Nihon Chomiryo Tabi
Start with these 2
Yuasa is held to be the birthplace of shoyu (soy sauce). The account handed down is that it began when someone brewing kinzanji miso, a method brought over in the Kamakura period, noticed that the liquid pooling at the bottom of the barrel tasted good. It is one of the better-known stories of a seasoning arriving by accident.
Inland, Aridagawa is sansho pepper country. Its budo sansho grows in grape-like clusters with large berries, and it leads with aroma rather than the numbing bite. Shoyu from the coast and sansho from the mountains: two seasonings of quite different character in the same prefecture.
- Shoyu, said to have begun from the liquid pooling in kinzanji miso
- Budo sansho, large-berried and growing in clusters
What sets Wakayama's seasonings apart
Wakayama is held to be the birthplace of shoyu. Because of that, shoyu made in the prefecture includes rich examples that came about quite differently from mass-produced bottles. The breweries still working in Yuasa keep to the older method of long aging in kioke (wooden barrel).
The other axis is sansho pepper. Budo sansho, grown in the Shimizu district of Aridagawa, takes its name from berries that grow in grape-like clusters. It is high in aroma with large berries, and Wakayama is a major sansho producing area. Shoyu and sansho have this in common: both are seasonings that decide a dish through aroma.
Why shoyu was born in Wakayama
Shoyu began in the course of making miso. Around 1254, in the Kamakura period, the priest Hotto Enmyo Kokushi, founder of Kokoku-ji in Kishu Yura, today's Yura Town, is said to have brought back the method for kinzanji miso from Jingshan Temple in China. The liquid that pooled at the bottom of the barrels used to brew this miso turned out to taste remarkably good. That is held to be the prototype of shoyu.
The method passed to nearby Yuasa. Blessed with good water and well served by sea transport, Yuasa grew into a brewing town, and from there the practice spread nationwide. Shoyu reached Shodoshima in Kagawa from Yuasa as well. The streets of Yuasa still carry traces of that brewing history.
Local dishes and their seasonings
- Kinzanji Miso (金山寺味噌)
- A name-miso in which vegetables such as melon and eggplant are packed into koji made from rice, soybeans, and barley and left to age. It is not used as a seasoning: you put it straight onto rice and eat it. It is the food shoyu came from, and people in Wakayama still eat it day to day.
Makers in Wakayama
- Marushin Honke (Yuasa Shoyu)Founded in 1881
A brewery keeping up kioke-brewed shoyu in Yuasa, the birthplace of shoyu. It also makes kinzanji miso, so it carries both shoyu and the food shoyu came from into the present. - Kanja Sansho-en
A grower of budo sansho in Aridagawa. It handles the large-berried, cluster-growing sansho from picking through to processing.
Stories from this area
Nearby prefectures
