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Kobe beef is Wagyu beef from the Tajima strain of Japanese Black cattle, raised in Japan's Hyōgo Prefecture according to rules set out by the Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association. The meat is a delicacy, valued for its flavour, tenderness and fatty, well-marbled texture. Kobe beef can be prepared as steak, sukiyaki, shabu-shabu, sashimi, and teppanyaki. Within Japan, Kobe is one of the three Sandai Wagyū, the "three big beefs", along with Matsusaka beef and Ōmi beef or Yonezawa beef. Kobe beef is also called Kōbe-niku, Kōbe-gyū or Kōbe-ushi in Japanese. Cattle were brought to Japan from China in about the second century AD, in the Yayoi period. Until about the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, they were used only as draught animals, in agriculture, forestry, mining and for transport, and as a source of fertiliser. Milk consumption was unknown, and – for cultural and religious reasons – meat was not eaten. Japan was effectively isolated from the rest of the world from 1635 until 1854; there was no possibility of intromission of foreign genes to the cattle population during this time. Between 1868, the year of the Meiji Restoration, and 1887, some 2,600 foreign cattle were imported, including Braunvieh, Shorthorn and Devon. Between about 1900 and 1910 there was extensive cross-breeding of these with native stock. From 1919, the various heterogeneous regional populations that resulted from this brief period of cross-breeding were registered and selected as "Improved Japanese Cattle". Four separate strains were characterised, based mainly on which type of foreign cattle had most influenced the hybrids, and were recognised as breeds in 1944. These were the four wagyū breeds, the Japanese Black, the Japanese Brown, the Japanese Polled and the Japanese Shorthorn. The Tajima is a strain of the Japanese Black, the most populous breed (around 90% of the four breeds). Beef consumption remained low until after World War II. Kobe beef grew in popularity and extended its global reach in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Related concepts (3)

Japanese Black

The Japanese Black (黒毛和種, Kuroge Washu) is a breed of Japanese beef cattle. It is one of six native Japanese cattle breeds, and one of the four Japanese breeds known as wagyū, the others being the Japanese Brown, the Japanese Polled and the Japanese Shorthorn. All wagyū cattle derive from cross-breeding in the early twentieth century of native Japanese cattle with imported stock, mostly from Europe. In the case of the Japanese Black, the foreign influence was from European breeds including Braunvieh, Shorthorn, Devon, Simmental, Ayrshire and Holstein.

Beef cattle

Beef cattle are cattle raised for meat production (as distinguished from dairy cattle, used for milk production). The meat of mature or almost mature cattle is mostly known as beef. In beef production there are three main stages: cow-calf operations, backgrounding, and feedlot operations. The production cycle of the animals starts at cow-calf operations; this operation is designed specifically to breed cows for their offspring. From here the calves are backgrounded for a feedlot.

Kansai region

The Kansai region or the Kinki region lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo and Shiga, often also Mie, sometimes Fukui, Tokushima and Tottori. The metropolitan region of Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto (Keihanshin region) is the second-most populated in Japan after the Greater Tokyo Area. The terms Kansai, Kinki, and Kinai have their roots during the Asuka period.