Revival of Game Meat as a Food Option

SOHOLM, a restaurant in Tennozu, Tokyo, serves carefully cooked gibier dishes throughout the year and is busy with many customers every day.

“The greatest thing about gibier is that deer and boar are full of energy. They grow really healthily because they only eat tasty things from nature like mushrooms and acorns. They only have half the calories of beef and pork, and they are also a rich source of iron.

They are very good for you,” says Shota Kawai, the manager of SOHOLM. He has put his heart into gibier; he has even obtained a hunting license.

Gibier is generally said to be in their prime in the autumn and winter seasons, but this is largely because regulation states that the hunting season starts in November and ends in March. Nowadays, hunting is allowed throughout the year in order to prevent damage to forests and agriculture by deer and boar, which have overpopulated the land. This has changed people’s perception of when gibier is in season.

Several tens of thousand boar and deer are hunted each year to prevent damage to forests and agriculture, but only a small percentile of them are used as edible meat. Recently however, more attempts are being made to use gibier in new ways, developing products and using them as local resources, making gibier a closer presence to people. Here are some examples.

Apparently, it is the wholesalers (meat sellers) who played part in the birth of many different gibier products, including those for home consumption. They have a vital role in connecting the producers (hunters) to the consumer.

Hirosuke Kono of Chinzeiya, a meat seller from Oita Prefecture in whom SOHOLM’s Kawai places great trust, says “I know every detail of how, when and by whom an animal has been hunted and processed.”

Usually, animals from hunters are taken to a meat processing facility, butchered and handed over to meat sellers before distribution. Just like any other food, hunted meat requires that it can be traced to its source and thorough management of this information guarantees that the meat is safe for consumption.

Kono also runs a meat processing facility and he holds lectures for members of hunting associations. These lectures teach the appropriate way to hunt and kill animals if the meat is to be used for consumption, so that the hunters can bring in meat equipped with the correct knowledge.

Kono also holds lectures about hygiene control and techniques of butchering meat for other meat processing facilities, to improve the overall quality of game meat.

Without wholesalers like Kono, who take on many responsibilities to deliver safe and tasty game meat to consumers, the Japanese gibier cuisine of today would not have been possible.

Kawai travels across Japan on a daily basis to promote gibier cuisine in regions suffering from damage caused to agricultural products by the overpopulation of wild animals.

This year, he started a new project called wildlife management. The project aims to not only limit itself to eating gibier, but to utilize and circulate all the gifts from the forests in daily life. As part of the project, wooden plates made using wood from forest thinning are being used at SOHOLM, and aprons made with deer leather are being marketed.

The thing that Kawai draws ideas from is the lives of hunters called Matagi.

“The reason why there are too many deer and boar is because people stopped going into the mountains, which in turn made the forests barren. In olden days these Matagi went into the mountains regularly not just to hunt, but they chopped wood for charcoal and firewood, they also maintained the trails through the woods, and preserved the forests.”

Gibier is also one of the gifts from the forests. If we make gibier part of our daily lives instead of letting it be a passing trend, it will help preserve forests as well. Gibier is not just a tasty and healthy food. It is also an educational tool that makes us think about the future of forests.