8 hours Ago
An ancient type of sushi called funazushi , considered by many to be the original form of the raw fish dish, is seeing a renaissance aimed at making it more palatable to younger generations and food lovers visiting Japan from abroad. To ensure the survival of traditional narezushi , a salt-cured fish and fermented rice dish no longer commonly served in Japan, innovations are being conceived such as combining it with cheese among other unlikely food arrangements. With the popularity of fermented foods having boomed due to their associated health benefits, distinctive flavors and sustainability, an experiment with a modern take on funazushi is a logical thing to try.
Funazushi, which has been served as a delicacy dating back centuries using the nigorobuna species fished from Lake Biwa in western Japan's Shiga Prefecture, is characterized by its distinctive sour taste and pungent aroma. Nigorobuna, or round crucian carp, is endemic to Lake Biwa, the largest freshwater lake in Japan, called Biwako in Japanese. Recently, however, the consumption of the "Biwako gourmet" dish has been on the decline.
According to a survey conducted by the Lake Biwa Museum from November 2023 through January 2024, some 50 percent of residents in Shiga who have eaten funazushi found the dish to be "too expensive," while 30 percent said it is "foul-smelling." The decline in the nigorobuna population is also a serious problem. Due to the introduction of invasive fish, such as largemouth bass and bluegill, and the decline of their lake habitat, nigorobuna catches have fallen dramatically.
Concerned that the local culinary culture will die out, Mamoru Umemura, 52, who runs Kunsaido, a specialty store directly operated by a lake fish processing and sales company in the city of Takashima, looked to cheese, another fermented food, to conceptualize a modern take on funazushi. Originally, funazushi was described as "Japanese cheese" because of its flavor. But instead of using a female fish with eggs, Umemura developed a new, less smelly "cheese funazushi" by using less expensive male fish and stuffing them with cheese instead of roe.
"It goes well with wine," Umemura said, adding "I hope foreign people will enjoy it as well." Elsewhere in the prefecture, Biwako Daughters, a shop in Nosu featuring tsukudani thinly-sliced seafood, meat or seaweed simmered in soy sauce, sells funazushi and cheese sandwiches as it hopes to "preserve the fish cuisine of Lake Biwa for future generations." The shop's owner Tomomi Nakagawa, 50, was born into a local fishing family going back generations, and lake fish were a common sight on the dinner table.
She saw the sandwich as a vehicle to get young people to try funazushi. To match the sour taste of funazushi, she chose an equally pungent cheese for the sandwich, which she says is popular with both domestic and international tourists. Michinori Hashimoto, curator at the Lake Biwa Museum run by the Shiga prefectural government, points out that in order to carry on the tradition, it is important to develop products that suit people's changing tastes.
In the case of funazushi, he added, "It is important to establish a supply system for products that meet demand and maintain the nigorobuna habitat.".
