Kujira Jiru

Salted whale meat is simmered with daikon, tofu, and mountain vegetables in a soy-seasoned broth — a New Year dish. Because it's reheated and eaten again and again, the vegetables chosen for it are ones that hold their shape rather than falling apart. The broth, rich with the whale's savor melted into the vegetables' sweetness, is said to have been a nutrient-dense dish essential to getting through Hokkaido's bitter winters. In some areas it's still called "kujina-jiru" today.

Fatty cuts of salted whale are simmered in a soy-seasoned broth with tofu, mountain vegetables, daikon, green onion, shiitake, and taro. Some households make it with salt or miso instead, though soy sauce is said to be the standard. Vegetables once meant late-autumn stores or salt-preserved wild greens, soaked to remove the salt before use; now that freezing is common, what goes in varies by household.

In the Donan region, where herring fishing thrived from the late Edo period into the Meiji era, whales — said to drive herring in toward shore — were revered as auspicious creatures. Eating this soup at New Year, in hope of a good herring catch once the season opened in early spring, is said to be how the custom took hold. Hokkaido also has a history of salting whale meat as a preserved food, a valuable source of protein — so in one bowl sit both the nutrition needed to survive a hard winter and a wish for a good catch to come. Some places are said to eat it at year's end too, drawing on the whale's own great size as a good omen.