Niku Meikannikumeikan.jp Japan's regional beef, jidori chicken and pork brands — what each one legally is, with sources
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Home Beef brands Japanese beef brands by breed

Japanese Black

75 of the 100 beef brands in this guide require Japanese Black cattle. Japanese Black is one of the breeds that may be labelled wagyu under the Ministry of Agriculture's guideline. Of these, 24 set a sex condition, 20 set an age or fattening period, and 57 set a grade.

Which breeds count as wagyu →

In numbers

The Japanese Black beef brands are spread across 40 prefectures (Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Kanagawa, Yamanashi, Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa, Fukui, Nagano, Gifu, Shizuoka, Aichi, Mie, Shiga, Kyoto, Hyogo, Wakayama, Tottori, Shimane, Okayama, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Tokushima, Kagawa, Ehime, Fukuoka, Saga, Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima and Okinawa). Of the 52 that set a meat quality grade, 1 accepts grade 5 only, 22 require grade 4 or higher, 23 require grade 3 or higher and 6 require grade 2 or higher. The 12 that set a minimum age require 21 to 33 months (all beef brands range from 18 to 33).

Counts cover only the brands in this guide.