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ISE, Japan, Oct. 26 — It was supposed to be a celebratory year for Akafuku, a confectioner that had been selling bean-jam sweets here since 1707. On its 300th anniversary, its top-selling sweets were still indispensable gifts to bring back home or to the office after a trip to Ise Shrine here, Japan's holiest religious site.
Instead, Akafuku has become the latest Japanese food company to be exposed for lying about the contents of its products, tampering with expiration-date labels and recycling ingredients. For only the second time in its history, Akafuku, which was forced to halt production during World War II because of a sugar scarcity, has suspended operations, this time indefinitely.....
.....The nearly daily disclosures have shaken Japanese consumers, who have long been willing to pay a premium for Japanese food products that were, or so it was said, safer than imported goods, especially from China. But the scandals involving the freshness of products by Akafuku, as well as two other nationally known confectioners, Shiroi Koibito and Fujiya, have resonated beyond the marketplace in a way that chicken or beef does not.
