Japanese Food Artisans a Visit to Three Family-Run Businesses in Toyama Prefecture

Japan-Insights Exploring Expert Experiences A part of the crafted textile displayed caught my eyes at Iizawa Shoyu Miso Ten, the artisan food producer outside of Kurobe, Toyama Prefecture Japanese Food Artisans A visit to three family-run businesses in Toyama Prefecture Susan Ellicott, Great Britain 2018 Japan-Insights © Japan-Insights Exploring Expert Experiences Japanese Food Artisans A visit to three family-run businesses in Toyama Prefecture 2|28 The author enjoying a chilled corn soup with lotus leaf at Sougo restaurant in Tokyo, part of a summer menu of Buddhist vegetarian shojin ryori cuisine by the chef Nomura Daisuke Motivation Many Japanese worry that their country's rich heritage of local food production is being lost as Japan becomes more urban and its young pick professional jobs over traditional crafts. To promote awareness of the skills behind Japan's iconic foods, I wanted to document the work of artisan producers of the key ingredients in miso soup without which Japan's famed cuisine would be unimaginable. Objective This research focuses on the owners of three traditional businesses in small towns in Japan's central prefecture of Toyama, a region with sea and mountains, whose fresh and preserved foods are highly regarded by Japanese chefs. Context Japan is famous around the world for its historic reverence for traditional crafts and its government's recognition of artisans, including creators of pottery, textiles and washoku, Japanese cuisine. I am fascinated by 2018 regional Japanese foods because, due to their local ingredients or production skills known only by the families who make them, they cannot be found or replicated anywhere else. Japan-Insights © Japan-Insights Exploring Expert Experiences Japanese Food Artisans A visit to three family-run businesses in Toyama Prefecture 2|28 3|28 A residential side street in central Kanazawa Of all the many ways to appreciate Japan if you are a visitor, one of the best is to go for an early morning walk through a residential area where elderly people live. You don't need a plan. Just stroll at random and sniff the air. Whether you're in a city, town or village, your nose will soon detect a fishy scent, warm and sweet, escaping from kitchen windows. All over Japan, before shops and offices have raised their shutters, this enticing aroma escapes from even the smallest of homes, enveloping passers-by like a grandmother's loving hug. The source is dashi, the smell of tradition. It whispers that someone has risen early to cook a fresh pot of the classic broth made with water, dried kelp (konbu) and dried, smoked skipjack tuna (katsuobushi), the essence of Japanese cuisine. Dashi is the base for miso soup, sauces and clear broths, and the liquid in which vegetables, even fruits, are poached to bring out the savoury flavour of umami, the fifth key taste after sweet, 2018 sour, bitter, and salty. Japan-Insights © Japan-Insights Exploring Expert Experiences Japanese Food Artisans A visit to three family-run businesses in Toyama Prefecture 3|28 4|28 Green vegetable poached in dashi broth with finely striped leek So central is dashi to Japan's identity that a Japanese friend in Tokyo who's married and has children says she feels guilty if she doesn't make a batch from scratch for her family before she leaves for work. At Japanese restaurants, making a cauldron of dashi is typically the first task of the day for apprentices. Dashi is the soul of Japanese cuisine, said Yoshida Shinichi, an accom- plished restaurant chef who showed me how to make dashi at Tokyo Cook, an English-language cooking school in Tokyo, last year. It's a prod- uct of our history of survival and our unique environment. Japan without dashi would be unthinkable, like, say, England without cake or Italy without pasta. Except there's a big difference. In Europe, where I grew up, most home cooks create complexity of flavour by com- bining a number of raw ingredients and applying lots of cooking time to them. For example, my homemade broth, like my grandmother's, uses fresh raw meat bones, herbs, and vegetables simmered in water for sev- 2018 eral hours. Japan-Insights © Japan-Insights Exploring Expert Experiences Japanese Food Artisans A visit to three family-run businesses in Toyama Prefecture 4|28 5|28 Chef Yoshida Shinichi lifts kelp from a bowl after soaking it in water By contrast, dashi made from scratch is quick to prepare. Using kelp soaked overnight, the cooking takes only minutes. Yet it's a deceptive simplicity because all the hard effort is hidden. In reality, a good dashi takes years of work: only minutes at the stove but weeks, months, some- times years, for the drying and fermentation of the kelp and fish. We get so many treasures from our preserved foods, Chef Yoshida told me. They've kept us fed through disasters, severe seasons and other hardships. They're the key to our survival. He lifted soft greenish brown strands of kelp from a bowl of water. But the younger generation doesn't make dashi from scratch anymore, he added. It's only our elderly people or chefs who know how. Like many top food professionals, Chef Yoshida, who hails from Kyushu in 2018 the south of Japan, wants younger Japanese to appreciate the skills and artistry in his country's regional foods. I agree with him. I'm a British journalist who's loved Japanese food since I first tasted miso soup in New York 30 years ago, made and served in a tiny restaurant in Greenwich Japan-Insights © Village run by three friends from Tokyo. Japan-Insights Exploring Expert Experiences Japanese Food Artisans A visit to three family-run businesses in Toyama Prefecture 5|28 So, last summer, I travelled to Japan to meet some of Japan's artisanal 6|28 food producers. My hope was that, in documenting their work, I might educate not only foreign visitors about the regional skills of Japan's traditional food producers but also inspire native Japanese to appreciate the expertise that goes into creating local food specialities. I travelled for a month, visiting fresh food markets, stores, restaurants and producers in a variety of cities – Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Takamatsu, Kobe, and Hakodate – and smaller towns. For this essay, I focus on three producers in the prefecture of Toyama in central Japan. The region combines stunning mountain villages perched in lush forests, charming coastal ports, such as Kurobe with its natural soft water springs, and picturesque simple wooden houses. Many of its towns are not custom- arily on the itineraries of visitors who don't speak Japanese. They require a car, and therefore a degree of commitment along with a sense of adven- ture, given that road and street signs, being away from big cities, are not written in English. For part of the trip, I travelled with Chef Yoshida and a fellow group of food professionals from Tokyo Cook, including Chef Nomura Daisuke, the celebrated head of Sougo, a vegetarian restaurant in Tokyo, and two chefs from the US. We visited several small family-run businesses with impressive histories of producing local or regional foods, including three of the key ingredients typically used in making a classic miso soup. This, when made authenti- cally, has dashi as its base, and also includes konbu, miso (of course!) and, frequently, tofu. 2018 Japan-Insights © Japan-Insights Exploring Expert Experiences Japanese Food Artisans A visit to three family-run businesses in Toyama Prefecture 7|28 The Welcome archway to Gokayama Old Gokayama is a UNESCO Heritage Site My first stop was Gokayama, a mountain village best known as the site of a cluster of wooden chalet-style houses protected by UNESCO for their heritage value. whc.unesco.org A few miles away, the less picturesque but more vibrant village of modern Gokayama lines a sloping two-lane street through a 'welcome' archway. On the ground floor of a modest two story building, Iwasaki Kihei, the son and grandson of tofu makers, prepares fresh tofu every day at his business, Kihei Shouten. When I visited on a hot, humid August day, the windows were wide open, capturing a breeze from the conifers along the ridge behind his building. The air inside smelled pleasantly beany. The room was kitted out with deep stainless sinks, plastic buckets, sieves, ladles, bowls, hoses, and metal machines with temperature gauges, all spotless. Kihei prefers to work the old fashioned way, he said, on a small scale that allows him to perform 2018 most tasks by hand. Drawings by his young grandchildren decorated the walls. Japan-Insights © Japan-Insights Exploring Expert Experiences Japanese Food Artisans A visit to three family-run businesses in Toyama Prefecture 7|28 8|28 Iwasaki Kihei's tofu production room with traditional equipment Local river stones from Iwasaki Kihei's – used as weights to squeeze liquid grandfather from the setting tofu Kihei's tofu is famous locally for its extra firm texture. The chefs travelling with me from Tokyo were surprised. Never before had they tried a tofu this solid – it easily survives being tied in a rope and lifted from a sink of water – or with such a clean, refreshing taste. A demonstration explained why. One production secret comes from his 2018 grandfather – a selection of large granite stones the late tofu maker pulled from a nearby stream of fresh mountain water. (The business shares the pristine stream with an artisan sake brewery.) Japan-Insights © Japan-Insights Exploring Expert Experiences Japanese Food Artisans A visit to three family-run businesses in Toyama Prefecture 8|28 9|28 Beans are soaked overnight to make Soaking soy beans Fresh soy milk as Iwasaki Kihei looks fresh soy milk every day on in his white plastic boots Starting with raw yellow soybeans soaked overnight to soften them, Iwasaki Kihei makes a frothy milk by cooking the beans in a machine with the soft local mountain water, and then liquidises them.

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