Four conditions have to be met before beef can be called Hida-gyu. The longest period of the animal's rearing must have been in Gifu. It must have been raised by a producer recognized and registered by the promotion council. It must be a Japanese Black kept for more than fourteen months. And the graded meat quality must be third grade or better.

Behind all of that stands one bull. Yasufuku-go, a Tajima animal, bought by Gifu prefecture in 1981. He left over thirty-nine thousand offspring, of which somewhere between a quarter and three-tenths met the standard to be sold as Hida-gyu.

The name itself is younger than the herd. The brand had been Gifu beef until 1988, when it was changed and the council was set up to run it. In 2023 it was registered as a geographical indication.

There is one more detail that says a good deal about how the animal is regarded here. The characters are the same, but the reading changes depending on the state of the creature. Meat is hida-gyu. A living animal, a breeding cow, a bull, is hida-ushi. The distinction is maintained in ordinary speech, and nobody here mixes the two up. Grilled, cooked on a magnolia leaf with miso, or pressed onto rice as sushi, it is sold on skewers on the streets of Takayama.