To be sold as Miyazaki beef, an animal must be Japanese Black, raised and fattened within Miyazaki prefecture, and graded four or above for meat quality by the national grading association. There is a further condition that most brands do not impose: one parent must be a prefectural sire, or a sire designated for herd improvement.

That last clause is the interesting one. Most beef brands regulate geography and grade. This one regulates ancestry, which means the prefecture is not simply certifying where a cow lived but which bloodline it came out of. Miyazaki spent decades developing its sires, names like Yasuhira and Itohide, with the prefecture and the agricultural cooperatives working as one.

On the fifteenth of December, 2017, it was registered as the fifty-fifth protected geographical indication in Japan.

The national wagyu show is held once every five years and is treated, without much irony, as the wagyu olympics. Miyazaki has taken the prime minister's award at four consecutive meetings: Tottori, Nagasaki, Miyagi, Kagoshima. Standing in a restaurant reading all this off a certificate on the wall, I realized the conversation was never really about meat. It was about parentage.