Japan — pet-food market statistics (AAFC 2023 baseline)
Source: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Sector Trend Analysis – Pet food in Japan (first-hand Government of Canada report; 2023 baseline data, 2028 forecasts). All figures are verbatim substrings of the landed source file; non-breaking spaces in the source were normalised to regular spaces for matching only.
Market size & growth
- Global pet-food market reached a retail value of US$134.0 billion in 2023.
- Japan ranked as the 9th-largest market globally, with a value of US$4.2 billion,
despite a CAGR decrease of 0.5% from 2019 to 2023.
- Japan was the 10th-largest pet-food importer, reaching US$724.2 million in 2023.
Pet population
- Japan's total pet population grew at a CAGR of 0.6% from 2019 to 2023, reaching
55.8 million pets in 2023.
- Cats and dogs constituted 28.1% of the pet population in 2023, with expected growth to
8.6 million cats and 6.2 million dogs respectively by 2028.
Competitive structure (2022)
- Cat-food sector leaders Inaba Foods, Mars Inc, Unicharm Corp represented 56.2% of market
share in 2022.
- Dog-food sector leaders Mars Inc, Colgate-Palmolive Co, DoggyMan HA Co Ltd accounted for
50.4% of market share in 2022.
Distribution channels (2023)
- Retail offline channels: 70.9% market-share representation.
- Remaining 29.1% via retail e-commerce and veterinary clinics.
- Retail e-commerce reached 23.1% (CAGR +6.6% 2019–2023, up from 17.9% in 2019) — the
fastest-growing channel.
Method & honest-gap notes
- Verification: 15 verbatim claims substring-matched against `pdf-raw/market-stats/
jp_aafc_pet_food_japan_2026-08-18.txt` (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Sector Trend Analysis – Pet food in Japan).
- Single-source: this topic is built from one government report. AAFC itself draws Japanese
market/population figures from domestic sources (e.g. JPFA surveys); where AAFC gives only an aggregated or forecast figure, the underlying primary breakdown is not re-derived here — recorded as an honest scope limit, not a gap in the cited numbers.
- No absolute dog/cat 2023 headcount: AAFC publishes the 2023 cat+dog share (28.1% of 55.8M
pets ≈ 15.7M) and separate 2028 forecasts (8.6M cats / 6.2M dogs); the exact 2023 dog/cat split is not stated in this report → honest gap.
- Currency: all values are US$ as reported by AAFC; no JPY conversion attempted.
Cross-references
market_stats_kr_2024— Korea market statistics (same AAFC/GAIN family)market_stats_ca_aafc_2024— Canada market statistics (same AAFC source family)gain_ja2025-0065_japan— USDA GAIN FAIRS Country Report Annual Japan (regulatory context)pet_travel_jp_maff— Japan pet-entry rules (MAFF)