Deadly dining in Japan

One pufferfish can have enough poison to kill 30 humans

Namaste Global Jigsawers,

Thank you for your overwhelming show of support last week. My surgery has been brought forward by a day and will be on Wednesday the 28th, so do keep your fingers crossed especially tight on that day.

As for today’s post, à la Monty Python, its now time for something completely different. Let’s take a visit to a fish market in western Japan, famous for its fugu, a fish that you eat at your own peril.

It was late afternoon at the Karato fish market in the far western port city of Shimonoseki. The floor was slick with scales and water. The wholesalers had packed up and left for the day, leaving stacks of wooden crates in their wake. Retailers were hawking their wares at discounted prices: sushi and sashimi at 50 percent off. The salty smell of the ocean lay heavy; the market is at the doorstep of the Kanmon straits that separates the islands of Honshu and Kyushu.

I am not much of a fish market aficionado. My hometown, Delhi, is Butter Chicken/Daal Makhani-central and mostly fish-free. But my father had worked in Bombay for a few years in the early 1990s and I’d spent a couple of summer vacations there. My dad’s apartment hadn’t been far from the Sassoon docks, whose smell and giant rats lived on in my nightmares for years to come.

A few decades later I’d washed up in Tokyo, as unenthusiastic about fish mongering and its attendant ambience, as ever. The first stop on most tourist itineraries at the time was the iconic fish market of Tsukiji. Visitors, limited to a daily quota of 120, would queue up all night to catch a glimpse of the tuna auction that took place before sunrise. The market at Tsukiji was eventually relocated in 2018, unvisited and unloved by me. 

So the trip to Karato, which was part of a Japan Tourism Organization visit for journalists, had entailed the loss of my Japanese fish-market virginity. I’d cast a nervous look about, but there were no giant rats to be seen. Instead there were ubiquitous images of the deadly delicacy of pufferfish or fugu, Karato’s piscine mascot.

The fugu is a fat, friendly looking, fish. But despite its almost comical appearance, it secretes a powerful neurotoxin that is up to 1,200 times more poisonous than cyanide. There can be enough poison in a single pufferfish to kill 30 adult humans.

Statue of a puffer fish/fugu in Shimoneseki. Credit: Pallavi Aiyar

On average, about 50 people across the archipelago suffered fugu poisoning every year. To calm the nerves of would-be fugu eaters it was usually stressed that the majority of these casualties were the result of mistakes made by amateur home cooks.

Personally, I didn’t find this factoid tipped the balance in favour of trying the dish, but chefs who cooked at fugu-serving restaurants in Japan were required by law to have a special license certifying that they were trained in removing all the potentially toxic parts of the fish, including its liver, kidneys and ovaries.

Yet, scares still occurred. In 2018, a supermarket in Gamagori city in central Honshu, failed to remove the liver from a batch of fugu, before putting it on sale. In the event, the sold products were retrieved and no fatalities occurred, but considerable panic ensued.

At the Karato market no one appeared too worried. The consensus in Japan was that fugu is delicious, prized for its subtle flavor and unique chewy texture. The fish is also low in fat and high in protein. I was assured that there had been no cases of poisoning in Yamaguchi Prefecture, where Shimonoseki is located, for decades.

Between the late 16th and 18th centuries however, the sale of fugu had been banned in Japan. Then, in 1888, the country’s first post-Meiji Restoration Prime Minister, Itou Hirobumi, stopped by a traditional restaurant in Shimonoseki. He was served fugu, which the locals had not given up eating despite its illicit status. Hirobumi enjoyed it so much that he lifted the prohibition.

Since then, cooking techniques have been developed and honed to remove the toxin-carrying organs of the fish. And today, Japanese consume about 10,000 tonnes of fugu annually. But the best chefs leave in just enough poison so that it tingles the lips, hinting at the fragility of life - an enduring theme of the Japanese aesthetic.

Personally, appreciating cherry blossoms seemed a more alluring way of experiencing mono no aware than flirting with death while eating dinner, but perhaps I simply lacked the requite samurai-like derring-do.

At Karato, retail stores displayed plates of pufferfish sashimi that were works of art: transparent, paper-thin strips cut into designs resembling chrysanthemum petals, peacocks tails, butterflies and even Mount Fuji. Real culinary daredevils could opt for hirezake, a fugu-based tipple made from burning the fish’s fin over charcoal and then placing it into a cup of warm sake (rice wine).

Chrysanthemum flower-shaped fugu sashimi. Pic credit: Pallavi Aiyar

On average, fugu dishes cost about 5,000 yen (USD 50). But at the karato market it’s possible to eat a pufferfish-based meal for as little as 1,000 yen (USD10), which accounts for its status as mecca for foodies on the cheap. I tried a bite of fugu sushi. It was surprisingly bland. I passed on the milt (or semen-filled genetalia) however, even though it is considered a delicacy.

Leaving the market behind, the poems of some of Japan’s most celebrated haiku masters came to mind.

Yosa Buson (1716-1783) once wrote:

Unrequited love. He has decided to give up.

 On that night - fugu soup!

But these days it is Matsua Basho’s (1644-1694) haiku that would probably hold true:

Well, nothing happened -
Even though yesterday I ate
Fugu soup

******

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Hasta la proxima vez,

Toodle pip for now,

Pallavi