed off the Clawson Blue Stilton cheese he’s had flown in via airfreight to Tokyo on the well-stocked shelves of The British Shop. He opened the shop in May near Tokyo’s bustling Shibuya Crossing to showcase British food.
“British food is not very well known in Japan. It was a real struggle when we opened up here to even find British products,” said Spencer, who is also the founder of Hobgoblin Pubs and owns the biggest British pub in Tokyo.
