Perhaps I'm the last to learn this, but I just read that until the
mid-1800s, the Japanese did not eat beef. Cattle were only used as beasts
of burden there.

The book[1] says that the first beef slaughter for food there was in 1856,
as requested by the US consul general there, after he'd had a lot of
health issues due his change of diet to the Japanese fare of the time.

The author says that there is a stone with an inscription that reads:
"This monument erected by the butchers of Tokyo in 1931, marks the spot on
which the first cow in Japan was slaughtered for human consumption (Eaten
by Harris and Heusken)"

Harris was the US consul general, Heusken was his secretary.

Then, says Trager, in 1872, the Emporer ate some -- which caused a
national "beef binge".


[1]James Trager, /The Food Book/, New York: Grossman Publishers, 1970.
pp 331-333.


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