What's going on
A Japanese user shared a well-known episode from American history: during the Civil War (1861–1865), many Texas ranchers left for the war, railroads and markets were disrupted, and the cattle were largely left to fend for themselves. They did just fine. The half-wild longhorns grazed the open range and kept breeding, and by the end of the war Texas was said to be home to millions of cattle with nowhere to sell them — which is what set off the famous postwar cattle drives north to the railheads.
For readers in Japan, this is hard to picture. Japan is small, mountainous, and has very little open grazing land; cattle are raised carefully on farms, and domestic beef is famously expensive. The idea of livestock multiplying unattended across a landscape nearly twice the size of the country struck many people as a glimpse of a completely different scale of nature.
The replies mix history, food economics, and some wandering thoughts on what cowboys actually did — and a few Americans dropped by in English to add context, including one story about a giraffe.
Comments
My take
Comments loosely translated for tone. Reactions collected from Togetter and X threads.
View original thread →
Texas is just way too convenient a place for cattle. During the Civil War, even when managing and shipping the herds fell apart, the cows just wandered around eating grass and breeding on their own, and by the time the war ended the place was overflowing with millions of them 🐃🐂🐄
This is completely beyond anything Japanese common sense or imagination could come up with. Really interesting 🤯
⚠ Original post unavailable — view on X
“The railroad’s shut down?"
🐂 “Dunno”
“The markets are a mess!"
🐄 “Dunno”
“All the young men went off to war!"
🐂 “There’s grass though”
🐄 “Having a calf”
After the war
🤠 “……Uh, are there like, WAY more cows now?"
What even is this… 😮
When I hear Texas Longhorn, I think Stan Hansen (A Texan pro wrestler who became a legend in Japan from the late ’70s on; his trademark was the “Longhorn” hand sign.). Cattle with horns that long breeding in the wild — that’s basically cow heaven.
An American exchange student once told me, “Japanese people think bread is the Western equivalent of rice, but the West doesn’t really have the concept of a staple food. If you had to pick one, it’d be beef.” And honestly, American bodybuilders eat beef to lean out before contests. Apparently wild cattle are low in fat, so you just lose weight normally.