While wild game dishes made with deer and wild boar meat have traditionally been popular among the European aristocracy, gibier, as it is known in Japan after the French word for game, has never been the norm here — at least until recently.
In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of wild animals damaging produce due to them eating and ravaging the rice paddies and fields. At the same time, there has been an increase in hunting as well as trapping the harmful animals.
The damage caused by animals exceeds ¥20 billion a year, with about 60 percent of it caused by deer and wild boars, according to the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry.