Project title
Management anthropology of fermented foods and seasonings in relation to regional tourism
Research Unit
Primary investigator
Co investigators
Project period
2024/5/10 ～ 2025/3/31
Project summary
“Washoku, Traditional Dietary Cultures of the Japanese” is said to be characterized by the use of fermented seasonings such as miso, soy sauce as seasonings . Fermented seasonings used in “Washoku” include miso, soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin, and fish sauce and so on. The food culture handed down in each region is often formed by various conditions brought about by the climate, climate, and products of the region, and has been devised and fostered over a long period of time to make life more desirable. This research will focus on the regional characteristics of fermented seasonings from the perspective of food tourism. This study aims to investigate the relationship between fermented seasonings and food culture and its regional characteristics, focusing on fermented seasonings that define Japanese food culture, which has been registered as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, and to consider their impact on regional tourism.
Activity and results reports
This project was designed to visit miso and soy sauce breweries in Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture; Nagaoka City, Niigata Prefecture; Toyama Prefecture; and Wakayama Prefecture, and to investigate what kind of regional characteristics and food culture are formed by the climate and terroir of each region. In the course of our research, we learned that accommodation facilities with a “fermentation” theme exist on the main island of Okinawa and in the Kirishima region of Kagoshima Prefecture, so we included these cases in our scope of investigation.
First, we visited Miso Hoshiroku in Nagaoka City, Niigata Prefecture, where we first visited the company, which brews Echigo miso (rice miso) and barley miso. We learned that the ingredients were produced by contract farmers using no pesticides, and that the majority of the water was filtered tap water, although they sometimes went to the mountains to fetch water. For salt, they used natural salt and practiced other earth-friendly manufacturing practices. Miso Hoshiroku's miso is marketed as a delicious miso to be eaten in miso soup. The company also produced and sold other processed foods, such as miso-pickled vegetables (e.g., Nagaoka kinchaku eggplant, daikon radish, and cucumber) and miso-pickled sablefish.
Yamamo Miso and Soy Sauce Brewer, and Ishimago Honten, which we visited in Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture, brewed Akita miso (rice miso) and soy sauce. Akita miso was a sweet-tasting miso made with more rice malt and had a salt content of about 11%. Both stores were particular about using Akita ingredients, and both were characterized by their built-in breweries, which were built into the buildings to protect them from the harsh cold weather. Ishimago Honten also made a special all-Akita miso using wooden vats made of Akita cedar and salt from the Oga Peninsula in Akita Prefecture. Although miso is designed to be eaten as miso soup, Ishimago Honten served noodles only on Saturdays, and Yamamo Miso brewer developed a menu that uses brewer's original yeast for cooking and they start to serve their food and beverage at café style, improve to restaurant, finally they set up auberge style, confirming the advancement of the industry structure from a secondary industry to a tertiary industry. In addition, Ishimago Honten also produced and sold miso pickles using locally grown vegetables.
The miso brewers we visited in Toyama Prefecture, Ishiguro Seed Koji Store, Sugino Miso Soy Sauce Co., Ltd. and Shinmura Koji Miso Store, all brew Toyama miso (rice miso), which is characterized by “high water content, high salt content, high koji ratio, and slow fermentation and maturation over two or three years” (from Yamagen Brewing Co., Ltd. website). In addition, there are many dishes unique to the region that use miso, such as “anbayashi,” which can eat at a festival held in the Toyama City to Imizu City area that uses konjac, “yogoshi,” which is a vegetable dish found in the Gosei area that is roasted with miso, “bamboo sprout boiled of miso,” and “misokanpa” in Asahimachi (rice that has been ground into a small oval shape and baked after being pierced with chopsticks). Many dishes unique to the area were also identified. Miso processed foods include pork, fresh fish such as yellowtails fish, vegetables, and tofu marinated in miso, and as food for special occasions, “itoko-ni (stewed vegetables)” and taro dengaku, which are seen during the November Hoonko festival. Many types of processed miso were also seen, such as yuzu miso, sesame miso, and sweet miso, which are spread on boiled or grilled vegetables. As for soy sauce, sweet soy sauce made by adding amino acid solution to union-produced fresh soy sauce was found in abundance from Toyama to Ishikawa prefectures.
The characteristics of miso and soy sauce breweries in Nagaoka City, Niigata Prefecture, Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture, and throughout Toyama Prefecture can be summarized as follows
- Miso: Rice miso made from rice koji, with a high koji ratio because these areas are rice-producing region.
- Soy sauce: In both Niigata and Akita prefectures, soy sauce brewed in wooden barrel was the norm, but in Toyama Prefecture there were many varieties of sweet soy sauce made by adding amino acid solution to fresh soy sauce.
On the other hand, in the miso and soy sauce breweries we visited in Wakayama Prefecture, we observed a variety of products that differed in aspect from those on the Sea of Japan side. The most common type of miso was rice miso, but a high percentage of shiro-miso and kinzanji miso were produced. Sales of shiro-miso were higher from Kinan area (the southern part of Wakayama Prefecture) to Kichu Area (the central of Wakayama Prefecture) and Kihoku Area (the northern part of Wakayama Prefecture). Koyama Yasuyoshi Brewery in Kinan (Tanabe City) concentrated its production and sales of shiro-miso during the year-end and New Year holidays, while miso stores in Kichu (Yuasa Town and Gobo City) and Kihoku (Wakayama City) sold it year-round. A wide range of uses for shiro-miso was observed, including use not only in zoni, which is a traditional Japanese soup eaten on New Year's Day, but also in miso soup for daily consumption, as well as in nuta (salad with vinegar and miso), and in white bean paste for Japanese confectionery. Shiro-miso produced and sold in Wakayama Prefecture is characterized by its gentle sweetness, but its taste is different from that of Kyoto's shiro-miso, which has a strong sweet taste. Shiro-miso is made in a various ways and tastes depending on the region, and further research is needed. In the prefecture, only Amadaya in Gobo City produced and sold aka-miso. Reflecting its historical background, kinzanji-miso was produced and sold at many miso breweries in the prefecture, although most of the manufacturers were located in Yuasa Town. Although kinzanji-miso is sold at grocery store, direct selling from the fermers, throughout Japan, the overwhelmingly high percentage of kinzanji-miso produced at miso breweries in Wakayama Prefecture (40-90%) confirms that consumption of kinzanji-miso in Wakayama Prefecture is much higher than in other prefectures. This is due to the fact that in 1249 during the Kamakura period, Hoto-Kokushi, who went to Song Dynasty (present-day China), brought back “kinzanji miso” manufacturing method to Japan, and began making it at Kokokuji Temple in Yura, Wakayama Prefecture. It is also pointed out that the branding marketing by the Kishu clan in the Edo period (Lee, 2021) had a strong influence. However, the large amount of Kinzanji miso distributed in Wakayama Prefecture is also largely influenced by food culture. In particular, the culture of tea porridge, which was devised during the Edo period to compensate for the lack of rice, and its affinity with kinzanji miso likely contributed to the strong consumer support for kinzanji miso even today, resulting in its higher consumption in Wakayama than in other prefectures.
The results of this project showed that miso produced at miso and soy sauce breweries in Nagaoka City, Niigata Prefecture; Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture; Toyama Prefecture; Wakayama Prefecture have a diversity of flavors that have been passed down to the present day, using ingredients from each region and suited to the cuisine of each region, as well as functioning as the basic seasoning that determines the taste of each region's local cuisine, confirming the regional uniqueness of the “Washoku: traditional food culture for the Japanese,” which has been registered as a World Intangible Cultural Heritage. The miso produced in the soy sauce breweries throughout Wakayama Prefecture has a diversity of flavors that have been passed down to the present day, and that are suited to dishes made with regional ingredients.
In addition, as an actual example of a powerful content for realizing high value-added food (gastronomy) tourism, we can cite the case of the development into a unique cooking method using storehouse yeast being promoted by the Yamamo miso brewery in Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture. The Noma restaurant in Copenhagen (closed at the end of 2024), which won first prize in the World's 50 Best Restaurants list five times, used unique fermentation techniques to age ingredients and develop sauces to create a taste that is unique to the restaurant. The Yamamo Miso brewery used the same method as Noma to create a unique taste by using succinic acid-producing brewer's yeast to create a unique taste, and realized high value-added food (gastronomy) tourism with the food culture of Yuzawa City in Akita Prefecture as a background. In Akita Prefecture, the Akita Food Promotion Division is promoting Akita Fermentation Tourism, and the Iwasaki Fermenting Town Development Council in the Iwasaki district of Yuzawa City has also confirmed that a brewery functions as one of the contents of overnight farm stays and has realized a high unit price tour program.
Taking a cue from the farm stay program in Yuzawa City, we searched for examples of fermentation being used for lodging, and upon learning of new precedents in Okinawa and Kagoshima Prefectures, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, we conducted a field survey to expand the possibilities for future research.
The “EM Wellness Fermentation Lifestyle Resort” in Nakagusuku Village, Okinawa Prefecture, is a hotel that proposes a lifestyle that incorporates Effective Microorganisms for land improvement, water environment improvement, odor elimination, and household cleaning, etc. About 40% of the guests are inbound tourists (from Taiwan, Korea, etc.), and the remaining 60% are domestic visitors, mainly Okinawa Prefecture. The hotel offered programs closely related to daily life, such as a hands-on program for making fermented seasonings (miso, vinegar, mirin, shio-koji, fresh-aged soy sauce, etc.) mainly for local residents, and EM classes (home vegetable gardening, washing and cleaning, etc.) that can be utilized in daily life. However, not only were the meals served in the hotel restaurant buffet-style, with many dishes from mainland Japan rather than traditional Okinawa food culture, but the items sold at the store in hotel were from producers outside Okinawa, such as shio-koji from Fukui Prefecture and miso seasoning from Nagano Prefecture. Perhaps that will be reflecting the needs of local residents, the survey made us feel that it would be nice to taste such traditional Okinawan food culture, as rice miso made with rice koji is traditionally produced in Okinawa Prefecture.
Next, we investigated the Koji and Fermentation Hotel in Kirishima City, Kagoshima Prefecture. This hotel is managed by Kawachi Genichiro Shoten, a seed koji store founded by Genichiro Kawachi, the author of the shochu textbook. Kawachi Genichiro Store handles not only yellow koji used in miso and soy sauce, but also black koji and white koji. Currently, the company is enthusiastically researching black koji, which active fermentation, and developing products using black koji. Kawachi Genichiro Store also supervises “koji sommelier” qualifications, and we learned (from an interview with the deputy manager) that the hotel was opened as an accommodation facility to meet the needs of those who have obtained the qualification to make koji by themselves (since it is said to take three days to make koji, a process that requires overnight stays). There is a certain amount of need for inbound tourists, and there are high expectations for future development.
Fermentation," which adds value and nutritional value to foods by preserving them with time and effort, is attracting worldwide attention, and we believe that fermentation can make a significant contribution to the realization of value-added food (gastronomy) tourism. The research conducted in this project is only one part of the study, and we would like to continue our research on the actual status of high value-added contents by examining preceding regions and case studies.
