As I mentioned in the first part of this article back in December, Japanese food isn’t just about the sushi.
Or the fugu.
There’s a whole lot more, starting with the biggest meal of all – that consumed by... the sumo.
Sumo is one of Japan’s more internationally famous sports, probably because the spectacle of two exceptionally plump men – in a nation of exceptionally skinny people – wrestling one another, clad only in loin-cloths is, well, fascinating.
Sumo wrestlers would be nothing without their diet, though we do dangle the word “diet” here in an ironic sense.
Chanko-nabe is the food of the sumo. It’s a huge, simmering hot-pot that is chock-full of meat, fish and vegetables, best mixed with soy sauce, but sometimes also blended with mirin, miso, sake, and dashi stock (shavings of dried skipjack tuna mixed with edible kelp).
Leftover broth is often then consumed with a hefty plate of noodles.
It’s as highly nutritious in protein as it is gut busting, and is the principle dish gorged by sumo wrestlers to extend their hefty waistlines and add to already-impressive girths.
Some wrestlers enjoy the concoction so much that they quit the ring and instead become the chanko-cho, or chief chanko chef, for their wrestling stables, and eventually open their own restaurants – often with sumo memorabilia from their workhorse days adorning the walls.
READ MORE @ FORCES OF GEEK, with commentary from Japanese DJ/producers DJ Wada, Jin Hiyama & Lili Hirakawa.
Alternatively, if you’re a child of the ‘90s you may recall an episode of The Simpsons titled “One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish”.
It’s the episode in which Bart Simpson and family make a visit to a new sushi bar called The Happy Sumo, and Homer demands fugu while the chef is out canoodling Edna Krabappel on the backseat of her car.
Cue assistant chef’s stressful splicing and dicing of the deflating delicacy.
For those who may have missed this cartoon, fugu is the Japanese name for blowfish or pufferfish of the Tetraodontidae family, the majority of which have extremely high levels of a neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin in their ovaries, liver, intestines, gonads and skin.
The Encyclopædia Britannica has labeled fugu the second most-poisonous vertebrate in the world and there is no antidote to the poison – a fact that doesn’t seem to faze Japanese consumers, however, since some 10,000 tons are eaten here each year.
When I first arrived in Japan in 2001 I really had no choice but to play Homer Simpson and indulge in the expensive dish, which can cost anywhere between ¥4,000 (US$50) and ¥20,000 (US$250) depending upon the restaurant, the quality of the serving, the size, and the kind of dish.
The most common way to have fugu is sashimi-style, sliced exceptionally thin and raw and served with a special dipping sauce called ponzu (a canny blend of citrus juice and soy sauce). Each piece is almost transparent and the texture softer than most other fish. The impression is that it discreetly dissolves in your mouth.
The delicacy is also deep fried or conjured up in a nabe (hot pot), and often combined with fugu hirezake: Toasted fugu fin served in hot sake. It smells a wee bit fishy, but has quite the celebratory kick to it.
You can usually tell the fugu eateries by the huge storefront tanks full of the fish: Swimming, carousing, looking a little the worse-for-wear, and occasionally floating listlessly upside down.
The allusion of those bottom-up types runs a little close to home when it comes to fugu.
Both in fiction and reality the fish has had a huge impact on the culture of this country and fugu is quite often lauded in traditional haiku. While its price sets the dish up as the foodstuff of kings (but not the emperor, who is not allowed to partake), many Japanese office workers with big annual bonuses aspire to tuck into the marine delight.
Even so there is a hint of the morbid and fatalistic involved. Fugu, while outrageously priced, could be viewed as the Russian roulette of the wining and dining set – and mortality is, after all, the great leveler.
YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT TASTY FUGU, ALONG WITH HACHINOKO (BEE LARVAE) AND INAGO (LOCUSTS) IN THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE @ FORCES OF GEEK.
Sumo is one of Japan’s more internationally famous sports, probably because the spectacle of two exceptionally fat men - in a nation of exceptionally skinny people - wrestling one another, clad only in loin-cloths shaped like sexy G-strings is, well, hilarious.
What most accidental spectators don’t realize is that there’s so much more to the sport than its remarkably hefty rikishi (wrestlers).
Behind the bulldog bravura of cataclysmic grappling that goes on in the ring are centuries-old traditions like the Shinto-related throwing of salt (that one’s for purification).
And sumo competitors’ hair - which is precision-slicked into top-knots - is coiffed using a waxy substance called bintsuke abura, the main ingredient of which comes from the berries of the Japanese wax tree, Toxicodendron succedaneum - a member of the same family as poison ivy. It’s been used cosmetically and in hairdressing in Japan for around a thousand years, and is also used by geisha as a waxy base for their make-up.
Incidentally, in July 2008 the Japanese newspaper Nikkan Sports reported that a 15g container of the oil rose from ¥685 to ¥735, prompting sumo stars to demand a pay raise.
Even that remarkably revealing loincloth, known as the mawashi, has a story: it’s made of silk, approximately 30 feet long, weighs up to 11 pounds (about 5kg), and sometimes bears the name of a sponsor.
Ryōgoku, located here in Tokyo near the historic centre of this monolithic metropolis, is the home of the sumo. Right outside the west exit of Ryōgoku JR station stands the mammoth Kokugikan, the Sumo Hall, with a capacity of 13,000 people. Three of the six national Grand Sumo tournaments happen here.
Unlike ogling geisha in Kyoto, train spotting sumo sorts in the streets around Ryōgoku is relatively easy, especially since the practitioners of the sport aren’t exactly the waif-like types that geisha or maiko typically are.
But sumo wrestlers would be nothing without their diet, and - yes - we dangle the word “diet” here in its most strictly ironic sense. You won't find these people anywhere near a Diet Coke or low-fat mayonnaise.
Chanko-nabe (ちゃんこ鍋) is the food of the sumo - a huge, simmering hot-pot that’s chock-full of meat, fish and vegetables, best mixed with soy sauce, but sometimes also blended with mirin, miso, sake, and dashi stock (shavings of dried skipjack tuna mixed with edible kelp).
Leftover broth is often then consumed with a hefty plate of noodles.
It’s as highly nutritious (think protein city) as it is gut-busting, and is the principle dish gorged by sumo wrestlers to extend their hefty waistlines and add to already impressive girths.
Some wrestlers enjoy the concoction so much that they quit the ring and instead become the chanko-cho, or chief chanko chef, for their wrestling stables, and eventually open their own restaurants - often with sumo memorabilia from their workhorse days adorning the walls.
And, to my blinkered eyes at least, there’s no finer chanko-nabe to be had in Ryōgoku, than at a fine establishment called Yoshiba.
The building that houses Yoshiba was erected in 1948 as a prominent sumo wrestling club and practice stadium for the famous, 200-year-old Miyagino stable, and nine years later the premises were handed down to the stable’s coach, former distinguished yokozuna (sumo grand champion), Yoshibayama, who passed away in 1977.
After that, the building was recast as a restaurant (in 1983), maintaining the sumo ring and the practice rooms in their original state.
Kappo Yoshiba, named after the aforementioned yokuzuna, is hardly a small place itself. The restaurant can seat up to 250 people, it boasts a sushi bar and a voluminous fish-tank, and while the place is invariably busy, the service from the staff is brilliant - so much so, it leaves you despondent that the custom of tipping is a foreign one in Japan.
There’s also daily entertainment in the sumo ring in the center of the restaurant, which veers from guys in yukata (summer robes) singing traditional sumo songs, to a group of rowdy musicians strumming away on a shamisen in a more quirky, contemporary style.
But the focus here, of course, is the chanko-nabe, and the seriously skewed attempts to finish this herculean dish. Give yourself a day or two to recover - and try not to remember that sumo champions and their lesser ilk guzzle gallons of the chunky nectar on a daily basis.
Ouch.
So anyway, this may be completely unrelated but here's the sexy Suburu commercial from a few years back - featuring a bunch of sumo washing a car:
There’s a question on my mind, and it’s one I’ve mulled over for years, ever since Homer Simpson demanded fugu (河豚) at a Japanese restaurant, that time when the sushi chef was out canoodling Ms. Krabappel on the backseat of her car. Cue assistant chef’s stressful splicing and dicing of the deflating delicacy.
For those precious insular types without an operational TV who may’ve missed this episode, and double-up on the offense by having no access to Wikipedia or even a moth-eaten edition of the Encylopædia Britannica, fugu is the Japanese name for blowfish, and the majority of these fish have extremely high levels of a neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin in their ovaries, liver, intestines, gonads and skin.
These little fellas, with a penchant for getting sizable relatively quickly, in fact get honorable mention on both Wikipedia and in the Britannica for being the second most-poisonous vertebrates in the world. There’s also no antidote. That doesn’t seem to faze the Japanese, though - apparently some 10,000 tons are consumed here each year.
When I first came over from Australia, I really had no choice but to play Homer and indulge in the expensive dish, and the best way to have fugu is sashimi-style, sliced exceptionally thin and raw, and served with a special dipping sauce called ponzu (a canny blend of citrus juice and soy sauce).
You can also have it deep fried or conjured up in a nabe (hot pot), but for me it’s sensational as sashimi, combined with fugu hirezake: Toasted fugu fin served in hot saké. It smells a wee bit fishy, but has quite the celebratory kick to it.
You can usually tell the fugu eateries by the huge store-front tanks full of the fish: Swimming, carousing, looking a little the worse-for-wear, and occasionally floating listlessly upside down.
The allusion of those bottom up types runs a little close to home when it comes to fugu.
Both in fiction and reality the fish has had a huge impact on the culture of this country. While it’s the foodstuff of kings (but not the emperor, apparently), lauded in haiku, and all Japanese office workers with big annual bonuses aspire to tuck into the aquatic delight, there’s a hint of the morbid and suicidal involved, along with some mention of egos quashed. Fugu, while outrageously priced, is the Russian roulette of the wining and dining set - and fatality is, after all, the great leveler.
Theatrical rumor has it that the flamboyant Chairman Kaga (played by actor Takeshi Kaga), of Iron Chefnotoriety, died of fugu poisoning after the series ended in Japan, but kabuki star Bando Mitsugoro VIII really did die (of paralysis and asphyxiation) just hours after a stint in a Kyoto restaurant in 1975 - having thrown care to the winds, boasting invulnerability, and tossed down four of the fish’s highly-toxic livers.
And then there’s that question I hinted at earlier, the one that’s followed me ever since I saw Homer carted off to hospital with suspected fugu poisoning.
The origin of the fish’s consumption in Japan remains unclear - it definitely goes back centuries, and there’ve been possible fugu table scraps found in burial mounds that date back to the Jomon Period, over 2,400 years ago.
The question for me is this: Who were the very first people who decided to snack on this exceptionally unattractive fish, and how on earth did they work out which bits were OK for consumption, and which other parts would grant them slow, excruciating death?
Were short staws involved? Furry dice? Some kind of class-system pecking order? Or just manic rounds of jan-ken-pon (rock-paper-scissors)?
Personally, every time I eat fugu (which has actually been only twice), I canonize the experience - then spend the rest of the night fretting that I’ll die in my sleep, much like the unluckier pioneers of aquatic vertebratic cuisine before me.
