Rice dishes ── Sushi
Sakezushi
sushi fermented overnight in Kagoshima's ash-cleared sake
A Kagoshima pressed sushi built on rice splashed with a local ash-cleared sake, layered with about ten toppings like sea bream and shrimp and left to ferment half a day. Local telling traces it to leftovers from a flower-viewing feast.
- Origin: Kagoshima City, Kagoshima
- About 970 km southwest of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Dried daikon, dried shiitake, bamboo shoot, carrot, egg, sea bream, shrimp, fried fish cake, and steamed fish cake — nearly ten ingredients, each prepared separately. Rice is spread in a sushi tub splashed with a local ash-cleared sake, then the toppings are layered on. What results carries a faint waft of sake, setting it apart from the vinegar-forward pressed sushi found elsewhere.
How it's made
Each ingredient is separately simmered sweet and savory. Ash-cleared sake is splashed into a sushi tub, freshly cooked rice is spread over it, and the toppings are layered on in color. A light weight is set on top and the whole thing rests about half a day, sake's aroma and fermentation working the flavor through.
Why it took this shape
One account traces it to the Edo period, when a Satsuma domain lord is said to have left behind food and sake from a flower-viewing feast in a tub, only to find it fermented into something fragrant the next day. Kagoshima's warm climate was ill-suited to brewing ordinary clear sake, so an ash-cleared sake with better keeping power took hold locally instead — and it's thought to be this local sake that made fermenting with sake, rather than vinegar, possible in the first place.
Before you go
- How to read a vertical menuIn shops with strips of handwritten menu items on the wall, the top-right spot is often used for recommendations.
- How to use a convenience storeA quick guide to choosing rice balls and hot snacks, buying coffee, paying by cash, IC card, or tap payment, using the eat-in corner, and sorting your trash — the basics for a first visit.
- 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.
Dishes in the same style
- Aburi-zushiNigiri with just its surface flash-seared by torch or hot iron. Unlike Edomae's shigoto curing for keeping, the searing here is done purely for the change in aroma and fat it brings — a relatively recent way of eating sushi.
- Aichi HakozushiVinegared rice is packed into a wooden frame, topped with shrimp, eel, shiitake, and egg arranged diagonally, and pressed. Placing toppings on the diagonal so everyone gets a fair share of each is said to be a feature of the Owari and western Mikawa style, made for celebrations.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Kagoshima
- Abura ZomenPork and somen are fried together with a splash of broth, the oil and stock emulsifying into a silky coat on the noodles. Just how somen took root in wheat-free Amami isn't clear, but the dish is a fixture whenever people gather, not least for the August Dance festival.
- AkumakiMochi rice steeped in wood-ash lye is wrapped in bamboo sheath and boiled for hours in more lye water — a Boys' Festival sweet said to have fed Saigo Takamori's troops in the field. The lye's alkalinity holds bacteria back, letting it keep for days in Kagoshima's heat and humidity.
- Amami Kokuto-jochuKokuto-jochu permitted to be made only in the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture. It's said to carry a sweet aroma distinctive to islands where sugarcane cultivation thrives, and around 30 breweries are said to compete on character while observing the liquor tax law's condition that rice koji be used.
- Buta Hone YasaiBone-in pork cut into big chunks is simmered in a large pot with tsuwabuki, daikon, and koshaman taro — an Amami dish essential to New Year's Eve, also called wanfineyasse. It's regarded as a wisdom born of using every part of the island's own black pigs.
- Buta JiruPork simmered with daikon, taro, and other roots in a miso broth, built on Kagoshima's own pork — the prefecture raises more hogs than any other — paired with a barley miso high in koji and correspondingly sweet. A warming bowl for winter, common at home and in school lunches alike.
- Buta MisoBoiled pork is pounded together with miso and sugar into a keeping paste, with peanuts and bonito flakes added in Amami versions. It's said to have grown out of the need to use every part of the one pig a household slaughtered each year, alongside salting and other preserved forms.