Chronicle of Hekinan

Chapter Three

The Invention of White — Why White Soy Sauce Was Born in Hekinan

第三章 — 白という発明・白醤油はなぜ碧南で生まれたか

Introduction — The Reversal of Adding No Colour

In the previous chapter, we saw mirin, Hekinan's "invention of sweetness." What we trace in this chapter is another invention Hekinan gave birth to — the "invention of whiteness," white soy sauce.

Soy sauce, one thinks, is black. As if that blackness were itself the proof of aroma and savour. Yet Hekinan gave birth to a soy sauce standing on the very opposite thought. By adding no colour, it sets off the ingredient itself. Not to assert darkly, but to draw out palely. How was this reversed aesthetic born in this land? In this chapter we wish to trace the origin of white soy sauce, its singular method, and its development into "white dashi."

I. An Amber Origin — From the Clear Liquid of Kinzanji Miso

The birthplace of white soy sauce is Hekinan. Its beginning lay in a single chance discovery.

In the late Edo period, while kinzanji miso was being prepared with wheat kōji, the liquid that gathered as a clear layer above it was pale and beautiful in colour, and when tasted resembled soy sauce — to use this as a new seasoning is said to be the beginning of white soy sauce.12 The place of origin is held to be the northern part of Ōhama village, Hekikai district, Mikawa province, in 1802 (later Shinkawa-chō; today Shinkawa, Hekinan, and thereabouts).3 It was a quarter of that Ōhama — the port town that flourished by the cargo ships, touched on in the previous chapter.

That the year is 1802 means that white soy sauce has a history of more than two hundred years.4 The origin of white soy sauce admits several accounts, but every account agrees in tracing its source to the clear liquid of kinzanji miso.123

If soy sauce is "made," white soy sauce was "found." A pale amber that appeared, of a sudden, within the daily work of preparing miso. Not to overlook it, but to raise it into a new seasoning — in the birth of white soy sauce there was the sure discernment of Hekinan's brewers.

II. The Science of Whiteness — Wheat Nine, Soybean One

Where does the pale colour of white soy sauce come from? Its secret lies in the proportion of ingredients and in the manner of brewing.

Japanese soy sauce is broadly divided into five kinds: the dark (koikuchi) of the Kantō, the light (usukuchi) of the Kansai, the tamari of the Tōkai, the twice-brewed (saishikomi) that matures dark soy sauce once more, and white soy sauce.5

Ordinary soy sauce uses wheat and soybean in roughly equal measure. White soy sauce, by contrast, uses wheat in overwhelming proportion — wheat to soybean nine to one, or eight to two.67 Because most of the ingredient is wheat, the sugar content is high, and the result is a singular seasoning: amber, clear, and strongly sweet.67

A second factor that decides the paleness of the colour is the period of brewing. Where black soy sauce matures over one to three years, the preparation of white soy sauce is short — a mere two to three months.2 The longer soy sauce matures, the darker its colour comes out. By preparing it briefly, white soy sauce keeps that pale amber.2

In traditional white-soy making, a delicate handwork has been built up to guard the pale colour. To avoid colouring through contact with the air, the moromi (mash) is prepared in two stages and matured slowly, about three months at a time, within wooden vats.8 In Hekinan, the birthplace, breweries of this old wooden-vat preparation are handed down to this day.8 Wooden vats take labour to manage and do not suit mass production. Even so, the complexity brewed by the microbes settled into the grain of the wood is held to be hard to gain from efficiency-seeking equipment. A small brewery, guarding its laborious vats, brews a single bottle that belongs to its land alone — behind the pale colour of white soy sauce lies this choice of the craftsman.

Yet here is a difficulty. Shorten the maturation too far, and the savour of the wheat and soybean does not fully come out.2 In a short span, and yet with sufficient savour. Between these opposed demands, white soy sauce is made.

In scholarship, too, white soy sauce — prepared from a wheat-based kōji in brine — is described as "a fusion of mirin and light soy sauce."9 That the mirin of the previous chapter and the white soy sauce of this one are bound, even in the language of science, like sisters is a curious correspondence.

III. "Black" and "White" — How the Cooks Used Them

White soy sauce was not, at its starting point, a household seasoning. It was a soy sauce for the cook.

The Mikawa region was originally a cultural sphere of red miso (soybean miso), and by "soy sauce" was meant the rich tamari soy sauce.10 Tamari, made from one hundred per cent soybean, has a dense savour derived from amino acids, and gives a deep taste to sashimi and to simmered fish.10 But it had the drawback that, for some dishes, it added too much colour.10

So the cooks called tamari and white soy sauce "black" and "white," and used each accordingly.10 Black for a dish meant to be deep in colour; white for a dish meant to draw out the colour of the ingredient. Even now, there are regions where the udon shop sets out both a black broth and a white one, and where, order an egg-drop dish or tempura, and it comes in the white broth without a word said.10

Until before the war, white soy sauce, being costly, was used mainly in fine Japanese cuisine that draws out the taste of an ingredient.7 After the war, as the way of eating improved and not only the taste of a dish but the colour of its appearance came to be valued, demand for white soy sauce rose.7 To set off an ingredient mildly, with sweetness and aroma, without marring its natural hues — this character was found by the age.7

White soy sauce remains, even now, rare. Of the five kinds of domestic soy sauce, the share of white soy sauce is less than one per cent of the whole.11 There are fewer than ten white-soy brewers in all the country, and of these, three are gathered here in Hekinan.12

IV. The Development of Shiro-Dashi — White Bound to Dashi

The story of white soy sauce, in the latter half of the twentieth century, meets a new development: "white dashi" (shiro-dashi). This, too, began in Hekinan.

White dashi is a seasoning based on white soy sauce, with dashi of bonito, kelp and shiitake, salt, and mirin and the like added.13 Clear and amber as it is, it gives the savour of dashi to a dish without marring the colours of an ingredient — the fine quality of white soy sauce, "adding no colour," bound to dashi and so made into a more usable form. The first white dashi is held to have been born in Hekinan in the late 1970s, worked up in answer to the cooks' demand.1314

What we wish to note here is that Mikawa hon-mirin is used among the ingredients of white dashi.13 That mirin we traced in the previous chapter appears once more, as one element of white dashi. Mirin and white soy sauce — the two inventions Hekinan gave birth to melt together here within a single seasoning.

White soy sauce for the cook, bound to dashi, gave birth to white dashi, and in time spread to the household table. Hekinan's "white," over two hundred years, has thus widened its base from the world of the specialist to the world of the everyday. White dashi is today a common seasoning made by many makers; that its source lies in the white-soy culture of Hekinan is a fact worth remembering.

V. War, and the Breweries That Kept the White

Last, we wish to touch on one ordeal white soy sauce passed through, and the history that sustained it.

White soy sauce takes wheat as its chief ingredient. So, when soybean and grain ran short under wartime control, the brewing of white soy sauce too met with hardship. In this period, it is recorded, a white soy sauce using rice as its ingredient was even developed.15 In the crisis of a severed supply of ingredients, the breweries of Hekinan piled invention upon invention and never let the flame of white-soy making go out.

Hekinan's white-soy making has carried on a two-hundred-year lineage while passing through the crisis of a severed supply. Its course is inscribed, too, in the fact that the "National Soy Sauce Summit," held in Hekinan in 2017, chose this land as the birthplace of the last of the five kinds of soy sauce — "white."12 Through the famed lands of the other four — dark, light, tamari, twice-brewed — the Summit came at last to Hekinan, the town where "white" was born.12

Born of the reversed thought of adding no colour, raised by the cook, passing through the war, developing into white dashi, and remaining rare even now — this is the white soy sauce of Hekinan. Mirin, a "sweetness"; white soy sauce, a "whiteness." To hold both of these inventions together is the unmatched depth of the brewing culture of the land called Hekinan.

In the next chapter, we raise our viewpoint a stage. Why did all of fermentation — miso, soy sauce, vinegar, mirin — gather in this one area? We wish to move our brush to the "ecosystem of fermentation" of Mikawa itself, Hekinan among it.

Notes & Sources

This is the third chapter of the Chronicle of Hekinan (white paper). The facts stated rest on the sources cited. The several accounts of white soy sauce's origin and year of birth are made plain (the 1802 theory of the northern part of Ōhama village, Hekikai district, Mikawa province; the theory of Yamazaki village, Aichi district, Owari province, from 1811 onward, etc.). Statements on method and classification rest chiefly on Inoue's "On White Soy Sauce" (a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of the Brewing Society of Japan) and on official materials of the City of Hekinan, and further primary sources will be reinforced in future revisions.

Footnotes

  1. "Knowing White Soy Sauce," Yamashin Shōyu Co. (on the birth of white soy sauce in 1802 in the Mikawa region [present-day Hekinan], and on its beginning in the use, as a seasoning, of the pale and savoury clear liquid of kinzanji miso). https://www.yamashin-shoyu.co.jp/know/ ↩ ↩2

  2. "The Birthplace of White Soy Sauce and Mikawa Mirin," Aichi Fermented-Food Tour (official tourism portal) / "What Is the White Soy Sauce of Hekinan, Aichi?," Waraku web (on the kinzanji-miso clear-liquid origin theory [around 1800, present-day Hekinan], the wheat-to-soybean ratio of 9:1, and the short two-to-three-month preparation of white soy sauce versus the one-to-three years of black). https://hakko-aichi.jp/culture/detail/2/ / https://intojapanwaraku.com/rock/gourmet-rock/54421/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. "White Soy Sauce," Wikipedia (on the theory placing the birthplace in the northern part of Ōhama village, Hekikai district, Mikawa province, in 1802 [later Shinkawa-chō; today Shinkawa, Hekinan], or the theory of Yamazaki village, Aichi district, Owari province, from 1811 onward). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/白醤油 ↩ ↩2

  4. "Knowing White Soy Sauce," Yamashin Shōyu Co. (on white soy sauce reaching back to 1802, and on its costly prewar use in fine Japanese cuisine). https://www.yamashin-shoyu.co.jp/know/ ↩

  5. "What Is the White Soy Sauce of Hekinan, Aichi?," Waraku web (on the five-fold classification of soy sauce — dark, light, tamari, twice-brewed, white). https://intojapanwaraku.com/rock/gourmet-rock/54421/ ↩

  6. "White Soy Sauce," Wikipedia (on using wheat in greater proportion, 9:1 or 8:2 wheat to soybean, a high-sugar, amber, clear seasoning, and the JAS standard). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/白醤油 ↩ ↩2

  7. "Knowing White Soy Sauce," Yamashin Shōyu Co. (on the 9:1 wheat-to-soybean ratio, an amber paler than light soy sauce, prewar fine use, and postwar growth of demand). https://www.yamashin-shoyu.co.jp/know/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  8. "Soy Sauce," Aichi Fermented-Food Tour (official tourism portal) (on white soy sauce being made in Mikawa, centred on Hekinan, the moromi prepared in two stages to avoid air-contact and matured about three months at a time in wooden vats, and the old wooden-vat breweries handed down); on wooden vats being unsuited to mass production and the value of small breweries, see also the remarks of the Nittō Jōzō brewer at Shokunin Shōyu. https://hakko-aichi.jp/culture/detail/2/ / https://s-shoyu.com/kura/nitto/ ↩ ↩2

  9. Inoue, "On White Soy Sauce," Journal of the Brewing Society of Japan, vol. 102, no. 1 (2007), pp. 24–30, doi:10.6013/jbrewsocjapan1988.102.24 (on white soy sauce, prepared from a wheat-based kōji in brine, being describable as "a fusion of mirin and light soy sauce"). https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jbrewsocjapan1988/102/1/102_1_24/_pdf/-char/ja ↩

  10. "What Is the White Soy Sauce of Hekinan, Aichi?," Waraku web (remarks of Mr. Yōichi Ninagawa; on the red-miso [soybean-miso] culture of Mikawa, the character of tamari, the cooks' use of "black" and "white," and the black and white broths of udon shops). https://intojapanwaraku.com/rock/gourmet-rock/54421/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  11. "Soy Sauce," Aichi Fermented-Food Tour (official tourism portal) / "The 7th National Soy Sauce Summit in Hekinan," City of Hekinan official (on white soy sauce being a rare thing, less than 1% of national soy-sauce output). https://hakko-aichi.jp/culture/detail/2/ / https://www.city.hekinan.lg.jp/soshiki/keizai_kankyo/shoko/regional_revitalization/6020.html ↩

  12. "The 7th National Soy Sauce Summit in Hekinan — The Brewing Town Where White Soy Sauce Was Born," City of Hekinan official (on white-soy making beginning in Hekinan about 200 years ago, three of the country's fewer-than-ten makers being in Hekinan, and the Summit coming to Hekinan as the birthplace of the last of the five kinds, "white"). https://www.city.hekinan.lg.jp/soshiki/keizai_kankyo/shoko/regional_revitalization/6020.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  13. "The White Dashi of Mikawa Hekinan," Honba no Honmono (on white dashi being born in Hekinan, a seasoning based on white soy sauce with dashi of bonito, kelp and shiitake, salt, and Mikawa hon-mirin added). https://honbamon.com/product/shirodashi/index.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  14. "The White Dashi of Mikawa Hekinan," Honba no Honmono (on the first white dashi being born in Hekinan in the late 1970s in answer to the cooks' demand). https://honbamon.com/product/shirodashi/index.html ↩

  15. "White Soy Sauce," Wikipedia (on a white soy sauce using rice being developed when soybean ran short under wartime control; the same article notes that an enterprise in Shinkawa-chō, Hekikai district [present-day Hekinan], mass-produced it). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/白醤油 ↩