Tōhoku region
Tōhoku was traditionally considered the granary of Japan because it supplied Sendai and the Tokyo-Yokohama market with rice and other farming commodities. Tōhoku provided 20 percent of the nation's rice crop. The climate, however, is harsher than in other parts of Honshū due to the stronger effect of the Siberian High, and permits only one crop a year on paddy fields.
Nori
The Japanese nori industry was in decline after WWII, when Japan was in need of all food that could be produced. The decline was due to a lack of understanding of nori's three-stage life cycle, such that local people did not understand why traditional cultivation methods were not effective. The industry was rescued by knowledge deriving from the work of British phycologist Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker, who had been researching the organism "Porphyria umbilicalis", which grew in the seas around Wales and was harvested for food, as in Japan. Her work was discovered by Japanese scientists who applied it to artificial methods of seeding and growing the nori, rescuing the industry. Kathleen Baker was hailed as the "Mother of the Sea" in Japan and a statue erected in her memory; she is still revered as the savior of the Japanese nori industry.