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Ryukyu
Ryukyu — Oita's soy, sesame, and ginger-dressed raw fish
Sashimi of the season's catch is tossed in a dressing of soy sauce, sake, mirin, sesame, and ginger — an Oita dish said to have spread from the southern coast as a fisherman's meal and keeping food, its name linked in local lore to a possible Okinawan connection, though the story is not settled.
- Origin: Oita
- About 780 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Ryukyu, one of Oita's signature dishes, is fresh local fish tossed in a sauce of soy sauce, sake, mirin, sesame, and ginger. It often uses sashimi trimmings or leftover cuts, letting the sauce carry the fish's flavor in a dish that keeps well. At restaurants in tourist areas it is often served over a bowl of rice as "ryukyu-don."
How it's made
Sashimi is marinated in ginger and seasonings until the flavor sets in. It is commonly served over hot rice, though some enjoy it as ochazuke, poured over rice with tea for a different texture. Konjac, whose texture resembles fish, is sometimes added to stretch the dish, and myoga, shiso, or wasabi can be added to taste. In mountain areas far from the coast, some households reportedly first cured the fish in vinegar before eating it.
Why it took this shape
Oita, facing the Seto Inland Sea, lands a rich variety of fish through the seasons, including horse mackerel and sea bream, and this dish is said to have spread as a way to preserve that catch. Accounts of the name vary: one holds that Oita fishermen learned the recipe from fishermen in Ryukyu, present-day Okinawa, while another traces it to a term for sesame-dressed dishes. Reportedly born as a fisherman's meal, it is said to have spread from the southern coast across the prefecture, a resourceful way to make full use of the sea's bounty.
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.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
- At teishoku diners, shokudo, and machi-chukaA guide to the teishoku set-meal format, free rice refills, table placement, and paying at a shokudo-style diner.
Dishes in the same style
- Agonoko UmaniThe roe of egg-bearing flying fish, caught only in early summer, is simmered in stock and soy sauce as an Oki bar snack. Its large grains and dense, sticky texture are prized as a delicacy said to be scarcer even than the fish's flesh.
- Funa MisoCrucian carp is simmered slowly with soybeans for around five hours, then finished in a sauce of red miso and coarse sugar. A freshwater fish dish of the Kiso rivers' lower basin, made with fatty winter carp simmered until the bones soften through.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Oita
- Aji no MaruzushiA whole horse mackerel, cured in plum vinegar and opened flat, is wrapped around vinegared rice and rolled in red shiso leaf — a celebratory sushi from Saiki, painstaking to prepare, built on the rich mackerel landed from the Bungo Channel.
- AmimeshiKrill simmered sweet-savory in mirin, soy sauce, and ginger is folded into freshly steamed rice — a dish from the Usa, Nakatsu, and Bungotakada coast, where krill are hauled from the Buzen Sea tideflats each autumn and winter; a favorite of the northern Oita coast.
- Atama RyoriGills, jaw, and innards of a large fish like grouper are quickly parboiled along with the flesh and piled onto a single platter — a dish from inland Taketa, far from the sea, said to have grown from a wish to waste nothing of a rare catch, served with a citrus dipping sauce.
- Ayu UrukaAyu (sweetfish) flesh or innards are minced with salt and left to ferment for about a week — an Oita salted delicacy said to have begun as a way to keep the clean river's seasonal catch; the innards-only version, nigauruka, carries a distinctive bitterness.
- Beppu ReimenThe dish's spread is traced to around 1950, when a cook repatriated from what had been Manchuria began making cold noodles in Beppu. Genso Arirang, founded that same year, is often named as the pioneering shop; the local style pairs a Japanese-style seafood stock with noodles made from buckwheat, wheat, and starch.
- Dango-jiruWheat dough kneaded and stretched into flat ribbons is simmered with root vegetables and shiitake in a barley-miso broth — an everyday Oita dish born of the prefecture's flour-based food culture, where poor rice land pushed wheat to the fore; the ribbons keep a firmer bite than udon.