"Gibier" in Vogue Among Young Women in Japan

Gibier is a French word for wild animals' meat - deer, boar and such living wild in the mountains. A growing number of young women are going for such meat in preference to beef and pork. Why?

Let's touch on a bit of history of food culture. Years aback the aristocrats owned plenty of lands, enough for wildlife to live and propagate. Hunting was part of their luxuries and game provided for their protein requirements.

Gibier meant a traditional cuisine in Europe and it still survives in France both in term and substance. The philosophy is that one must consume all parts of the animal one has hunted - not meat alone but also guts, bones and every drop of blood.

In Japan, the shooting season opens on November 15 and closes on February 15. Though not as popular as in Europe, quite a few Japanese gourmets count days for the season and enjoy what they call the ultimate in cuisine that goes so well with wine.

Now, why young women going wild for it?

Well, it, of course, has to do with beauty. Deer meat is known to be low-fat, protein-rich and 5-6 times as much iron content (Ezo deer) as compared with beef and pork. In iron content, deer meat beats tuna and bonito by three times.

Meanwhile, deer and boars overpopulate far and wide in the mountains across the country and are damaging farms and forests, due to a drastic decrease in the number of licensed hunters - from 512 thousand in 1975 to 120 thousand in 2012.

So, gibier is as much an environmental issue as feminine beauty. Hokkaido is a land of Yezo deer. Local supermarkets in Sapporo feature Yezo deer meat. In 2012, a local hotel developed a menu for varieties of deer meat recipes and Lawson came up with a deer meat packed lunch.

Japan has a way of remodeling alien culture into one of its own. Gibier is certainly claiming its position in modern Japanese cuisine.

News Source: Nikkei Shimbun