The Breed
The Wagyu Heist
Fewer than 250 cattle left Japan before it shut the door in 1997. Every Wagyu outside Japan descends from them: the herds in Texas and Australia, the steak on the menu, the burger in the case. Japan says none of them is Wagyu. By its own rules, Japan is right.
Wagyu is two words in Japanese.
Wa means Japanese. Gyu means cattle.
Japanese cattle. That is the whole name.
It is now on menus in Dallas, on burgers in airports and on steaks in Singapore.
Most of that beef never saw Japan.
Some of it is half Angus.
The genes got out. The name followed them. Japan has spent thirty years trying to get both back.
This is how a closed herd opened for a few years, and why it closed again.
Two Thousand Years of Work
For most of Japanese history, cattle were not food.
Buddhist teaching forbade eating them. Cattle pulled plows and carried loads.
That shaped the animal. A draft ox was bred for strength and stamina, not size.
Japan is mountains and valleys. Herds were cut off from each other. Each region bred its own line.
Then Japan opened to the world.
Kobe opened its first slaughterhouse for foreign residents in 1868. Within a few years Kobe was killing 800 cattle a month.
Between 1868 and 1887 Japan brought in about 2,600 foreign cattle: Brown Swiss, Devon, Shorthorn, Simmental, Ayrshire and Korean.
The crosses grew bigger. They did not taste like Japanese beef. By 1912 the government had ended the crossbreeding policy.
What came after was the opposite of crossbreeding.
In 1919 the government began registering cattle. By 1944 it had named the breeds.
Today there are four: Japanese Black, Japanese Brown, Japanese Shorthorn and Japanese Polled.
Japanese Black is more than nine in ten.
One bull shaped it more than any other.
Tajiri-go was born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1939. He sired 1,463 calves.
A 2012 survey found that 99.9 percent of Japanese Black females in Japan trace back to him.
For eighty years Japan bred these cattle only to each other. That is what a closed herd means.
The Name on the Map
Inside Japan, Wagyu is not one beef. It is hundreds.
More than 320 regional brands, each tied to a place.
The most famous is Kobe.
Kobe beef comes from Tajima-strain Japanese Black cattle born in Hyogo Prefecture.
Only steers and heifers that never calved qualify. The carcass must score 6 or higher on Japan’s 12-point marbling scale and weigh 499.9 kilograms or less.
A certification body has guarded the name since 1983. A few thousand head pass each year.
Everything in that list is checked.
Every Wagyu in Japan carries a ten-digit number. It follows the animal from birth to the meat case.
A place, a breed and a paper trail. In Japan, that is what the word means.
Four Bulls
The first ones left in 1976.
On March 31, 1976, four bulls landed in the United States, bought by a Texas cattleman, Morris Whitney, and a Japanese partner.
Two were black: Mazda and Mt. Fuji. Two were red: Judo and Rueshaw.
There were no cows with them.
Bulls alone cannot make a herd. They can only make crosses.
For seventeen years, no Wagyu cow left Japan.
Four bulls and no cows. Japan had given away a sample, not a breed.
The Window
Then trade opened a door.
In 1988 Japan agreed to end its quotas on imported beef. They were gone by 1991.
American beef poured into Japan. Some cattle started going the other way.
In July 1993 a Northwest Airlines 747 carried three cows and two bulls out of Japan. They were the first Wagyu females ever exported.
An Idaho cattleman brokered the deal with Japanese investors. One of them owned a restaurant chain and wanted cheaper Wagyu.
American officials helped get the export permits.
Females changed everything. With cows, a breed can be copied.
Over the next four years, more followed.
The biggest supplier was a Japanese cattleman in Hokkaido, Shogo Takeda.
In 1994 Takeda shipped five bulls and 35 females. In 1995 he shipped six bulls and 45 females.
His partner in Australia was a farmer named David Blackmore. One Australian family alone brought in 750 embryos from Takeda’s cattle.
Takeda broke no law. Japan’s Wagyu registry told him to stop. He refused, and in 1997 it expelled him. As of 2019 he had not been readmitted.
That same year, Japan declared Wagyu a national treasure.
The exports stopped. Live cattle and genetics have not legally left since.
Nobody agrees on the exact count.
The World Wagyu Council says 183. The Australian Wagyu Association says 221. A Japanese legal summary of the 2020 law counts 247 head sent to the United States, plus 13,000 straws of semen.
Either way, it was a few hundred animals.
Every Wagyu outside Japan comes from that handful. Nothing has been added since.
The Heist That Was Legal
Nothing in that window was stolen.
Every animal left with papers. Every sale was legal at the time.
Japan treats it as a theft anyway.
Its farmers had spent a century building a herd no one else had. In four years, the herd had copies on two continents.
Then, in 2018, someone actually tried to steal it.
In June 2018 a man boarded a ferry from Osaka to Shanghai with a metal flask. Inside were 365 straws of frozen Wagyu semen and fertilized embryos.
Chinese customs turned him back. He had no Japanese inspection certificate. He took the flask home and handed it to Osaka customs.
Police arrested him and an Osaka restaurant owner in March 2019. The genetics had come from a livestock farmer in Tokushima, who had sold them for several million yen.
The men were charged under animal-disease and customs rules.
No law in Japan protected the genetics themselves.
Japan wrote one.
On October 1, 2020, a new law made Wagyu genetics protected property, like a trade secret.
Stealing them, or sending them abroad against the terms of sale, can now bring up to ten years in prison and a ¥10 million fine. Companies face fines up to ¥300 million.
The law reaches use of the genetics outside Japan, too.
The door closed in 1997. In 2020 Japan put a lock on it.
What the World Did With It
The genetics did well abroad.
Australia did best.
In 2010 Japan had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. In 2011 came the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.
Japanese beef dropped out of Asian kitchens.
Australian Wagyu took its place. For a while it held nearly all the high-end Wagyu business in Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong.
Australia now has the largest Wagyu herd outside Japan.
In 2017 Australia counted 36,000 registered fullblood Wagyu and about 380,000 crossbreds.
The United States has about 40,000 cattle with Wagyu genetics, by the American Wagyu Association’s estimate.
Only a few thousand of them are fullblood.
Most American Wagyu cattle are crosses.
A Wagyu bull on an Angus cow makes a calf that is half and half. The trade calls it an F1.
Crossing is how most of America’s Wagyu beef gets made.
The genes went around the world. Most of them went into crossbreds.
What the Label Means
In the United States, the word Wagyu has a floor.
Fullblood means 100 percent, traced back to cattle that left Japan.
Purebred means at least 93.75 percent, bred up over four generations.
For a package to say Wagyu, USDA requires one parent to be fullblood or purebred. That puts the floor at 46.875 percent.
So a steak sold as Wagyu in America can be a little less than half Wagyu.
The label does not have to say which half.
A restaurant menu has no floor at all.
Kobe is worse.
Real Kobe beef was not exported anywhere until 2012. It first reached the United States that August.
The word Kobe has no legal protection here.
Anyone can print it on a menu.
In America, Wagyu describes some of an animal’s genes. In Japan, it describes the whole animal and where it came from.
Only Japan Can Claim It
Japan wrote its rule down in 2007, in a government labeling guideline.
Beef may be called Wagyu only if it comes from the four Japanese breeds, or crosses among them, born and raised in Japan.
Every one of those animals can be traced by its number.
Nothing outside Japan can meet that rule.
Not an F1 in Kansas. Not a fullblood cow in Texas, whose ancestors flew out of Japan in the 1990s.
The genes may be the same. The birthplace is not.
Japan’s registry has said its herd has been closed for eighty years. It has no plans to change that.
Japan sells its own Wagyu abroad now, and it sells more every year.
In 2024 Japan exported 10,826 tons of beef worth ¥64.8 billion, a record. The United States was the biggest buyer.
The government’s target for 2030 is ¥113.2 billion.
The fight over the name is a fight over that money.
That does not make Japan wrong.
Japan built the breed. It kept the herd closed for eighty years. It tracks every animal from birth.
Nobody else did that work. The rest of the world bought the result in a four-year window.
The genetics left Japan. The name did not.
What You Are Buying
None of this makes American Wagyu bad beef.
A fullblood steer raised in Texas carries the same Japanese genetics. Many American ranchers have spent decades breeding them.
A good F1 can be an excellent steak.
It is just not Wagyu in the way Japan means the word.
The honest name is the long one. American Wagyu. Fullblood, purebred or F1, with the percentage on the label.
Ask the question the package does not answer.
How much Wagyu is in it? Who bred the bull? Where was it raised?
A rancher who raised it can tell you.
If the label will not say what it is, ask the person who raised it. Know who raised your beef.
About this piece
Figures are as of 15 October 2026. Counts of the cattle exported from Japan between 1976 and 1997 differ by source: the World Wagyu Council gives 183 live animals, the Australian Wagyu Association 221, and a Japanese legal summary of the 2020 law cites 247 head and 13,000 straws of semen sent to the United States. We report all three. The 1990s exports were legal at the time; “heist” describes how Japan has treated them since, not a crime. The 2018 smuggling case is described from news reports of the 2019 arrests. Herd figures for Australia are from 2017 and for the United States are the American Wagyu Association’s estimate; neither is a census. The 46.875 percent floor follows from USDA’s requirement that one parent be fullblood or purebred (at least 93.75 percent). Japan’s 2007 rule is a government labeling guideline for the word “Wagyu” in Japan. This piece makes no claim about the healthfulness of any beef, and takes no position on trade policy.
Sources
World Wagyu Council, “History of Wagyu Worldwide” — wa and gyu; Morris Whitney’s 1976 import of Mazda and Mt. Fuji (black) and Judo and Rueshaw (red); 183 cattle exported, 167 black and 16 red; the 1997 national-treasure declaration; Wagyu in 36 countries outside Japan.
Texas Wagyu Association, “Wagyu History in Japan” and “Wagyu History Outside of Japan” — draft cattle and the Buddhist prohibition; about 2,600 British and Continental cattle introduced from 1868; registration from 1919 and nationalized in 1944; the 1993, 1994 and 1997 shipments by importer; fullblood and purebred definitions (15/16, the fourth generation).
Wikipedia, “Wagyu” and “Kobe beef” — 1868–1887 imports; crossbreeding ended by 1912; the 1944 breed decision and Japanese Shorthorn added in 1957; Kobe slaughterhouses from 1868 and 800 head a month by 1875; more than 320 regional brands; Japanese Black more than 90 percent; Japan’s 2007 labeling guideline; Kobe exports from January 2012, the 2009 U.S. ban on Japanese beef lifted in August 2012; no U.S. legal protection for the name Kobe.
Nippon.com, “The Roots of Wagyū” — Tajiri-go, born 1939 in Hyogo, 1,463 calves, and the 2012 survey finding 99.9 percent of Japanese Black females his descendants. Nippon.com, “The World of Wagyū: Aussie Challengers” — Takeda Shogo’s supply to David Blackmore from 1992 and exclusive agreement in 1994; his expulsion by the registry in 1997; that his exports violated no law or regulation; Australian Wagyu’s share of high-end demand in Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong after 2010 and 2011. Nippon.com, “Japan’s Beef Exports Reach Record High” (2025) — 10,826 tons and ¥64.8 billion in 2024; the United States, Taiwan and Hong Kong the main buyers; the ¥113.2 billion target for 2030.
Australian Wagyu Association, “In the Beginning Was an Ugly Cow” (30-year history, 2019) — Takeda’s 1994 shipment of five bulls and 35 females and 1995 shipment of six bulls and 45 females; 750 embryos imported by one family; his expulsion in 1997; an estimated 221 Wagyu exported from Japan between 1976 and 1997.
Texas Monthly, “Thirty Years Ago, the First Wagyu Cows Came to the U.S.” — the July 1993 Northwest Airlines flight with three cows and two bulls; the Idaho broker and Japanese investors; Japan’s 1997 ban; about 40,000 U.S. cattle with Wagyu genetics (American Wagyu Association estimate); most American Wagyu crossbred; the one-parent rule and the 46.875 to 100 percent range. Seattle Times (22 March 1992) — the four bulls’ arrival on March 31, 1976.
USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, American Wagyu Association live animal specification (May 2025) — fullblood 100 percent; purebred 93.75 percent minimum; DNA parent verification through the association.
Beef Central, “Australian Wagyu industry reaches out to Japanese counterparts” (8 September 2017) — 36,000 registered fullblood and about 380,000 crossbred Wagyu in Australia; Japan’s registry: a closed herd for eighty years, with no plans to change.
Philippine Daily Inquirer / Yomiuri Shimbun reporting (March 2019) — the June 2018 Osaka–Shanghai ferry attempt, the turn-back for lack of a Japanese inspection certificate, the arrests, the Tokushima seller and the charges; 365 straws.
Atsumi & Sakai, newsletter on the Act on Prevention of Unfair Competition regarding Livestock Genetic Resources (2021) — in force October 1, 2020; up to ten years’ imprisonment and ¥10 million for individuals, ¥300 million for companies; application to use outside Japan; 247 live cattle and 13,000 straws to the United States.
Kobe Beef Marketing & Distribution Promotion Association (kobe-niku.jp) — founded 1983; certification of Kobe beef. Japan Best Wagyu, “Wagyu vs Kobe Beef” — Tajima-strain Japanese Black born in Hyogo; steers and heifers only; marbling 6 or higher; carcass 499.9 kilograms or less.
USDA Economic Research Service, “U.S.-Japan Agreements on Beef Imports” — the June 1988 agreement and the end of Japan’s beef import quotas in 1991.