Prologue
Daisuke Masugi
( Head of tonkatsu.jp)
— “Do you have any of Mr. Kaneko’s pork today?” —
“Do you have any of Mr. Kaneko’s pork today?”
There is hardly a day when we don’t receive this request from our guests. Starting with Amagi Kurobuta, more and more people are coming specifically for Mr. Kaneko’s brands—and the number grows by the day.
The first time I ever tasted Amagi Kurobuta was not as tonkatsu, but as a grilled dish at the Basque restaurant Lauburu in Minami-Aoyama. The depth of flavor in the lean meat, the way the fat melted with such refined texture—at the time, I had never eaten “Amagi Kurobuta” as tonkatsu, and I wasn’t even considering opening a tonkatsu restaurant. And yet, a thought rose in my chest, uninvited:
“If this pork became tonkatsu… what would happen?”
Even now, I remember the exhilaration of that moment with complete clarity.
In the summer of 2021, before tonkatsu.jp opened, I reached out to Mr. Kaneko.
“From autumn, I will be opening a tonkatsu restaurant in Omotesando, Tokyo. Would you allow me to serve your pork as tonkatsu?”
I had no background in the restaurant industry. I was, frankly, a complete unknown—someone whose credentials were impossible to verify. And yet, Mr. Kaneko replied quietly:
“Come to the Atsugi Meat Center at 7:30 a.m.”
It was our very first call, just a brief exchange, but it was enough to make one thing clear: this would be a strict man. I still remember vividly the day I went to Atsugi, carrying a tight knot of tension in my stomach.
I explained what I hoped to pursue after opening, and he granted me permission to buy. After the restaurant opened, the first producer to come and eat our tonkatsu was Mr. Kaneko himself. I fry with a sense of tension for every guest—always. But that day, I learned what a different kind of tension it is when the producer himself sits down to eat. I will never forget that single cutlet.
At first, he supplied Amagi Kurobuta and Izu Taihu Pork. Later, he began delivering brands created through various crossbreeds.
“I tried making a pig with this blend. Taste it.”
Crosses involving Mangalitsa, Duroc, or even Meishan—each one the result of Mr. Kaneko’s relentless trial and error.
If I were to describe Mr. Kaneko’s pork in one phrase, it would be this: a pig that never stays still—one that keeps evolving. It was magnificent from the beginning, of course. But the evolution of its deliciousness simply does not stop. This isn’t a year-by-year story. It’s not even month-by-month. A pig that made you think, “This is the ceiling,” is calmly surpassed—again—often the very next week.
And I’m not the only one astonished. Our guests are, too. Some finish an entire meal without adding sauce or salt—eating it exactly as it is. That is how much power there is in the ingredient itself. Yet at the root of that power is the person named Wataru Kaneko.
It began with Amagi Kurobuta, then Izu Taihu Pork. And then the “Prototype Series,” which Mr. Kaneko entrusted to me with the words, “You decide the names on your side.” Today, Mr. Kaneko’s lineup has grown to thirteen brands.
Where does this spirit of inquiry come from? Why does he push things this far—this relentlessly?
I began to think: if guests could taste the pork with some understanding of what lies behind it, tonkatsu might become a deeper experience—one more layer profound. And so I asked Mr. Kaneko himself to speak.
I also spoke with Hirotoshi Ishizaki, a feed manufacturer who has known Mr. Kaneko privately for many years, and with Takeshi Naeda, the owner of Kyoto’s “Makai-kei Ramen Sankamba,” who—like me—was struck to the core by Mr. Kaneko’s pork and now serves ramen made with Amagi Kurobuta.
Mr. Kaneko’s own words, and the perspectives of those around him.
When those voices overlap, the outline of the man named Wataru Kaneko begins to rise into view. If this story allows you to enjoy Mr. Kaneko’s pork with greater delight—and taste it with even greater depth—there would be no greater joy for me.
Chapter 1
Hirotoshi Ishizaki
(Director, Feed Division, Koyama Shoji Co., Ltd.)
— From the least visible place of all: feed —
The first time I met Mr. Wataru Kaneko was nearly twenty years ago now—sometime in the early 2000s, I believe.
As I also told Mr. Masugi, the livestock industry back then was brutally harsh, even in hindsight. Pork suitable for tonkatsu could be as cheap as 350 yen per kilo at times. Even on average it hovered around 450 yen, and 500 yen was considered good. Those numbers are unthinkable today, but back then they were the norm.
I run a feed business across Saitama, Gunma, and Tochigi. The work of a feed supplier is rarely noticed when the economy is good. But when the industry starts to tilt, we get hit first. When I went to collect payments, I’d be told, “We don’t have money.” Sometimes a farmer would grab me by the collar. It wasn’t unusual for anger to come straight at the salesperson.
When livestock is running smoothly, no one complains. But once the gears slip, producers, wholesalers, feed suppliers—everyone suffers in a chain reaction. That was the era.
Around that time, there were producers raising Kurobuta in Iruma and Sayama, Saitama—pigs known as “Iruma Kurobuta” and “Sayama Kurobuta.” But at meat centers then, Kurobuta wasn’t highly valued, and sometimes traded at the same price as standard pigs. Kurobuta takes longer to raise, costs more in feed, and is harder to manage. In reality, it needs to sell for at least 100 yen more than standard pigs to make sense. Yet the price was the same. “We can’t continue like this,” the producers told me.
“Can you do something about where we sell?”
That consultation was the beginning of everything. At the time, I had ties with Nippon Nosan Kogyo, and I heard there was a wholesaler in Kanagawa who handled Kurobuta. That was Kaneko Livestock. I got Mr. Kaneko’s contact from a sales rep at Nippon Nosan Kogyo and called him. That was our first connection.
I still remember it clearly. On that very first call, Mr. Kaneko said:
“If we’re doing this, I want to see those three farms with my own eyes. Meet me at 10:30 at the Ome interchange—come there.”
For a first meeting, things moved fast. No hesitation. It so happened that three farms were clustered around the Ome interchange. After a couple phone calls beforehand, I went to Ome at the appointed time.
“Kaneko.”
That was his entire greeting. No small talk. We headed straight for the farms.
We visited all three, but only one got a “pass.” And the judgment was shockingly quick. At the second farm, he finished simply by opening the door and looking inside. He didn’t even walk in. The moment we stepped back outside, he said:
“Ishizaki-san—did you see the feed box and the waterer picker at the front?”
The water area was dirty. The feed box was filthy. That alone was enough: “No good,” he said—flatly. “Absolutely.” Even the time—10:30—had a reason. After the morning feeding, if there was still feed left at that hour, it meant the farm’s management was off.
“If there’s feed left at 10:30, you should be able to throw it away—that’s how it has to be.”
Pigs are clean, delicate animals. Typically there are around ten pigs in a pen. And from the moment they’re born, a survival-of-the-strong dynamic begins. The stronger pigs eat first, and the eighth pig onward ends up eating leftovers. Saliva from earlier pigs sticks to the feed. As time passes, the feed loses freshness—especially in summer. At a truly well-managed farm, after feeding, they check the feed box—one scoop with a shovel and it’s clean again.
But at the first and second farms, feed remained. Spider webs hung thick on the ceiling. There was odor. Those three points alone were instant disqualification. I could tell he prioritized sanitation above all.
The third farm was a small operation in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Iruma—an unthinkable location, normally. But astonishingly, there was no pig smell at all. A stubborn-looking elderly man ran it alone, and his cleaning was absolute. I’ve seen countless farms, but it’s rare to find one that odorless. It was also a farm I had supplied personally, so I believed, “This one should be fine.” Mr. Kaneko reached the same conclusion. On the spot, he gave the pass.
“Eight head every Tuesday is fine. Fixed time, fixed quantity. Bring them to Atsugi. I’ll pay your highway tolls. Grading—top, middle, standard—doesn’t matter. I’ll buy them all at 620 yen.”
In an era when Kurobuta was being beaten down to the same price as standard pigs, buying at 620 yen was extraordinary.
That was the beginning of business with Kaneko Livestock. At the time, Mr. Kaneko still didn’t own a farm.
His position was “wholesaler.” Yet he already had a sense of “how it’s raised becomes what kind of meat.” I showed him the entire feeding program—piglet feed, finishing feed, sow feed—the full lineup. The designated finishing compound feed for Kurobuta, everything. After scanning it, he said:
“This one thing—make sure you feed it for the final month. No exceptions.”
What surprised me even more came after. Each month-end, I faxed the producer’s invoices to the Kaneko Livestock office. That way, you can see whether they truly bought the finishing feed. In truth, it’s common for people to say, “We’re using it,” while actually not. Mr. Kaneko crushed that kind of ambiguity from the start.
That producer later died of cancer. Until his death, Mr. Kaneko kept buying his pigs. And when the end came, he took every last pig.
Closing a farm is hardest at the end. Females can be bred and shipped, but males remain. Mr. Kaneko even considered whether healthy pigs could be donated to an agricultural high school. I also cover agricultural high schools and the prefectural livestock research center in Saitama, so I understand the reality. Once tests are run, though, something always gets flagged. They couldn’t be introduced. At that point, Mr. Kaneko said:
“Then I’ll take responsibility and cull them all at my place.”
He managed and slaughtered the Kurobuta to the end. He attended the funeral, offered incense, and handed meat directly to the widow. Would a wholesaler go that far? Normally, no. Seeing him, I thought:
“This man sees beyond the meat.”
Mr. Kaneko sees upstream and downstream—everything. Most producers are finished once they ship. They don’t know which wholesaler their pig passes through, which restaurant it enters, or how and by whom it’s eaten. Almost no one knows that far. That’s why I understand his insistence on the Atsugi Meat Center: slaughter data comes up immediately, untouchable—uneditable—unfalsifiable. No manipulation. That is the true form.
When I heard Mr. Kaneko would start farming, I honestly thought: “He’ll become someone unique in Japan.” A wholesaler who knows the field, checks his own meat every day, enters farms and observes pigs, selects bloodlines, designs and executes feeding plans, and manages the farm environment itself.
It’s virtually impossible for a producer to become a wholesaler. That’s why I see Mr. Wataru Kaneko as neither “producer” nor “wholesaler,” but something else—another dimension entirely. Productivity is irrelevant to him. He goes end-to-end over the long term to make great pork. That is the Kaneko style. And now there are many chefs ready to receive the pork he has raised with such care. His curiosity never stops. He simply cannot help loving pigs.
What left the deepest impression on me is that, at meals, Mr. Kaneko watches the expressions of customers who have nothing to do with him. A regular guest eats his pork and says, “Delicious.”
Mr. Kaneko sees that face and smiles shyly. And then comes that line:
“Umee-be.”
(“So damn good.”)
Even at 600 days: “Umee-be.”
Even at 400 days: “Umee-be.”
I think that is Mr. Wataru Kaneko’s goal—and at the same time, his next starting line.
I want to keep running alongside him.
Chapter 2
Takeshi Naeda
(Owner, Makai-kei Ramen Sankamba)
— “The day I met a pig’s madness in front of a pot” —
When I talk with Mr. Masugi, we usually start with horse racing. It’s not deliberate—it just happens naturally. And for some reason, once we’re talking about racing, the tension loosens. It’s not business talk, not status talk—just “talking about what we love.” And I think that atmosphere is exactly why we can then move so naturally into the real topic: Mr. Wataru Kaneko.
I run a shop in Kyoto called Ramen Sankamba (“Triple Crown Horse Ramen”). People often ask about the name, and the origin is fairly simple. The place where I trained in Fukuoka had an owner who loved Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and he served three kinds of ramen as a Three Kingdoms motif. I found that idea fascinating, and I still remember him telling me: “If you ever open your own place, you should serve what you truly love.”
I’ve loved horse racing since I was young. During training, while making ramen, I kept thinking: how would I express three kinds of ramen in my own way? One day it hit me—horses. There are three kinds. There are Triple Crown winners. And each Triple Crown winner has a distinct personality and story.
The first one I decided was the chicken salt ramen I serve now. The soup has a slightly golden hue, and the moment I saw it I thought, “This can be Orfevre.” Gold. Even the meaning behind the name fit perfectly. Next came the pork ramen. The impact was so intense the first time I ate it that I thought, “This is Deep Impact.” Shock—so I made that the name. The last remaining one was abura soba. The flavor can get aggressive, so the name never settled. But I wanted two-kanji names across the set, and as I thought back through Triple Crown winners, Symboli Rudolf surfaced—The Emperor. That completed the trio. In the end, that’s how the name “Ramen Sankamba” came to be. Honestly, parts of it are forced—but it feels right to me.
I started horse racing around 2001. Many classmates were into it, and one of them introduced me to Stay Gold—always second, then finally winning overseas. When I saw that story, I thought, “There’s a world like this.” At the time, Derby Stallion and Winning Post were popular games. I learned bloodlines, thought about crosses, studied combinations. Looking back, that might already have been “a creator’s perspective.”
Horse racing and ramen may look like completely separate worlds, but to me they overlap a lot. Bloodlines. Blends. Time. Accumulation. And in the end, results are everything. Both worlds require romance—without it, you can’t continue. People ask how I met ramen, but honestly, the biggest reason is simple: I liked it.
I used to be a salaryman. It didn’t fit me at all. I pushed too hard, and eventually I collapsed. Around that time, a company owner I was close with said, “I’m opening a ramen shop in Fukuoka—if you want, come.” The location was Itoshima. There was nature, and it could be rehab, he said. I agreed instantly. I thought, “This is it.” I learned ramen-making there, and realized: “If I’m doing something on my own, ramen is where I start.”
I returned to Kyoto, found a property, and opened my shop. Kyoto’s ramen culture is generous—there’s an atmosphere of “If it’s delicious, anything is fine.” That suited me.
The first place I learned about Mr. Kaneko’s pork was Uzu to Kaminari in Kugenuma Kaigan. When I was training in Fukuoka, the owner bought every ramen book in existence and told me to read through them. The most intensely memorable of them all was the one about Uzu to Kaminari. The obsession was almost insane—in the best sense. I reread those pages over and over. I decided: when I go independent, I will definitely go there.
When I finally went, I first ate their regular shoyu ramen. It was already excellent. But then they said, “We have something limited today,” and served me Amagi Kurobuta Kombu-water Shio Tsuke SOBA. Honestly, it was a shock. I took one bite of the chashu and thought, “What is this?” The lean and the fat—this wasn’t anything like the pork I had known.
On the way home, I researched immediately. Where could I eat this pork? That’s when I found an SNS post showing Mr. Kaneko, Mr. Kai (Debu-chan), and the manager of Mendelu Sagamihara visiting tonkatsu.jp. I thought, “Ah—this is where I should go.” That was the beginning of everything. And as you know, since then I’ve kept coming from Kyoto, barely a month between visits, to eat Izu Taihu Pork and Izu no Kiwami at tonkatsu.jp.
Later, I met Mr. Kaneko for the first time at Hashimoto Horumon. To be honest, my first impression was—“This guy is insane.” I mean it as praise. The moment we spoke, I understood. If this man makes pigs, of course the pork turns out like this. It wasn’t logic. It was instinct.
After that, I began using his pork myself, and as a chef, I was astonished again and again. First, the fat is different. Mr. Kaneko’s pork has an extremely low melting point. Even at room temperature, it just keeps dissolving. When you make soup with ordinary pork, the moment it boils, big bubbles erupt—water is simply boiling. But with Mr. Kaneko’s pork, it’s different. During heating, the fat already begins to melt, and emulsification starts naturally. Even when it boils, the bubbles are fine—quietly, continuously, fine bubbles. At first I wondered, “Am I doing this right?” But it happened every time. “Ah—so that’s what this is.”
You can’t pre-slice the chashu, either. If you slice it and leave it, the fat melts and it sticks together. So I slice after the order comes in. It’s more work, but I don’t want to lose flavor.
When I made braised pork, I was even more shocked. I thought it was cooked as usual, measured the temperature, and it was 30°C. “Wait—what?” I had to heat it again for over an hour. There’s so much fat that heat doesn’t pass through. But at room temperature it melts. The ingredient makes no sense. And that’s exactly why it’s interesting.
When I make ramen, I don’t really think “the soup is the star.” And after I started using Mr. Kaneko’s pork, I especially don’t. The chashu is the star. The meat and the fat are the star. The soup can just support it—maybe it should be less noticeable. The moment you place the chashu on top, the melting fat alone completes the flavor. Ingredients like that are rare.
I think Mr. Kaneko’s pork is a crystallization of love, madness, and obsession. Without love, you couldn’t do what he does. Without madness, you couldn’t keep checking every pig, every week. Without obsession, you couldn’t push it that far.
But what Mr. Kaneko ultimately watches is something very simple: someone eats, says “Delicious,” and smiles. That single phrase Mr. Ishizaki mentioned—“Umee-be.” I feel like everything is contained in those two words.
When I served an Amagi limited, a first-time customer ordered it right away, then smiled in disbelief. Ah—this is it.
I think Wataru Kaneko is someone who makes pigs with a kind of madness—just to make people smile.
Chapter 3
Wataru Kaneko
(President & CEO, Kaneko Livestock Co., Ltd.)
I’m the fourth generation.
We’ve been livestock traders—what you’d call wholesalers—since my great-grandfather’s time, so pigs were always around me from childhood. But, Masugi-san, it’s not like I planned from the beginning to become a producer. I started producing a little over ten years ago. So as a producer, I think I’m still relatively young. But I’ve spent a long time as a trader—looking at pigs, touching them, cutting them, selling them. So what I’ve always been thinking is: “What kind of pig will be properly valued?”
To be honest, the pigs that fetch a price in the market are easy to understand. The carcass is white. It looks good. That sells. But it’s not only that. What I’ve aimed for is a pig with tight, firm lean meat. When you bite, umami rises from inside the meat. That kind of pig. Tight lean. Good “meat set.” That’s ultimately the strongest. So how do you get lean meat to tighten? That becomes a feed question, a raising method question, a breed question. But the biggest foundation is health.
The farm I took over had run-down facilities. But I thought, “The conditions are here to make delicious pigs.” Why? Because there weren’t any major diseases. I thought that was incredible. I’ve seen farms all over different prefectures, and a farm with disease always ends up straining somewhere. A lot of them have gut problems. Immunity is low. Then the meat won’t tighten, and the organs get rough. So first you have to build a healthy body.
Raising for more days isn’t as simple as “just raise longer.” The question is: how do you keep them healthy while raising them longer? If you don’t think about that, long-term fattening ends as self-satisfaction. I’ve watched the mainstream world where “normal pigs ship at 150 days.” But I don’t do that. I believe meat won’t improve unless you raise them properly and long enough. Of course, it’s not “longer is automatically better.” Health is everything. So I do everything thoroughly to create health. For me, the symbol of that is the organs.
I look at organs, not just meat. Because if the organs aren’t good, the meat won’t be good. Normally, offal is distributed separately—sent to offal dealers. Producers don’t touch it. They ship and they’re done. But I’m different. I have slaughter slots, I cut, I handle the meat. So I know from experience: if the organs are rough, the meat is rough. That’s why I wash the organs myself, touch them myself, tag them with numbers, and eat them every week. If you don’t feel it, you can’t do anything. Not just drinking alcohol—eating, sensing differences, thinking “Why did this happen?” It’s like a chef: in the end, it’s the tongue.
But organs don’t improve easily. In pig farming, you never know what enters from outside. It’s in the mountains, so there are wild animals. There’s swine fever, too. That’s why I change clothes when I enter the farm, and when I’m out, I avoid going into the farm as much as possible. I even carry compost myself, but I believe humans who go outside are the most dangerous. So I protect it. Because if you don’t protect it, everything ends. That costs money and time. Nobody does it. So people say, “You go that far?” But if they’re not strong, nothing starts. In the mountains, you never know what will happen. So I do what others don’t do. That’s what I’m doing.
People ask about feed, too, but basically I haven’t changed it drastically. If it’s expensive, it’s been expensive for over ten years. I know raw materials rise, supplies rise. It’s hard. It’s hard in a real way. I think, “It doesn’t pay,” too. Going home and being told, “Why do we have no money?”—that’s the hardest. Truly.
But if I cut corners, I can’t make it. If I cut corners, the lean won’t tighten. If I cut corners, the organs get rough. If I cut corners, it stops being my pig. So I can’t cut. That’s the world I’m in. And I get told by people in the industry, “You’re an idiot.” “You’re doing something that won’t make money.” But I think, you should eat something good. For me, and for the people who eat it. Because pigs are, in the end, food. If you eat it and it doesn’t make you go “Damn, that’s good,” it’s meaningless.
So yes, I’m aware I do things other producers can’t understand. For example, I take fatty acid measurements every week. Most people don’t do that. Numbers don’t lie, and if you take them weekly, trends appear. Even with the same feed, distribution and individual differences can shift things. I do it so I don’t lose track of “what state is correct for my pigs.”
Crossbreeding is the same. Doing the same thing as everyone else isn’t interesting. I hate that, so I try different things. But it’s not play. The results all come out. In the meat. In the fat. In the organs. Recently I’ve been thinking again—when Meishan goes in, it really is something. Yesterday I ate it myself and felt it deeply. Liver and tongue—how can it be this different? Kurobuta, Meishan, Mangalitsa—this combination works. The meat yield isn’t huge, but the fat quality, meat quality, organs—everything becomes a different class. So I think about the next one. When the next offspring comes, I’ll check the answer again. In the end, it’s repetition.
But a perfect 100 is difficult. Even with the same feed and environment, sometimes you cut and go, “Huh?” Why? Bloodline issues exist. That’s why I’ve thought about registering genes. If the meat is bad, and you can trace which paternal line it came from, you can remove the bad ones. It’s a hassle. But without doing it, you can’t close the gaps. You just have to crush one issue at a time. What I want isn’t a pig that only looks good—I want meat that, when you eat it, you can tell it’s tight and firm.
When I started pig farming, we only had Kurobuta at first. It’s not like I decided from the beginning to be Kurobuta-only. At first it was almost like a hobby. But if I do it, I do it all the way. I named it “Izu no Kiwami” (“Izu Ultimate”), right? Usually, if you name something “Ultimate,” you stop there. But I can’t stop. Always above. Always looking above that. If I could make the ultimate and quit, that’d be nice—but that day won’t come. I do what others don’t do. I do what they can’t do.
In the end, pigs are food.
A customer who has nothing to do with me takes one bite and says, “Delicious.” When I see that face, it just comes out naturally.
“Umee-be.”
At 400 days.
At 600 days.
“Umee-be.”
That’s the end—and that’s also the beginning.
I named it “Kiwami,” but “Kiwami” isn’t a place where you stop. It’s a name of resolve: to keep looking upward.
I’m not done yet.
(The Wataru Kaneko Story — End)
