Wagyu

• 1. Introduction

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  Wagyu cattle share a startling family secret. Researchers once traced the pedigrees of 718,969 registered Japanese Black mothers. Of those, 718,330 descended from a single bull called Tajiri-go. That is 99.9 percent.

  Wagyu is the name for four principal Japanese breeds of beef cattle, and its meat ranks among the most expensive in the world. Yet the word itself is slippery. It names no single breed, the animals have no single ancestor, and Japan once nearly lost its native herds.

  What does Wagyu actually mean? Where did these cattle come from, and why did a country that long frowned on eating beef end up prizing it? And how did one bull come to dominate a whole population? The answers run through ancient bones, imperial bans, foreign warships and a failed experiment with European breeds.

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• 2. A Name, Not a Breed

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  The Japanese characters for Wagyu, 和牛, translate simply as Japanese cattle. Today the word covers four breeds known as improved Wagyu, or kairyō wagyū. The Japanese Black is the largest by far, making up 97 percent of all Wagyu raised in Japan.

  That dominance causes a common mix-up. The rich marbling people associate with the name belongs to the Japanese Black alone. The Japanese Brown, also called the Japanese Red, is reared in southern Japan, in Kōchi Prefecture on Shikoku and Kumamoto Prefecture on Kyushu. The Japanese Polled is found mainly in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The Japanese Shorthorn lives in the north, chiefly in Iwate Prefecture, and makes up less than one percent of Wagyu.

  Then there are the true natives. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, crossbreeding with European cattle nearly wiped out the old Japanese stock. Only a few hundred native animals survive, such as the Mishima and Kuchinoshima cattle, and their meat rarely reaches the market.

  Dairy breeds raised in Japan, such as Holstein and Jersey, follow a different rule. Their meat must be sold in Japan as domestic beef, never as Wagyu. To learn how the improved breeds came about, it helps to start much earlier, with bones in the ground.

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• 3. Bones and Bloodlines

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  In 1927, fossils turned up at the Hanaizumi Site in Ichinoseki City, Iwate Prefecture. They belonged to Hanaizumi Moriushi, a wild bison-like species that lived roughly 20,000 years ago. Bones of aurochs, the wild ancestors of domestic cattle, were found in the same city. Bone points from the site suggest that people hunted these animals.

  The arrival of domestic cattle is harder to date. At the Ohama Site in Goto City, Nagasaki Prefecture, diggers found cattle teeth from the middle Yayoi period. The find was controversial because the Chinese account by Chen Shou said Japan had no cattle or horses. Radiocarbon dating placed the molars around 40 AD, give or take 90 years.

  Some archaeologists remain unconvinced. One view holds that people from the Korean peninsula brought cattle in the mid-5th century. Cow bones from the Nango-Ōhigashi site in Gose City, Nara Prefecture, are believed to date to the 5th century. At the Funamiya Kofun Tumulus in Asago City, Hyōgo Prefecture, diggers recovered pieces of what may be Japan's oldest cow-shaped haniwa, or clay figurine.

  Genetics complicates the Korean story. Wagyu and Korean cattle such as the Hanwoo differ greatly in their DNA. About 65 percent of Japanese Black cattle carry mitochondrial haplogroup T4, which is unique to East Asia. Between 66 and 83 percent of Korean cattle carry T3, the type common in Europe. So Korean cattle are not the main ancestors of Wagyu.

  A rarer marker, haplogroup P, appears in about 46 percent of Japanese Shorthorns. It has turned up in many extinct European aurochs but in only three living livestock animals worldwide, one Chinese and two Korean. It likely came from the Nanbu cattle of the old Nanbu Domain in present-day Iwate. Researchers conclude that northern and western Japan had different cattle ancestors, and that Wagyu has no single forebear. The next question is what those animals were actually for.

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• 4. Swift Bulls and Vines

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  In 675, Emperor Tenmu issued a decree, influenced by Buddhism, that banned eating meat, cattle included. Yet a study of human waste excavated at the Heijo Palace site shows that people in the Nara period kept eating beef anyway. The Yoro Code of 757 even set rules for dismembering government oxen and selling hides and meat.

  By the Heian period, cattle had a more genteel job, pulling bullock carts. The best were called sun-gyū, or swift bulls, and owning one was a point of pride for aristocrats. A book called the Pictorial Record of Swift Bulls, believed to date from around 1279, lists 52 of them. It is said to be the world's oldest specialized book on bulls. The most admired animals came from Iki Island in present-day Nagasaki Prefecture, until Mongol invaders killed and ate them.

  Farming with cattle and horses spread across western Japan between the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. A farmer's complaint from 1423 about a crooked manor administrator happens to mention his own plow cattle. Beef was still no meal for ordinary people. Until about 1868, cattle pulled plows and hauled loads in agriculture, forestry, mining and transport, and they supplied fertilizer. Milk was unknown, and meat was avoided for cultural and religious reasons.

  Japan was effectively sealed off from 1635 to 1854, so no foreign genes could enter the herds. In western Japan, breeders pursued aggressive inbreeding and named prized bloodlines tsuru, meaning vine. Famous vines included the Takenotani tsuru of Okayama, the Bokura tsuru of Shimane, the Iwakura tsuru of Hiroshima and the Shusuke tsuru of Hyōgo. A good cow then meant a healthy, obedient one. Tajiri-go came down from the Atsuta tsuru, itself a descendant of the Shusuke line.

  Some now worry that the Tajima line's dominance is draining Wagyu of genetic diversity. That worry has drawn fresh attention to a revival of the Takenotani vine.

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• 5. Beef Comes to the Harbor

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  In 1859, Japan opened the port of Yokohama at the demand of Western nations, and a foreign settlement rose beside it. Residents wanted beef, but nearby villages refused to sell. Cattle were imported from the United States, China and Korea, and the supply gradually fell short.

  Hyōgo Port supplied another source. In 1865, before Kobe's port opened, nine warships from Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States arrived demanding that it be opened. Sailors bargained with local cattle merchants for animals, which were first slaughtered on board ship. As demand grew, slaughter moved ashore, and in 1866 foreigners killed cattle in the pine forests of Cape Wadamisaki.

  Foreign ships then bought 30 or 40 cows at a time in Kobe and carried them to Yokohama. There the meat became famous as Kobe beef, though it was actually Tajima beef. Kobe's own port opened in January 1868. That year an Englishman, Edward Charles Kirby, built the city's first slaughterhouse, and in 1869 a sukiyaki restaurant called Gekka-tei opened.

  A newspaper article from 1875 reported that Kobe led the country in beef eating, with 800 cows slaughtered in a month. Yokohama came next with 600, then Tokyo with 500, and Osaka and Nagoya with 300 each. Books of the era claimed that Wagyu tasted better than foreign beef. One declared that there had never been beef as good as Kobe's.

  Still, farmers and officials judged native cattle to be good at plowing but poor at making milk and meat. The government decided they needed improvement, and what followed was a costly gamble.

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• 6. The Crossbreeding Gamble

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  Between 1868 and 1887, some 2600 foreign cattle were imported, but few people wanted to breed them with native stock at first. That changed around 1900, when the government set up a committee on cattle improvement and began a systematic crossbreeding program. Ayrshire and Simmental cattle came first, followed by Brown Swiss.

  The results were unpopular. The crossbreds were too large for Japan's narrow fields, slow and sluggish, and rough in temperament. Their meat was poor, and critics judged it unsuitable for sukiyaki. From around 1907, farmers stopped breeding them, and any native animal that was small and black could sell.

  Genetics knowledge was thin, since Mendel's laws had only just been rediscovered. In 1911 the government suspended plans to buy Brown Swiss and Simmental cattle. In 1912 it formally ended its encouragement of crossbreeding, declaring the effort sufficiently successful. That October, at a livestock show in Himeji City, two crossbred bulls won first prize as Improved Japanese Breed, and the term took hold.

  A 1914 survey counted 61 supposed Wagyu breeds, including Tajima, Iwaizumi, Mishima and Aso. These were really just regional labels. Breeders worked to remove traits inherited from foreign cattle, such as tiger stripes, grayish-white lips, an off-color stripe along the back and white spots, while building up size and weight.

  Around 1919, western Japan began registering pedigrees and body types, with nine breeds recorded. Each prefecture used its own standards. By about 1925 the unwanted traits had almost vanished. In 1937 the nine names gave way to Japanese Black, Japanese Polled and Japanese Brown. An official decision in 1944 made them fixed breeds, and the Japanese Shorthorn joined them in 1957. Their defining quality, though, lay in the meat itself.

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• 7. Fat That Melts

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  The Japanese word sashi describes the fine threads of fat running through Wagyu meat. Marbling varies with sex, castration and fattening method, but in the Japanese Black, genes are thought to matter most. Among native breeds the Mishima cattle show it and the Kuchinoshima cattle do not. Within the Japanese Black, Tajima animals tend toward marbling, while the Takenotani strain of Okayama produces redder meat.

  Chemistry explains the texture. The Japanese Black is rich in monounsaturated fatty acids such as oleic acid. Ordinary beef fat melts at 40 to 50 degrees Celsius. Wagyu fat melts below butter's roughly 30 degrees, so it softens at mouth temperature. This is thought to be a main reason for the melt-in-the-mouth tenderness.

  The meat also has a sweet scent known as Wagyu beef aroma. It is linked to compounds called lactones, which also occur in peaches and coconuts. Heating the beef strengthens the aroma.

  Japan grades beef under standards approved by its Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. A letter, A to C, gives the yield, meaning the share of edible meat in the carcass. A number from 1 to 5 gives the meat quality, judged on marbling, color, firmness and texture, and fat luster and quality. That makes 15 combinations, with A5 on top. Recent changes in feeding have added fat, since less grazing and more feed have produced larger, fattier cattle.

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• 8. Brands, Law and Trust

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  More than 320 regional brands of Wagyu exist in Japan. Kobe beef was the first to earn fame, known abroad since the 1860s. Ōmi beef won a reputation in the Meiji era. Matsusaka beef followed in the Taisho era, built on Tajima calves bought, fattened elsewhere and sold. Yonezawa beef has been known in the Tokyo area since Meiji.

  Trade policy reshaped the herds. Beef imports were liberalized from 1991, and in 1993 they jumped 34 percent over the previous year. Japan's beef self-sufficiency fell below 50 percent. To compete with cheaper foreign meat, farmers concentrated on the marbled Japanese Black, and the other three breeds shrank in number.

  In 2001, bovine spongiform encephalopathy was reported in Japanese cattle and became a major social problem. Japan responded with strict testing and registration. The Beef Traceability Law of 2003 required ear tags and recorded each animal's history from birth to beef, with the records published online. Since 2007 only the four improved breeds, their crossbreds, and cattle born, raised and registered in Japan may be labeled Wagyu.

  Branding had its own legal problem. From the 1980s regions promoted their beef, but Japan's trademark law did not allow regional collective trademarks. An amendment in 2006 fixed that. The Geographical Indications Law passed in 2014, and protection began in 2015.

  The protected list includes Tajima beef, said to have a history of about 1,200 years, and Kobe beef at about 170 years. Others are Special Matsusaka, Yonezawa, Maesawa, Miyazaki, Ōmi, Kagoshima Black, Kumamoto Red, Hiba and Hida. The list ends with Olive-Fed Wagyu, one of the rarest beefs in the world. As for who else raises these animals, the answer now spans the globe.

  The Australian Wagyu Association is the largest breed association outside Japan. Australian farmers raise fullblood and Wagyu-cross cattle for home and export markets, including China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The animals are grain fed for the last 300 to 500 days, and some herds in Western Australia's Margaret River region get red wine added to their feed.

  In the United States, some Japanese Wagyu are bred with American Angus. The meat may be sold as American-Style Kobe Beef or as Wangus, though many retailers loosely call it Wagyu. Wagyu were first shown competitively at the National Western Stock Show in 2012. Other American breeders keep fullbloods descended from original Japanese lines, registered through the American Wagyu Association.

  Canadian farming began after the Canadian Wagyu Association formed in 1991, and farms now stretch from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador. In Britain, a herd was imported to North Yorkshire in 2008 and first reached the table in 2011. Scottish herds date from that same year.

  Brazil, Germany, South Africa, Namibia and New Zealand each have their own association, and these groups belong to the World Wagyu Council. The council promotes the breed through World Wagyu Day, held on the 21st of June. Steve Haddadin founded the day in 2022, and the British Wagyu Breeders Association adopted it alongside the council.

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