What is clear shoyu? A shoyu with no color, and the line it shares with shirodashi and usukuchi

Pour it into a glass and it looks like nothing but water. Put it in your mouth and the taste is unmistakably shoyu (soy sauce). "Toumei Shoyu," the clear shoyu Fundodai of Kumamoto brought to market, is a bottle almost nobody sees once without looking twice.

It got attention for how surprising it looks, but this is no novelty. It is one answer to a problem Japanese shoyu has carried for a long time: color.

Where the color of shoyu comes from

Why is shoyu brown in the first place?

The color is not on the ingredients to begin with. As soybeans and wheat are brewed and then aged, sugars and amino acids react and brown pigments form. The longer the aging and the higher the temperature, the deeper the color goes. Which means the color of shoyu is also a record of the time its savoriness took to grow.

On the cooking side, though, that color can get in the way. Sashimi of white fish. A clear soup with a see-through dashi. An egg yolk. White rice fresh from the pot. Pour a brown liquid over a dish meant to show its ingredients as they are, and the whole plate reads differently.

Holding the color back, a Japanese workaround

Japanese shoyu making has been layering up answers to this problem for a long time.

Usukuchi shoyu, which developed in the Kansai region, is shoyu made by changing the brewing and aging conditions so that less pigment forms. Being paler, it lets the color and the aroma of the ingredients stand. It is easy to misread: usukuchi is not weakly flavored shoyu, and in fact its salt runs slightly higher than koikuchi (the standard dark shoyu). Breweries such as Suehiro Shoyu in Tatsuno, Hyogo, have carried this craft forward.

Going further in the same direction gives you shiro shoyu (pale amber shoyu), and combining that with dashi gives you shirodashi. Clear shoyu sits at the leading edge of this same line of holding the color back, and seeing it that way makes its position clear.

Fundodai's clear shoyu: from a Kumamoto brewery founded in 1869

Fundodai, the maker behind the clear shoyu, is a Kumamoto shoyu maker founded in 1869.

Finishing it in a state with almost no color means you can add savoriness and salt without altering the color of the ingredients. The name lands first, but where to use it is plain enough. It comes in a 100ml bottle, designed to sit on the table.

How to use clear shoyu

• On sashimi of white fish (the flesh keeps its clarity)
• On rice with raw egg (the yolk keeps its color exactly)
• On chilled or simmered tofu, with the white of the tofu intact
• To season a clear dashi soup or a thickened sauce
• In light pickles or a dressing where you want no color added

This is not a replacement for your everyday shoyu but a bottle you reach for when the color matters. Start with rice and a raw egg, and see how the color holds.

Frequently asked questions

What kind of shoyu is clear shoyu?

A shoyu that carries the savoriness and the salt of shoyu while holding almost no color. Fundodai in Kumamoto (founded 1869) brought it to market. It suits sashimi, egg dishes and chilled tofu: anything where you do not want to change the colors on the plate.

Where does the color of shoyu come from?

During brewing and aging, sugars and amino acids derived from the soybeans and wheat react and produce brown pigments. The longer the aging and the higher the temperature, the darker the color, so usukuchi shoyu, which aims to hold color back, changes the aging conditions and the brewing method to limit how much pigment forms.

How is it different from usukuchi shoyu or shirodashi?

All of them share the idea of holding color back, but they differ in degree and in role. Usukuchi shoyu is a shoyu with the color restrained, and its salt runs slightly higher. Shirodashi is a seasoning made by combining shiro shoyu or usukuchi with dashi. Clear shoyu sits at the far end of the same line, taking the color down to almost zero.