The man behind Fukushima town's 'Strawberry Sheep'

Japan Times

14-04-2025

When Ryuji Matsumoto moved from Tokyo to the town of Okuma in Fukushima Prefecture about six years ago, mutton was probably the last thing on his mind.
His relocation had come about because the construction company he ran in the capital got involved in projects in the town.
While working on the demolition of houses and decontamination in Okuma, which hosts the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the thought came to him that he needed to do more to help revitalize the town, which bore the brunt of the tsunami and nuclear meltdown caused by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.
It culminated in him rearing what he dubs Strawberry Sheep, whose meat has proven popular for its distinct sweetness, the result of the animals consuming feed containing locally grown strawberries.
The mutton is expected to be added to a list of return gifts for people who make donations to Okuma under the furusato nōzei hometown tax donation system as early as this spring.
"I hope to help the community regain its vibrancy," Matsumoto, 54, said.
In a breeding facility in the town's Ogawara district, the bleating of some 40 sheep is heard as Matsumoto, who had no prior experience in livestock farming, feeds them and cleans their shed.
He recalled how new buildings were being completed in various parts of the town and the community was seemingly being steadily rebuilt. And yet, he felt there was something lacking to attract more people there.
Matsumoto is no stranger to the area. His parents are from the nearby city of Iwaki and, since being a child, he had often visited the coastal area of Fukushima Prefecture where the city and Okuma are located.
'I started to wonder if there was anything I could do for Okuma,' he said.
As he was pondering on this, an acquaintance of his who runs a Mongolian barbecue restaurant in Tokyo related to him that Japanese mutton formed less than 1% of all meat marketed in Japan.
This was Matsumoto's light-bulb moment. If he could rear sheep in Okuma and make a name for them, surely it would lead to a revitalization of the town, he thought.
And so began his journey into sheep farming. He started studying how to rear sheep roughly three years ago, including how to feed them and clean their breeding facility.
The more he learned, the more he realized that in order to make Okuma sheep stand out, they needed to have a distinguishing element.
He eventually got acquainted with Ushiya, a livestock farming company in the neighboring village of Katsurao, which also produces mutton. Over several discussions with the company, an idea came to him about incorporating a local specialty into his feed.
Around the same time, strawberry farming was taking off in Okuma as a new industry, so Matsumoto paid a visit to Nexus Farm Okuma, a public-private venture funded by the town that engaged in strawberry farming in 2019.
He obtained from the company rejected fruit that would have otherwise been discarded to incorporate into his feed.
He joined Okuma Mirai, a local company engaging in projects to revitalize agriculture in the town as its executive officer, and with the support of two of the firm's employees, started raising four sheep in August 2023.
He started to mix dried strawberries into the pasture grass that he fed his sheep. Over time, he started to notice changes in the texture of the sheep's meat.
Last October, Matsumoto served mutton from his farm to a group of people for the first time, and all of them commented that the meat tasted sweet and had little odor.
And thus, the concept of Strawberry Sheep was born.
Recognizing the quality of Matsumoto's sheep, Okuma has decided to add his mutton to its list of return gifts under the hometown tax system.
Matsumoto hopes to open a restaurant that serves mutton one day, and also cooperate with Ushiya in the future.
'I want to make the district a major mutton-producing area and utilize it to attract tourists so that it will lead to an expansion of the nonresident population,' he said.
This section features topics and issues covered by the Fukushima Minpo, the prefecture's largest newspaper. The original article was published March 3.