With a mascot on standby — adorned with ear tags and a chef’s hat — booths manned for promotions and a host of interactive activities prepared, the 12th National Japanese Beef Ability Expo is ready to make a splash when it opens to the public on Oct. 6.
Dubbed the “Wagyu Olympics” and hosted every five years, the five-day event is expected to welcome more than 400,000 visitors, all seeking to find out firsthand which cattle and variety of beef will be crowned best in Japan. This year’s host, Kagoshima Prefecture, will see around 440 head of cattle from 41 prefectures compete in nine categories based on characteristics such as the animals’ age and gender.
Farmers and breeders have long been gearing up for this competition, the premium event on Japan’s beef industry calendar. Preparations started only shortly after the close of the previous expo, which was held in Miyagi Prefecture in 2017.
With only days to go until the 2022 contest, animals and meat are now being prepared for travel, with representatives from Hokkaido and Okinawa taking up to three days by boat and road to reach the venue.
For farmers, scooping a coveted title not only represents the culmination of five years of effort, it also brings greater recognition of their wagyu brand and improved sales. For wagyu in general, the expo also creates much-needed buzz among consumers both at home and abroad.
Despite its superior quality characterized by tenderness, intricate marbling and high levels of healthy fat, Japan’s top-grade beef has been suffering slowing sales at home due to the nation’s declining population, whose older members tend to eat less meat. Indeed, 30% of Japanese consumers surveyed by Statista in October 2021 said they bought wagyu less than one day per month.
Moreover, as Australia and the United States continue to expand their domestic “wagyu” industries in response to rising demand, Japan’s beef exports are facing growing competition in many countries.
In a bid to increase sales and protect the wagyu brand, experts have long been educating consumers that only Japanese beef is authentic wagyu, due to breeding and how the cattle are raised.
In Australia, cattle are classified as wagyu if they have more than 50% wagyu genetics, unlike in Japan where cattle can only be described as such if they are full-blooded. Australian wagyu cattle also tend to feed on grass, whereas Japanese stock eat a variety of grain, corn and rice straw in addition to grass.
With Japan eyeing agricultural exports worth ¥2 trillion — including wagyu — by 2025, awareness-raising is ongoing to convey that Japanese wagyu is “the best,” according to the Japan Livestock Industry Association.
As recently as 2017, the Universal Wagyu Mark was redesigned to replace the English text “Wagyu Japanese Beef” with “Japan Beef.” “Wagyu” was removed “to avoid confusion among consumers,” as it is also used by American and Australian beef producers to brand their beef with wagyu characteristics.
“It was essential to add the word 'Japan,'” Yoshikazu Oba, a representative of the management support department at the Japan Livestock Industry Association, said at the time.
Plans are therefore in place at the upcoming expo to introduce the unique elements of Japan’s wagyu industry that make the beef so prized, such as the precise and personalized care of the cattle.
There will also be tasting opportunities, including a barbeque, and other initiatives to allow visitors to appreciate wagyu onsite. By doing so, organizers hope to boost consumption in the longer term and keep wagyu in the forefront of consumers’ minds.
Expo influence
The Wagyu Olympics were established in 1966 to support the wagyu industry.
According to Tetsuya Fukushige, executive director of the Kagoshima Prefecture Executive Committee for the upcoming expo, its original aims were fourfold: to improve meat quality, to increase the number of wagyu cattle, to motivate farmers and to inspire farming successors.
While delivering these goals, however, the Wagyu Olympics has become much more than simply a tool for farmers. Today, it is a public relations powerhouse for wagyu. Successive high-performing prefectures in the competition have seen increased wagyu brand awareness at home and abroad, as well as improved domestic sales and growing exports.
At the last expo, in 2017, Kagoshima Prefecture was ranked first overall, after winning four of the nine categories. Since then, industry professionals and the general public have expressed growing enthusiasm for its wagyu brand, Kagoshima Kuroushi (literally, “Black Cow”). Both the cattle and the meat have been piquing interest.
“Buyers started coming from all over Japan to Kagoshima markets to buy our calves, resulting in an increase in the calf price,” says Fukushige, noting that calves are typically raised for nine months and then auctioned off to be reared for another 20 months.
And thanks to extensive media coverage of Kagoshima’s success, “restaurants across the country wanted it on their menus, and exports increased, too,” Fukushige says.
Today, Kagoshima is one of the leading exporters of wagyu in Japan, with key markets including Hong Kong, Singapore, the United States and the European Union.
Fukushige attributes this growth, in part, to the prefecture’s stable supply of wagyu. About 330,000 head of beef cattle can be found in Kagoshima Prefecture, amounting to about 20% of the country’s Japanese Black, one of only four breeds considered to be wagyu and accounting for 90% of all wagyu in Japan.
Even the COVID-19 pandemic has not been a prolonged dampener on demand for the most recent winner.
Although some initial restrictions on the movement of people resulted in a slowdown in food service orders, Kagoshima’s exporters have been enjoying growth in business-to-consumer sales in the past 18 months. Wagyu is becoming a treat to be enjoyed at home by the middle classes, rather than simply an item for luxury consumers, according to Fukushige.
Now he is hoping that hosting the Wagyu Olympics will provide an additional advertising boost to the wagyu industry, both locally and nationally.
“Even in Kagoshima Prefecture, where wagyu is renowned, some people don’t know much about wagyu or only eat it to mark a celebration,” Fukushige says. “We want to increase awareness of wagyu, and the volume of wagyu eaten here and beyond. If people enjoy eating it at the expo, they will want that experience again and again.”
Introducing washoku
Overseas, meanwhile, wagyu is synonymous with Japan and firmly established as a must-try Japanese food. Thanks to careful and sustained promotions, brands such as Kobe Beef, Tajima Beef and Matsusaka Beef have become household names.
Indeed, such is the recognition of wagyu that it has even been credited, along with sushi, as having introduced large swathes of the global population to Japanese cuisine when exports began in the 1990s.
At first, most consumers experienced wagyu in high-end restaurants where the beef was prepared as sirloin or fillet steaks and cooked teppanyaki-style on a hot plate in front of them with pizazz.
But as wagyu became more available, the world saw a proliferation of wagyu dishes, ranging from one-pot sharing options such as sukiyaki (slices of beef and vegetables in broth) and shabu-shabu (slices of beef and vegetables blanched in water and served with dips) to classics like gyūdon (beef over rice) and gyūkatsu (beef cutlet).
And the ongoing popularity of wagyu overseas has helped foster wider interest in Japanese cuisine, acting as a form of “soft power,” according to those close to the food industry.
“Japanese hot pot and grill dishes using Japanese wagyu beef have now become very popular overseas,” according to the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Association website.
Zen-Noh, as the association is commonly known, directly operates a number of restaurants in Asia that specialize in wagyu dishes. Its goal is “to promote more widespread consumption of Japanese wagyu beef” and “help to spread the world about washoku cuisine” at these restaurants.
The designation of washoku as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, in 2013, has caused foreign interest in Japanese food to soar. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries estimates the number of overseas restaurants serving Japanese cuisine reached 159,000 in 2021, up from around 24,000 in 2006.
Meanwhile, branding and promotion by the Japan Food Product Overseas Promotion Center, set up in 2017, has boosted the export of 10 key agricultural products, including wagyu. Services such as the Japan Meat Information Service Center aid these efforts by providing recipes for rarer wagyu dishes such as wagyu sushi and tataki (finely chopped or seared wagyu).
By 2019, wagyu exports had risen nearly ninefold in value and eightfold in volume compared to a decade earlier, totaling 4,339 tons worth ¥29.7 billion — well in excess of the government target of ¥25 billion, according to data from the Finance Ministry.
As demand for wagyu continues to grow abroad due to the washoku boom, Japan is set to increase its beef cattle output to 300,000 tons annually by fiscal 2035 and boost the value of its wagyu exports to ¥160 billion by 2025.
Promoting Japan
Beyond cuisine, wagyu is being increasingly recognized as an effective tool in Japan’s soft power, a phrase referring to the act of shaping the preferences of others through appeal.
Pre-pandemic, soft power’s greatest impact was in boosting the number of visitors from overseas, particularly the growing subsector of gastronomy tourism.
In 2016, 71% of inbound visitors surveyed by the Japan Tourism Agency said their top motivation for visiting Japan was “to eat Japanese meals.”
“There are tourists who come to Japan to eat Kobe Beef, which is one of the most representative ingredients of Japanese cuisine,” says Tetsunori Tanimoto, executive director of Kobe Beef Official Restaurant Guide.
And, in a further agency survey in 2018, the largest proportion of international tourists (27%) said eating Japanese cuisine was the most important leisure activity they had planned during their trip. Of those polled, beef ranked particularly highly for visitors from South Korea and Taiwan.
Similarly, a pre-pandemic survey on Japan-based restaurant search site Gurunavi shows more than 80% of Chinese visitors and 50% of Taiwanese visitors had tried wagyu while visiting Japan.
Japan’s tourism industry is therefore hopeful that interest in wagyu will draw international visitors to some of the country’s lesser-known spots. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ Savor Japan Program, which was launched in 2016, introduces famous local dishes such as Tajima Beef hotpot to showcase 21 areas across the country that have been certified as having a traditional food culture.
Meanwhile, in Gifu Prefecture, local wagyu is being exported, despite the small quantities available, as part of efforts to encourage tourism to the region.
“There are many famous tourist spots within Gifu Prefecture, including the World Heritage site at Shirakawa-go, and many tourists from overseas visit,” Mitsushi Kobayashi, representative director of Hida Meat Agricultural Cooperatives, told government magazine Highlighting Japan. “We want these tourists to enjoy Hida beef even when they return home and we want them to come back to the Hida region after being drawn in by the flavor of the meat.”
These plans to increase tourism are well-founded based on visitor trends from the 11th Wagyu Olympics. Speaking at the show, Eiji Kashiba, then-representative of the expo’s promotion office, said staff had welcomed representatives from China, South Korea, the United States, Australia, France and the United Kingdom. All were eager to gain a greater appreciation of wagyu.
Although this year’s organizers are unsure of exactly how many international visitors to expect given Japan’s strict border measures, interest is expected for the online portion of the program.
And with a record number of prefectures sending a delegation to this year’s competition, the mascot’s welcoming of arrivals might thoroughly put her through her paces — just like the cattle in the competition.
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