Japanese Polled

What do Japanese Polled cattle look like?

The Japanese Polled is a small beef breed from Japan. Its coat is black, and neither sex grows horns: the animals are naturally polled, which means hornless. It is one of the six cattle breeds native to Japan, and it belongs to the wagyū group of Japanese beef breeds. It is a compact animal rather than a large one. Bulls and cows look alike in colour and in the absence of horns, and the breed is kept for beef.

Where does the Japanese Polled come from?

Cattle reached Japan from China alongside rice growing, around the second century AD, in the Yayoi period. For centuries they were working animals only, pulling and carrying in farming, forestry and mines, and their dung manured the fields. Japan shut itself off from the world between 1635 and 1854, so no outside blood came in. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, about 2,600 foreign cattle arrived by 1887. Crossbreeding with native stock became common from about 1900 and stopped suddenly in 1910, once people saw that the mixed animals, though bigger and better milkers, worked less well and gave poorer meat. From 1919 the mixed regional herds were registered and selected, and in 1944 four breeds were recognised. The Japanese Polled came from Yamaguchi Prefecture, in south-western Honshu, with Aberdeen Angus blood as its main foreign ingredient.

What the Japanese Polled is known for

The Japanese Polled is black, and it carries no horns in either sex; these two points are its most distinctive features. Its build is that of a small beef animal. When crossbreeding between native Japanese cattle and imported stock was stopped in 1910, it was because the mixed animals, larger and better milkers, worked less well and gave poorer meat; selection after that leaned towards beef quality. The breed grew out of that shift, and it is kept for meat rather than milk or work.

How the Japanese Polled is bred and kept

From 1919, the jumbled regional cattle populations left over from the brief period of crossing were entered in registers and chosen for improvement, under the name Improved Japanese Cattle. Four separate strains were sorted out according to the kind of foreign cattle that had most influenced them, and these became breeds in 1944. Aberdeen Angus from Scotland left the strongest mark on the Japanese Polled. To keep the breed and its genetic resources alive, the administration of Yamaguchi Prefecture has set up the Japanese Polled Public Corporation.

What the Japanese Polled is kept for

Before the Meiji Restoration, Japanese cattle were kept only for work: ploughing and hauling on farms, in forests and in mines, and their manure fertilised the land. Milk was not drunk, and meat was not eaten, for cultural and religious reasons. Cattle were so valuable that a poor farmer could not afford one. After the Meiji Restoration the picture changed, and beef became the aim of the wagyū breeds. Today the Japanese Polled is a beef breed, and the emphasis in its selection is on meat.

The land and climate of the Japanese Polled

The breed belongs to Yamaguchi Prefecture, in the south-western part of Honshu, the main island of Japan. Its ancestors worked in farming, forestry and mining there and were used for haulage. From 1635 until 1854 Japan had no contact with the outside world, and no foreign cattle genes entered the island's herds for over two centuries. The mixing that followed the reopening, and the selection that came with it, produced this breed in that same south-western corner of the country.

Who keeps the Japanese Polled

The breed is identified with Yamaguchi Prefecture. Its local administration set up the Japanese Polled Public Corporation to protect and preserve the animals and their genetic resources. In the centuries before the Meiji Restoration, cattle in Japan were working animals kept by farming households, and they were far too costly for a poor farmer to buy. The same pattern of small, valuable, working cattle lies behind the native breeds of the country, of which the Japanese Polled is one.

Faith and ritual

Traditionally, meat was not eaten in Japan, and milk was not drunk; the reasons were cultural and religious. That shaped the cattle of the country for centuries, and the forebears of the Japanese Polled were no exception. Cattle were valuable animals too, a sign of wealth that only the better-off could own, and they were looked after for their work and their manure rather than as food.

Custom and folk tradition

Cattle were valuable animals in old Japan. They ploughed fields, carried loads, worked in forests and mines, and supplied manure for the land, and in the years before the Meiji Restoration a poor farmer could not afford to buy one. The country's long isolation from 1635 to 1854 kept its cattle apart from outside stock, and those native herds are the base from which the modern breeds, this one included, were built.

Related breeds and crosses

The Japanese Polled sits with three other wagyū breeds: the Japanese Brown, the Japanese Shorthorn and the Japanese Black. All four come from crossings made in the early twentieth century between native Japanese cattle and imported animals, mostly European. For this breed the chief outside influence was the Scottish Aberdeen Angus. Together with the two remaining native Japanese breeds they make up the country's six native cattle breeds.

Numbers, conservation and the herd book

Numbers are low. In 1978 the breed counted 2,242 head; by 2008 the total had fallen to 132. The FAO put it in the critical class in 2007. It is not on the brink of vanishing, but protection is urgent. The Japanese Polled Public Corporation, set up by the administration of Yamaguchi Prefecture, works to keep the breed and its genetic resources going.

Questions people ask about Japanese Polled

Good reading and sources

• Japanese Polled on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data