Chronicle of Hekinan

Chapter Four

The Land Where Brewing Gathers — An Ecosystem of Fermentation

第四章 — 醸造が揃う土地・発酵の生態系

Introduction — From a Single Brewery to a Single Land

Thus far we have traced, each on its own, the two inventions Hekinan gave birth to — mirin and white soy sauce. In this chapter we wish to raise our viewpoint a stage and, beyond the individual brewery, survey this land itself.

The question is this. Why did very nearly all of the fermented seasonings — miso, soy sauce, vinegar, mirin, sake — gather in one region, Mikawa and Chita, Hekinan among them? Japan has many lands where brewing flourishes. But of so diverse a fermentation gathered in a single area, there is no other instance. One expert calls this region "the capital of umami."1 In this chapter we wish to depict how that gathering was no accident, but stood as a single "ecosystem."

I. The Capital of Umami — A Rare Land Where All Gather

First, let us confirm what is gathered in this region.

The Chita peninsula and the south of western Mikawa are a land where not only sake-brewing but diverse brewing trades — miso, tamari, soy sauce, mirin, vinegar — have unfolded from the Edo period to the present.2 Here the palest white soy sauce and the richest tamari coexist, and the production of sake, mirin and vinegar thrives besides — a rare region where diverse fermented foods gather in one area.3

This abundance is often hardest for the local people themselves to feel.3 It is too matter-of-coursely all present. One food expert remarks: "Nowhere within Japan but the Chita peninsula has fermented products of such devoted, high quality all gathered. Salt, too, was taken from the nearby salt fields, so everything but sugar is here."4

Miso, soy sauce, vinegar, mirin, sake — and salt. Very nearly all the fermentation that forms Japanese cuisine lives within a radius of but a few dozen kilometres. This fact is the starting point for understanding the land of Hekinan.

II. Why They Gathered — Five Conditions

Why, then, did so great a gathering arise? It was the result of several conditions overlapping in this land not by accident but by necessity. A chef who has long pondered this question on the ground arranges those conditions thus.5

First, the presence of sake. Centred on the Chita peninsula, this land was a great producer of sake. From it was born the craft of secondary processing of sake lees, and the culture of vinegar and mirin spread.5

Second, good water. That the development of irrigation — the Meiji Canal, the Aichi Canal and others — advanced at an early stage, early even nationally, sustained the water indispensable to brewing.5

Third, that there were craftsmen who made wooden vats. Of old, most brewing vessels were of wood, and the craft of vats that would not leak water was gathered in this land. That craft connected, too, to the building of ships and irrigation works.5

Fourth, shipping. As we saw in the previous chapters, that the shipping trade flourished and the building of ports and canals advanced opened the road to deliver what was made to a vast market.5

Fifth, cultural stability. The lordly culture of the Owari Tokugawa — one of the three branch houses — combined with the merchant and agricultural cultures of Mikawa, and this was a stable, rich land. Only upon such a foundation could a fermentation that demands time — such as Hatchō miso, three years in the preparing — be kept and carried on.5

Sake, water, vats, sea, and stability — when these five meshed, the rare state arose in which all of fermentation gathered in a single land.

III. Fermentation in a Chain — What Sake Lees Joined

Of the five conditions, what marks this region's fermentation above all is "a chain that takes sake as its origin." Fermentation calls forth fermentation — and the manner of that chain lies at the heart of this ecosystem.

The chain begins, first, with sake. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the sake of western Mikawa and the Chita peninsula took in the craft of Kamigata and came to be drunk in Edo as well.6 The sake of Mikawa was dry and called oni-koroshi ("demon-slayer"), and is said to have divided popularity with the sake of Nada.6

From this flourishing sake trade were born mirin and vinegar. Both take as their ingredient a by-product of pressing sake — sake lees.2 In the mid-eighteenth century, the Ishikawa Hachirōemon house of Ōhama (Hekinan) made sake and shōchū, and went on to begin a mirin-making that used sake lees as its ingredient.2 That craft spread, and Ōhama became one of the country's foremost producers of mirin.2 Meanwhile the Nakano Matazaemon house of Handa, originally a sake-brewing house, came — once its lees-vinegar making found its track — to make vinegar its chief trade.2 That lees-vinegar, rich in sweetness and savour, was used in the haya-zushi (quick sushi) then in vogue in Edo, and its consumption rose swiftly.2

The chain reached even to the tools. As one sake brewery tells it, the wooden vats and koshiki (large steamers) used at the more than two hundred and twenty sake breweries once on the Chita peninsula, worn until gaps opened so they could no longer serve for sake, were turned to miso-making and the like.7 Indeed, trace the miso and soy-sauce breweries of this land, and many, it is said, carry a history of "once a sake brewery" or "a sake brewery next door."7

Sake, from its by-product (lees), gives birth to mirin and vinegar; with its aged tools (wooden vats), it nurtures miso. This chain, in which one fermentation calls forth the next, was the deepest reason why diverse brewing clustered so densely in this region.

IV. The National Fungus — An Unseen Protagonist

In all these fermentations there is one protagonist in common. Invisible to the eye, yet the leading player that has moved all of this ecosystem — the kōji mould.

Miso, soy sauce, mirin, vinegar, sake. These fermented foods all take a single mould as their starter. That mould, which gives rise to umami, is called Aspergillus oryzae, and is at present designated the "national fungus" (kokkin).8

Different ingredients, different methods, different breweries — and yet, at the base of all the fermentation of this land is the working of the same kōji mould. The sweetness of mirin, the paleness of white soy sauce, the richness of tamari, the sourness of vinegar — all begin from the kōji mould breaking down starch and protein and changing them into sugars and amino acids.

And the way that kōji mould works differs subtly from brewery to brewery. The microbes settled into the brewery, the water, the contrivances of the maker — these differences give, even to the same "white soy sauce" or "mirin," a wholly different taste from brewery to brewery.9 Grasped not as the common noun "white soy sauce" but as a single bottle that a particular brewery brews, its individuality stands out.9

The unseen national fungus upholds the foundation, and upon it the individuality of each brewery flowers — this is the layered abundance of this region's fermentation.

V. The Ecosystem That Sustained "Washoku"

Last, let us see what this ecosystem of fermentation gave birth to. It does not stop at the food of one locality. It was the food culture of Japan itself.

The way of eating, which had taken salt and miso as its base, changed greatly from the mid-eighteenth century onward.2 Soy sauce spread, sweet mirin came to be used as a seasoning, and lees-vinegar sustained the quick sushi — as many kinds of seasoning were combined with dashi, Japanese cuisine developed greatly.2 Grilled eel glazed with a sauce of soy sauce and mirin; buckwheat noodles suited by fragrant soy sauce; quick sushi of sweet-savoury lees-vinegar.2 All of these are foods that came into being only once the fermentation of this region was carried to Edo.

Indeed, in the section on miso soups of Edo Ryūkō Ryōri-tsū (A Guide to Fashionable Edo Cuisine), a cookbook published by a fine Edo restaurant in 1835, the miso of Owari and Mikawa appears.7 The fermentation of Mikawa and Chita reached, to be sure, even the tables of the gourmets of Edo.

That the brewed goods of Owari and Mikawa sustained the "washoku" born in the Edo period6 — this fact tells that the fermentation of the land called Hekinan was not a mere local speciality, but formed the base layer of the food culture of Japan.

Hekinan was one of the centres of that ecosystem. It gave birth to mirin, it gave birth to white soy sauce, and both of these were bound, within a single chain, to the other fermentations of sake, vinegar and miso. In the next chapter, we wish at last to move our brush to another deep layer of this land — to why the work of fermentation called "waiting" came, in this place, to be bound up even with "philosophy." The ecosystem of fermentation was, at once, an ecosystem of food and a climate of a certain spirit.

Notes & Sources

This is the fourth chapter of the Chronicle of Hekinan (white paper). The facts stated rest on the sources cited. The factors of the gathering (the five conditions) rest on a local chef's ordering, and the historical facts (the brewing development of the Ishikawa house, the Nakano house, Taketoyo, etc.) take the exhibition materials of the Shōkakutei Bunko as their chief authority. The advertising of particular companies or products is avoided, and the account is given as the fermentation culture of the region as a whole. In future revisions, corroboration by primary sources of regional economic and brewing history (municipal histories, research literature on the brewing trade, etc.) will be reinforced.

Footnotes

  1. "A Brewing Gourmet Journey in Aichi, 'the Capital of Umami,'" agora plus (JAL) (as remarked by Mr. Hiraku Ogura, that Aichi can be called "the capital of umami" in the variety of its fermented seasonings, that the seasoning culture of miso, soy sauce, mirin and vinegar flowered in Chita and Mikawa, and that the nearness of shipping, ingredients and salt developed the brewing culture). https://www.agora.jal.co.jp/open/articles/sample2404N.html ↩

  2. Shōkakutei Bunko special exhibition "Brewing, Savouring, Telling — Chita, the Peninsula of Brewing" (2014) (on miso, tamari, soy sauce, mirin and vinegar being made on the Chita peninsula and the south of western Mikawa from the Edo period and produced for the national market; on mirin and vinegar born from sake lees; on the mirin of the Ishikawa Hachirōemon house of Ōhama, the lees-vinegar of the Nakano Matazaemon house of Handa, the miso and tamari of Taketoyo, and the development of washoku). https://shoukakutei.or.jp/works/20141026.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  3. "Aichi, a Region Where Fermentation Thrives," Shokunin Shōyu (on the palest white soy sauce and the richest tamari coexisting, the thriving of sake, mirin and vinegar besides, and its being a rare region where diverse fermented foods gather). https://s-shoyu.com/knowledge/0402/ ↩ ↩2

  4. "Unravelling the Brewing History of the Chita Peninsula, Japan's Foremost Fermentation Kingdom," haccola (as remarked by Mr. Hidetoshi Sawada of Sawada Shuzō, that nowhere but the Chita peninsula has high-quality fermented products so gathered, that there were salt fields too, and that "everything but sugar is here"). https://haccola.jp/2018_03_27_6744/ ↩

  5. "Why Were So Many Kinds of Fermented Seasoning Made in Aichi, and Took Root as Culture?," Nihon-ryōri Ittō (the chef Osada) (on the five conditions: the craft of secondary processing of sake lees; good water from the Meiji and Aichi Canals; the presence of wooden-vat craftsmen; the development of shipping and ports; and the lordly culture of the Owari Tokugawa together with the merchant and agricultural cultures of Mikawa). https://note.com/ittou_nihonryori/n/na28249111b4e ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  6. "The Brewing of Nishio," Nishio Tourism (on the sake of western Mikawa and Chita being drunk in Edo in the latter half of the seventeenth century and called oni-koroshi, on mirin and vinegar being made by drawing on sake-brewing craft, and on the brewed goods of Owari and Mikawa sustaining the washoku of the Edo period). https://nishiokanko.com/list/special/brewing/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. "Unravelling the Brewing History of the Chita Peninsula," haccola (Sawada Shuzō) / Shōkakutei Bunko special exhibition (on the wooden vats and koshiki from the 227 sake breweries of the Chita peninsula, no longer usable, being turned to miso-making; on many miso and soy-sauce breweries carrying a sake-brewery history; and on the miso of Owari and Mikawa appearing in Edo Ryūkō Ryōri-tsū [1835]). https://haccola.jp/2018_03_27_6744/ / https://shoukakutei.or.jp/works/20141026.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Shōkakutei Bunko special exhibition "Chita, the Peninsula of Brewing" (on the sake, miso, soy sauce, mirin and vinegar of Chita all taking the kōji mould — Aspergillus oryzae — as their starter, and on this being the national fungus). https://shoukakutei.or.jp/works/20141026.html ↩

  9. "Why Were So Many Kinds of Fermented Seasoning Made in Aichi, and Took Root as Culture?," Nihon-ryōri Ittō (the chef Osada) (on the same traditional method yielding a different taste from brewery to brewery, the difference of the microbes settled into the brewery and the contrivances of making, and the individuality standing out when grasped not as a common noun but as a particular brewery's single bottle). https://note.com/ittou_nihonryori/n/na28249111b4e ↩ ↩2