Seasonings of Yamagata

Why Yamagata shoyu comes with dashi already in it

The first bottle opened in a Yamagata kitchen is a shoyu with dashi in it. Aji Marujuu, the bottle that represents the prefecture, is a dashi-blended shoyu combining honjozo shoyu with katsuobushi and other stocks, and locally it is used so widely that people say the taste of Marujuu is the taste of home.

That one bottle settles the flavor because hotpots and simmered dishes fill the Yamagata table. As the imoni gathering shows, people want to finish a large pot for a crowd in a short time. Rather than making dashi separately, it was convenient to have it in a form you could pour into the pot along with the shoyu. Because the savory depth of the dashi and the salt of the shoyu are already in balance, you catch a faint sweetness when you taste it.

Umai Tare, the all-purpose sauce of Yonezawa, is likewise a sweet-salty blend of shoyu with katsuo dashi brought forward. A culture of broths that fold dashi and shoyu into one has supported Yamagata home cooking for a long time.

The safflower merchants who grew Yamagata's brewing culture

In the Edo period, Yamagata was a major producer of Mogami safflower. Traded at high prices in Kyoto and Osaka as a dye, safflower went down the Mogami River and out from Sakata aboard the Kitamaebune ships, and it is said to have made wealthy merchants of Yamagata.

One of those safflower merchants was Marujuoya, founded in 1844 in the Yamagata castle town. The capital of a merchant district built on the safflower trade is credited with supporting the spread of brewing industries such as shoyu and miso. In Yonezawa too, shoyu and miso have been made from early on against the backdrop of the Uesugi castle town.

There are competing accounts of where shoyu originated, and Yamagata is not the birthplace of shoyu. But in this place, where the logistics of the Sea of Japan coast met the commerce of the inland basin, a brewing culture rooted in home cooking grew in its own shape. That dashi-blended shoyu and all-purpose sauces still sit at the center of daily life is an extension of it.

Local dishes and their seasonings

Imoni (芋煮)

The imoni gathering, where people circle a pot on an autumn riverbank, is an annual event in Yamagata. Inland, in the Murayama area, the standard is beef and shoyu; in Shonai it is pork and miso, and the seasoning splits sharply within the prefecture. The shoyu version often uses dashi-blended shoyu, which settles the flavor of the pot with a single bottle.

Dashi (だし)

A summer home dish of finely chopped cucumber, eggplant, myoga and shiso dressed with shoyu and stock. It is eaten over freshly cooked rice or chilled tofu. It is regarded as a piece of practical wisdom for keeping the appetite going with aromatic vegetables and shoyu when summer heat dulls it.

Tama Konnyaku (玉こんにゃく)

Spherical konnyaku simmered slowly in a shoyu-based broth. The standard is to skewer it and serve it with mustard, and it is sold widely at tourist spots and festivals in Yamagata.

Makers in Yamagata

• MarujuoyaFounded in 1844
  A maker founded in the Yamagata castle town as a safflower merchant. Their dashi-blended shoyu, Aji Marujuu, is known as a pantry staple that settles the flavor of imoni.
• Hirayama Magobee Shoten
  A maker that has worked in shoyu and miso in Yonezawa. Their sweet-salty all-purpose sauce, Umai Tare, with its pronounced dashi, has long supported the home cooking of Yonezawa.