Japanese Shorthorn

What do Japanese Shorthorn cattle look like?

A small beef breed from Japan, and one of the country's six native kinds of cattle. It also belongs to the wagyū, the four Japanese beef breeds. The coat can be plain red, roan, which is a close mixture of red and white hairs, or red-pied, meaning red marked with white patches. Horns grow on cows and bulls alike. It is a compact animal rather than a tall one, and no figures for height or weight are given. Bulls are heavier than cows, and in most other ways the two look the same.

Where does the Japanese Shorthorn come from?

Formed in the far north of Honshu. Aomori and Iwate prefectures used British Shorthorn blood only, while Akita prefecture took in Ayrshire and Devon as well. Herds are also kept on Hokkaido. Cattle came into Japan from China with rice farming, in the Yayoi period, roughly the second century AD. Until the Meiji Restoration of 1868 they worked: ploughing, forestry, mining, haulage, and their dung fed the fields. Japan closed its doors from 1635 to 1854, so no outside blood reached its cattle. Foreign animals, about 2,600 of them, arrived between 1868 and 1887.

What the Japanese Shorthorn is known for

The breed came out of a working tradition. Japanese cattle were expensive and highly valued, kept for their muscle and their manure rather than for their flesh. When foreign bulls were crossed in from about 1900, the offspring grew bigger and milked better, but they worked less well and their meat was poorer, so the crossing was called off sharply in 1910. What remains is a beef animal of the northern districts.

How the Japanese Shorthorn is bred and kept

Japan had no contact with outside cattle for more than two centuries, from 1635 to 1854, so the native stock stayed pure. Once the country opened, some 2,600 foreign cattle came in between 1868 and 1887, though few farmers used them at first. Crossing became common around 1900 and stopped suddenly in 1910. From 1919 the mixed regional herds were entered in registers and selected as Improved Japanese Cattle; the strains, each named for the foreign breed that had most influence, were recognised as breeds in 1944.

What the Japanese Shorthorn is kept for

The Japanese Shorthorn is a beef breed, and today it is raised for meat alone. Its ancestors were draught animals, used in farming, forestry and mining, for carrying loads, and for the manure they gave. Milk was not drunk in Japan and beef was not eaten, for cultural and religious reasons. The meat marbles less than Japanese Black beef, so it fetches a lower price at market. Roughly 1.2% of Japan's beef cattle belong to this breed.

The land and climate of the Japanese Shorthorn

This is a cattle of the far north. The breed was formed in the northernmost part of Honshu, in Aomori, Iwate and Akita, and it is still kept in those prefectures. Hokkaido, the northern island, also has herds. That is the whole of the record: the Japanese Shorthorn belongs to cool northern Japan rather than to warm or dry country, and it has been selected there since the early twentieth century.

Who keeps the Japanese Shorthorn

No single herding people or caste is tied to this breed. It belongs to the farming districts of northern Japan, above all the prefectures of Aomori, Iwate and Akita on Honshu and the island of Hokkaido. Ordinary farmers in those places gathered and improved the cattle during the early 1900s, and rural families there keep them still. In earlier times a cow was a serious purchase: cattle were prized and valuable, too costly for a poor farmer to buy.

Faith and ritual

Beef was left out of the Japanese diet for many centuries, and the reasons given are cultural and religious rather than practical. Cattle were therefore not bred as meat animals but kept alive for their strength and their dung. No temple, shrine or rite is tied to the Japanese Shorthorn in the record. Its place in belief is indirect: a long period in which eating beef was avoided shaped the sort of cattle Japanese farmers kept and the qualities they chose.

Custom and folk tradition

For centuries cattle in Japan were working animals, not food animals. They pulled ploughs, hauled timber and ore, carried goods, and supplied the manure that kept the fields fertile. Milk was not part of the diet and beef was not eaten, so a farmer's interest lay in a strong, long-working ox. Cattle were rare and costly, beyond the reach of a poor family. The country was closed to the outside world from 1635 to 1854, and that long, isolated spell of work and manure-making is the background from which the wagyū breeds later came.

Related breeds and crosses

It is one of the four wagyū breeds, alongside the Japanese Black, the Japanese Polled and the Japanese Brown, and one of six native Japanese breeds in all. Its foreign ancestry is mostly Shorthorn, with Ayrshire and Devon added in Akita. Every wagyū, this one included, descends from crosses made in the early 1900s between native Japanese cattle and imported stock, most of it from Europe. The breed grew out of the herds registered from 1919 as Improved Japanese Cattle.

Numbers, conservation and the herd book

The FAO classed the Japanese Shorthorn as not at risk in its 2007 review of farm animal breeds. In 2008 the breed was put at about 4,500 head. That makes it a modest share of Japanese beef production, roughly 1.2% of the national beef cattle herd. It was registered and selected from 1919 among the Improved Japanese Cattle, and in 1944 the four wagyū strains were recognised as separate breeds. Northern Honshu and Hokkaido are where it is kept.

Questions people ask about Japanese Shorthorn

Good reading and sources

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