Washoku, the Fermented Cuisine

the current — the mouth

Chapter Four — The Origin of Sushi: Narezushi, Fish Fermented in Rice

第四章 — 鮨の起源・熟れ鮨、魚を米で発酵させる

Introduction — The Other Face of Sushi

What we call sushi — fresh fish, and vinegared rice. No fire, no long labour. It seems one extreme of washoku's subtraction.

Yet the distant ancestor of that sushi wore a wholly opposite face. A pungent keeping food, fermented for months, sometimes for years. Sushi, too, began as a cuisine of microbes. Where the shōjin cuisine of the last chapter held fish away to shun killing, this road, on the contrary, was one of actively fermenting fish.

I. The Rice Was a Pickling Bed — Narezushi as Keeping Food

The oldest form of sushi is called narezushi. It is a food in which fish is steeped, with salt, within cooked rice and fermented, over long time, by lactic-acid bacteria.1 It was a wisdom for keeping precious animal protein in an age without refrigeration.

Here is a fact that betrays the modern sense. At that time, the rice was not a thing to be eaten. The rice was a "pickling bed" for fermenting the fish, and when the steeping was done, it was thrown away. What was eaten was the fish alone.1 People used rice — a precious grain — whole, as a vessel of fermentation.

What happens during the steeping? Upon the rice, lactic-acid bacteria make lactic acid. That acid turns the whole acidic, and keeps the microbes of decay away. At the same time, part of the fish's protein turns to amino acids — that is, the umami deepens.2 Keeping, and umami. The microbe brought both at once.

II. From the Mekong, to Lake Biwa

Whence came this craft? Its origins admit of several theories, but it is held to reach back to the keeping foods of inland Southeast Asia — the basins of the Mekong and the like.3 And, together with the coming of rice culture, it was transmitted to Japan. Narezushi appears in the record in the tenth century; the Heian code Engishiki records the narezushi of Ōmi (Shiga).3

By the shore of Lake Biwa, far from the sea, this craft was applied to freshwater fish, and became funazushi. Crucian carp caught in spring are salted; in summer they are steeped in earnest with rice and pressed hard with a weight; from around the new year they are eaten.2 It is a living fossil that conveys to the present the form of ancient narezushi.

In the Nara and Heian ages, narezushi was a tribute to the court, and a tax. From Ōmi and Wakasa, sushi of sweetfish and crucian carp was carried to the capital.3 It was a precious thing, hardly to be tasted by the common people.

III. The Impatient — Namanare, and the Turn to Vinegar

For keeping, the long fermentation was excellent. But people grow impatient.

By the Muromachi period, a new way of eating appeared, called namanare. The period of fermentation is cut short, and the food is eaten when the sourness has begun to show.4 Now, the rice that had been thrown away came to be eaten together with the fish. For the sourness had passed into the rice, in good measure, and it had come to taste like vinegared rice. The "sushi" that Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi ate is told to have been this namanare.4

And then the Edo period. People at last gave up the very waiting for fermentation. Join rice with vinegar, and that sourness is to be had at once, without months of waiting. So was born the "fast sushi" — the hand-pressed sushi of vinegared rice and raw fish.5

Here lies a quiet substitution. The sourness that months of lactic fermentation had made, vinegar took over. But this must not be missed: that vinegar, too, is a thing born of fermentation. The sourness of fermentation did not vanish. It was handed on, changed in form, to the product of another fermentation. The story of vinegar we trace again in Chapter Six.

IV. The Two Microbes Are Here as Well

What bears the fermentation of sushi is the lactic-acid bacterium — a bacterium. Like the nattō seen in Chapter Two, this belongs not to kōji (the mould), but to the watershed of bacteria. Washoku's other stream shows its face here too.

And yet, into sushi as well, the lineage of kōji has slipped. Against the narezushi fermented with rice alone, there is the izushi steeped with kōji added. The kabura-zushi of Hokuriku, and the hatahata-zushi of Akita, are of this kind.6 Kōji and bacteria — the two watersheds of washoku — flow, quietly parted, even within this small keeping food.

And one point more. Mackerel narezushi and the like are fermented, slow, within an earthen storehouse.2 A cool, dark vault, even in temperature, holds this long maturing — the very figure of architecture holding time, traced in the second paper, The Basin, is overlaid here once more.

Closing — Speed Covered Over the Ferment

Hand-pressed sushi, by "omitting" the long time of fermentation, grew easy, and spread, in time, across the world. Sushi is now the very emblem of a cuisine of freshness, using neither fire nor ferment.

Yet within that sourness, the memory of months of fermentation surely remains. Speed covered the ferment over, but did not erase it. The Japanese taste for sourness, too, may be said to have been nurtured by this long history of fermentation.5

And within narezushi, the fish's protein had turned to amino acids — to umami. That phenomenon is the very umami at the centre of washoku's flavour. In the next chapter, we enter at last that core — the world of dashi and umami.

Sources

This text is the fourth chapter of a white paper on washoku. The facts set down rest on the cited sources. The origins of narezushi and the dates of its transmission to Japan admit of several theories; this chapter follows the representative ones — Southeast Asian origin, transmission with rice culture, first attestation in the tenth century. That Nobunaga and Hideyoshi ate namanare also contains tradition. This chapter treats sushi from the cultural and historical side, and does not enter into health effects.

Footnotes

  1. "Sushi Begins with Narezushi," Rice Stable Supply Support Organization (Komenet) (on sushi being a Southeast-Asian method of treating fish, transmitted to Japan with rice culture, in which fish steeped for months in rice undergoes lactic fermentation as the rice saccharifies, the protein self-decomposing into umami, the rice being a pickling bed and not for eating). https://www.komenet.jp/bunkatorekishi/bunkatorekishi10/bunkatorekishi10_2 ↩ ↩2

  2. "Lactic Bacteria Here Too: Narezushi," KOSMOST (on funazushi being salted in spring, steeped in earnest with rice at the summer doyō and eaten from around the new year, the lactic bacteria making lactic acid that turns it acidic and keeps stray microbes off, the fish's protein turning to amino acids and deepening umami). https://kosmost.jp/microorganisms/nyusankin-narezushi/ / "The Ancestor of Sushi, Narezushi," Toho University Omori Medical Center, Oriental Medicine (on the making and lactic fermentation of funazushi, and on mackerel narezushi being fermented within an earthen storehouse). https://www.lab.toho-u.ac.jp/med/omori/oriental_med/guide/column_food/column20180326.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. "Ancient Japanese Sushi, Narezushi," CNN.co.jp (on narezushi being a method used across much of Southeast Asia around the second century AD, thought transmitted to Japan around the eighth century, with documents appearing in the tenth, and on the fermented rice having been discarded and only the fish eaten). https://www.cnn.co.jp/travel/35114389.html / "Narezushi," Wikipedia (on the Engishiki recording the narezushi of Ōmi and on the origins lying scattered through Southeast Asia and southern China). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9A%E3%81%97 / "Sushi Begins with Narezushi," Komenet (on narezushi being used in antiquity as tribute and tax to the court). https://www.komenet.jp/bunkatorekishi/bunkatorekishi10/bunkatorekishi10_2 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. "The Appearance of Namanare," Izasa Nakatani Honpo (on the keeping food narezushi changing in the Muromachi period into namanare, in which the fermentation is shortened and the rice eaten together with the fish, so the precious rice was no longer discarded, and on the sushi of the tea-table records and of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi being held to be namanare). https://www.izasa.co.jp/blog/sushi-roots02-83/ / "On the History of Sushi and Narezushi," Otoko Nakamura (on namanare appearing in the Muromachi period, eaten when the rice has begun to sour after a short maturing). https://otokonakamura.com/storyofnarezushi/ ↩ ↩2

  5. "The Origin of Sushi," Komelab (on the shift from fermentation-prizing narezushi to fermentation-restraining fast sushi, in which rice is married to vinegar and eaten with fish). https://note.com/japaneserice88/n/n43e2c3728faf / "Sushi Begins with Narezushi," Komenet (on the spread of fast sushi marrying rice to vinegar, and on the distinctly Japanese taste that delights in sourness). https://www.komenet.jp/bunkatorekishi/bunkatorekishi10/bunkatorekishi10_2 ↩ ↩2

  6. "Narezushi," Wikipedia (on what uses rice alone for fermentation being narezushi, and what uses rice and kōji being "izushi," with the kabura-zushi of Ishikawa and hatahata-zushi of Akita among the izushi kind). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9A%E3%81%97 / "Sushi Begins with Narezushi," Komenet (on kabura-zushi and the like, which add kōji to the rice to ferment the fish, being a separate lineage called "izushi"). https://www.komenet.jp/bunkatorekishi/bunkatorekishi10/bunkatorekishi10_2 ↩