🇯🇵 The cattle breeds of Japan
6 breeds from Japan, best known first, across 21 towns, fairs and pastures.
Cattle reached Japan around the second century AD and spent most of their history as working animals, ploughing, hauling and supplying manure; milk was not drunk and beef was avoided. Four wagyu breeds and two further populations are recognised today, and one early breed is reported extinct.
Cattle in Japan
Cattle have been part of Japanese farming for a long time, but they worked rather than fed people. They pulled and carried for transport, mines, forests and fields, and their dung fertilised the soil. Milk was not drunk and meat went uneaten. A working animal was valuable enough that a poor farmer could not afford one. Isolation from 1635 to 1854 kept foreign blood out. After 1868 about 2,600 imported cattle arrived over two decades; crossing with native stock began in earnest around 1900, then stopped in 1910 when the hybrids proved worse at work and in meat quality. The modern breeds were drawn from the mixed herds that followed.
The breeds
The four wagyu breeds date from 1944, when the mixed regional herds were sorted by which imported cattle had shaped them: Japanese Black, Japanese Brown, Japanese Polled and Japanese Shorthorn. Genetic work shows Japanese Black cattle carry the East Asian mitochondrial type T4 more often than not, at around 65 per cent. American imports, Shorthorn among them, were bred into the Nanbu cattle of the old Nanbu Domain, giving the Japanese Shorthorn. Two further populations, Kuchinoshima and Mishima, are also counted as breeds. A third, Kairyo-washu, is reported to have died out.
Regions and communities
Regional herds varied, and the north-east is the clearest case: Nanbu cattle of the old Nanbu Domain, in what is now Iwate Prefecture, gave rise to the Japanese Shorthorn. Elsewhere the regional populations became the base for the wagyu breeds. Two further groups, Kuchinoshima and Mishima, are recognised on their own. Cattle remains and cattle figurines have been found at sites in Iwate, Nagasaki, Nara and Hyogo, which is where the early history of the animal in Japan is read from.
Milk, butter and beef
For centuries cattle gave their owners work and manure rather than food. No one drank milk and no one ate beef. Animals ploughed, carried and hauled; their dung went onto the fields. Only after foreign stock was brought in did milk and meat qualities come under discussion, and the first crosses were faulted on exactly those points.
Today
The four wagyu breeds were formally recognised in 1944, and Japanese Black, Japanese Brown, Japanese Polled and Japanese Shorthorn remain the main named groups. Kuchinoshima and Mishima are also treated as breeds. The Kairyo-washu is reported to have died out, so one old line has already gone. Genetic testing separates Japanese cattle from Korean breeds such as Hanwoo, and puts Japanese Black mainly in the East Asian mitochondrial group.
The facts in this overview come from the Wikipedia article "Cattle in Japan", written by its contributors and used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. EveryCow rewrote the text in its own words, with AI assistance, and compares every page with the article to make sure no passage is copied. It may be reused under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with a link back.
Cattle towns and fairs of Japan
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