Agu pork

Agu pigs are small and black, about 100 kg as adults against 200 to 300 kg for imported breeds, and a sow has only four or five piglets. They put on fat easily, which means less meat per animal and a soft, rich pork with little smell. Japanese Wikipedia dates the Chinese-lineage pigs to the late 14th century under the Ming, and bones from the Gushikawa shell mound on Ie-jima suggest Ryukyuans kept pigs earlier still. The name may come from Aguni island.

After the war, imported breeds took over, including relief pigs sent home by Okinawan emigrants in Hawaii, and the Agu line fell to about 30 animals. From 1981 Shimabukuro Masatoshi, director of the Nago Museum, pushed to save it, and Ota Tomonori, a teacher at Hokubu Agricultural High School, helped keep the line going. Backcrossing has since raised the population to more than 600, and the prefectural Livestock Research Center now leads the work.

Two names matter at the counter. JA Okinawa owns the hiragana trademark あぐー for pork with at least 50% Agu blood on the sire's side, and a business without a licence cannot sell pork as あぐー, アグー or AGU. A near-pure backcrossed line was registered in 2012 as Nakijin Agu. Ufuya in the hills above Nago serves Agu shabu-shabu in a farmhouse more than a century old.