Seafood ── Fish
Sawara
Spanish mackerel — a slender fish central to Setouchi's spring table
Its kanji combines 'fish' and 'spring' — a slender fish at its best that season, served miso-glazed or raw. It tends to linger in the calm Seto Inland Sea, and top-landing areas there have folded it into their festival sushi culture.
- Blue-backed fish
What it's made of
Its kanji pairs 'fish' with 'spring', and the season is said to run April to June. Raw, the flesh is startlingly soft, with a texture that seems to dissolve before any fat even registers. Miso-glazed, the surface turns lightly charred while the inside falls apart, carrying the miso's aroma. The silver body is prized freshest straight off the boat, and how fatty it tastes is said to shift almost day by day across its brief two-month season.
How it's made
Two methods land it: a drift gillnet strung for hundreds of meters across an open channel at night, and a 'bag net' that waits for fish backing away with the tide. Right after landing, fishers bleed and chill it immediately to keep the flesh firm. A local saying — 'hold a sawara with both hands' — hints at how carefully each fish is handled, since rough handling is said to tear the flesh and ruin it for sashimi.
Why it took this shape
The Seto Inland Sea's calm waters are said to let migrating sawara linger rather than pass straight through. Okayama's coast is lined with fishing cooperatives from east to west, so the trip from boat to table is reputedly among the shortest in the country. That closeness puts raw fish center stage, and the brief two-month spring season is used to the fullest — seared, in miso soup with milt, every part eaten, and folded into festival sushi as well.
Before you go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Roadside stations, direct-sale stands, and marketsHow to enjoy buying food near where it's produced, visiting and shopping at morning markets and fish markets, what to expect at farm stands, and finding local food at roadside stations (michi-no-eki).
- Foods to look for in springA guide to foods often seen in Japan around spring — early bonito, bamboo shoots, sakura mochi, hanami bento, new-season tea, and butterbur sprouts — with rough pointers for finding them.
Dishes in the same style
- AjiA blue-backed fish sold year-round, served raw, minced as tataki, or fried. Fish that settle in one fast-flowing strait rather than migrate firm up and fatten, and are pole-and-line caught there under premium regional brand names.
- BuriA 'shusseuo' whose name changes with size. Winter's fat-laden 'kanburi' is prized raw, teriyaki-glazed, or simmered with daikon — bays where it fattens before wintering, then is taken in set nets, are valued for both fat quality and yield.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Known for it here
- Known for it here: Okayama
Facing the rich fishing grounds of the Seto Inland Sea, this prefecture lands among Japan's most Spanish mackerel and weaves it into its festival sushi.
Contrast
- HamoA fish so fine-boned it demands the knife skill of hone-kiri, said to fatten on the rains of early summer. Essential to Kyoto's Gion Festival, nearby coastal grounds able to supply the city quickly saw demand concentrate and the craft sharpen.
- TachiuoA long, silver-bladed fish eaten skin and all. Salt-grilled or pan-fried to bring out its fatty flesh — larger fish taken by pole-and-line near the Kuroshio current run fattier still and command higher prices.