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Irish Food in Japanese Kitchens: Ireland’s Agricultural Partnership with Japan

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By Reece Hickey

In April 2025, Taoiseach Micheál Martin officially opened Ireland House Tokyo, the headquarters for Irish-Japanese trade and diplomacy in Japan. It houses the offices of various Irish organisations and state agencies such as the Irish Embassy, Bord Bia, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland (Industrial Development Agency Ireland). The opening of Ireland House Tokyo has demonstrated the importance of the Japanese export market to Irish trade, particularly in the agricultural sector. 

Why do Japanese Consumers like Irish Food? 

Irish agricultural trade has become increasingly popular in Japan, with Japan now being the third largest consumer of Irish agri-food exports outside of Europe – Irish beef and pork, seafood, dairy and whiskey all highly sought after. In 2024 alone, €162 million worth of Irish food and drink products were exported to Japan. There are various reasons for this. 

Irish produce is considered among the highest quality in the world, particularly dairy and beef. Ireland’s mild and moist climate allows for a year-round grass-based agricultural system. This means that cows can graze on Ireland’s lush grass pastures for most of the year, making Ireland’s grass-fed meat and dairy especially flavourful and nutritious. 

Irish agri-food products are largely sustainably produced as well. Bord Bia has been a key player in recent years in ensuring that Irish produce is of high quality and is produced through environmentally sustainable means. This is done through auditing farms and food processing plants, as well as labelling their products with the Bord Bia Quality Assurance Mark. Irish produce carrying this mark indicates that it is safe, sustainably produced and fully traceable. 

These factors strongly appeal to Japanese consumers as they heavily prioritise the quality and freshness of their food. The aging population of Japan is also notably health-conscious and is willing to pay a premium price for high quality, safe and reliable food: a market niche well suited for Irish produce. 

The Success of Irish Food and Drink in the Japanese Market. 

One of the best performing Irish food exports in Japan has been beef offal (edible organs). Unlike in the Irish market, offal is a common sight on Japanese menus, with Irish beef tongue becoming quite a popular delicacy in Japan. One of the key customers for Irish beef tongue is restaurant chain “Negishi”, who sell it in over 40 restaurants across Japan, catering to approximately 100,000 customers each week. Last year, three high-end Japanese chefs were inducted into Bord Bia’s exclusive Chefs’ Irish Beef Club (CIBC). 

The CIBC is composed of chefs working in top restaurants and culinary institutions worldwide who share a passion for Irish beef. It already includes high-end chefs from across Europe and the Middle East. The CIBC has played a pivotal role in promoting Irish beef as a premium product in Japan. Inductee Chef Yuki Inoue, Head Chef at Ristorante La Bisboccia in Tokyo, said: “I’ve been using Irish beef at La Bisboccia for six years. We have served beef from all over the world, but Irish grass-fed beef stands up as the best, and our customers love it”. 

Irish whiskey brands such as Jameson, Redbreast and McConnell’s have also found success in Tokyo’s bars. In 2020, there were just 55,000 cases of Irish whiskey sold in Japan, a figure that has risen to more than 200,000 cases in 2024. The Irish Whiskey Association participated in a trade mission organised by the European Commission in Tokyo in June 2025. “Japan is a very exciting country for Irish whiskey, something that many companies are now discovering. There is a huge interest in the product, and a great affinity for Ireland”, said Eoin Ó Catháin, Director of the Irish Whiskey Association. 

Infrastructure, Legislation and Trade Missions – Groundwork for Success.

The Irish state purchased a site in Tokyo in 2017 for a centre of Irish trade and diplomacy, prior to the signing of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement in 2019, which removed the majority of Japanese tariffs imposed on the EU. This site is now home to Ireland House Tokyo. With establishment costs totalling over €21 million, Ireland House Tokyo is the most expensive capital project the Irish state has ever invested in, outside of Ireland. This is justified, however, as bilateral trade between Ireland and Japan is now worth more than €21 billion per year and the volume of trade has doubled over the past decade. 

Accompanying the opening of this site was an extensive trade mission led by Bord Bia and Irish government ministers, which involved initiatives such as the aforementioned Chefs’ Irish Beef Club and participation in trade shows such as Foodex Japan, Japan’s biggest food and beverage exhibition. This trade mission established vital partnerships between Irish organisations and the Japanese agri-food sector. Another major part of the trade mission was Ireland’s participation at World Expo Osaka, where months of activities at the Expo were held to increase Ireland’s presence and visibility in Japan. 

2025 was a landmark year for the development of Irish-Japanese commerce. With key relationships built, crucial infrastructure constructed and vital trade agreements established, it is now time for Ireland to reap the benefits of its long-term investment in the Japanese market.

Black Economic Empowerment: South Africa’s Failed Attempt at Redress.

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By Joseph Kennedy.

When Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) was introduced by the government, the promise of a new economic landscape came with it. Yet over thirty-five years after the official end to the country’s apartheid, South Africa remains one of the most divided societies in the world. Despite billions in business deals and endless government scorecards, inequality has barely shifted, unemployment has worsened, and a handful of connected elites have become the faces of the failed movement.

The Black Economic Empowerment movement emerged in the years after Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress party took office in 1994, when the new government inherited an economy completely divided by race. Apartheid had locked the Black majority out of ownership, skilled work, and corporate leadership. BEE was designed to be the economic counterpart to South Africa’s political liberation.

Formalized through the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act in 2003, the policy set out to expand ownership, provide employment opportunities, and grow a Black middle class that had been racially excluded for generations. In practice, this meant a corporate scorecard system that rewarded companies for Black ownership stakes, affirmative action in recruitment, and procurement from Black-run businesses.

These scorecards covered metrics including who sat on boards and executive teams, recruitment and promotion of black employees, money was invested in training and skills development, and trade with black-owned suppliers. Businesses could climb the BEE “levels” by hitting these targets, and a higher score made it easier to win government contracts or become a preferred supplier for large corporations.

From the government’s perspective, this mix of ownership transfers, hiring targets and skills investment was supposed to create a broad-based Black middle class and open pathways for new Black entrepreneurs. At its launch, BEE was promoted as the blueprint that would finally give Black South Africans a meaningful place in the economy they had long been cut out of.

So, what went wrong? The issue wasn’t the idea; it was how it was implemented. Rather than creating broader opportunities, the first wave of empowerment deals instead placed enormous quantities of wealth in the hands of a small group of politically connected elite. Billions of South African Rand in share transfers went to fewer than 100 people, according to governance researchers. As a result, most Black South Africans saw little change in income, employment, or mobility.

Companies often treated BEE as a compliance exercise, ticking boxes on ownership targets without building real ground skills or supporting new entrepreneurs. Procurement rules, designed to favor Black-owned suppliers, were frequently exploited through “fronting”, where businesses appointed Black partners on paper to secure contracts.

Once politics became involved, the trouble only deepened. Procurement around state-owned giants like Eskom and Transnet became crowded with well-connected government officials, inflating prices and driving the corruption crisis that later defined the state capture years. So as the wider economy stalled, the policy’s promise of change was replaced by rising frustration from a middle class that was supposed to be expanding, not shrinking.

In 2025, the impact of BEE’s failures is plain to be seen in South Africa’s economy. Inequality has barely shifted, with the average white household still earning more than four times the income of a Black household, according to Stats SA.

Unemployment tells the same story, where joblessness sits at around 37% for Black South Africans but falls to single digits for their white peers. The policy’s narrow focus on share deals and political insiders left millions without the skills, capital or mobility needed to break into the formal economy. On the ground, this has meant fewer new jobs, higher living costs, and a squeeze on families trying to climb into the middle class. South Africa is now left with the worst of both worlds; a transformation project that hasn’t transformed much, and an economy struggling to grow under the weight of inequality it was supposed to fix.

BEE was initially implemented with the aim of levelling the playing field and reducing the stark contrast between ordinary white and black families. Instead, it created a new political oligarchy, where wealth and opportunity circulate among the same well-connected names while millions remain shut out. The policy’s original promise hasn’t disappeared, but it now depends on shifting away from elite share deals and towards genuine skills, entrepreneurship, and most importantly, economic opportunity. Without that reset, equality, prosperity and economic freedom will remain something South Africans talk about, rather than experience.