In the town of Shiogama in Miyagi Prefecture, there’s a residential neighborhood overlooking Matsushima Bay, the epicenter of Japan’s catastrophic March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. On a quiet street there, chef Hideyuki Irakawa and his wife, Michiko, have been serving samurai food from their restaurant, Chimatsushima, for the past two decades. The smoky, wholesome cuisine has given fighters a nutritional leg up for hundreds of years, but now its varied flavors are tempting a wide array of locals and tourists. The Irakawas have made it relevant for the 21st century by adding touches of artistry that feel distinctive to the Tohoku region; last year, when Miyagi prefecture celebrated its inaugural Michelin Guide, theirs was one of 11 local restaurants to earn an initial star.
Tohoku, which makes up the entire northeast of Honshu, Japan’s main island, is essentially the country’s New England, with colorful foliage in the fall and extremely snowy winters. It’s also where samurai cuisine rose to prominence in the 1600s, during the important Edo period. Back then, Japan’s prized athletes typically ate a simple diet of miso soup and brown rice to carbo-load for battle. Adding textural variety and strong flavors helped encourage them to consume more grain, so kitchens of the era experimented with adding distinctive, salty side dishes: pickled vegetables and plums, seaweed, and natto, a fermented soybean paste.
Both samurai cuisine and the Tohoku region remain wildly under the radar. Only 1.3 percent of foreign tourists to Japan venture to Miyagi or Tohoku’s five other prefectures—Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, and Yamagata. But some of the world’s most recognized chefs, from Daniel Boulud to David Bouley, have taken a fascination with Tohoku’s culinary history, and Michelin’s support is only catalyzing the prefecture’s reputation as a bastion for top-notch, warrior-worthy eats.
The Building Blocks of a Butt-Kicking Diet
The rise of samurai cuisine is largely credited to Masamune Date, a feudal warlord known as the One-Eyed Dragon of Oshu. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, he was the most powerful samurai in Tohoku—but he was also known as a culinary innovator.
In Japan, samurai cuisine is racking up Michelin stars https://t.co/4Zie26nLFi pic.twitter.com/0Q5ZsDzpXk
— Bloomberg Pursuits (@luxury) April 13, 2018
To this day, cooks produce a strong red miso made with soybeans and koji (a mold that replaces malt) that’s fermented and aged at a brewery near the base of Sendai Castle, which Date built in 1593. It’s the star ingredient at restaurants like Nacrée, a Michelin one-star spot designed by Kengo Kuma. There, Chef Minoru Ogata—a former sous chef at the three-star L’Astrance, in Paris—uses the miso to marinade thick cuts of roasted bacon.
This condiment is also a bit of a status symbol. Eric C. Rath, a University of Kansas professor specializing in dietary cultures of premodern Japan, says that because miso improves with age, it traditionally carried a socio-economic heft among the warrior class. “If you want to demonstrate that you have wealth as a samurai, you bring out a three-year-old miso—it’s like bringing out an aged Bordeaux,” he said.
Another key element to Tohoku’s samurai diet is yukiwari (“snow-breaking”) natto soybean paste, which includes more salt and koji than the traditional version. Versions of the dish have been consumed since the 11th century; it has the texture of caramel and the pungency of a stinky cheese, and is meant to efficiently fill up your belly, restore warmth, and provide the energy for battle. (As a side bonus, it’s also a known-probiotic and immune system booster.) At Chimatsushima, Chef Irakawa serves yukiwari natto with a dollop of red beans and rice—then the whole dish is garnished with gold leaf, lotus root, wasabi, ginkgo nuts, seaweed jelly, and the Japanese citrus ponkan.
Tsukemono, or pickled vegetables, are the last pillar of a complete samurai diet. Given the lack of refrigeration, pickling helped the warriors eat vegetables out of season, and the brininess and crunch helped break up the monotony of rice. In Tohoku, the most common variety is made with daikon radishes that are smoldered over chestnut and cherry wood chips, then pickled in rice bran, salt, and sugar for several months. The result is called iburi gakko, or “wood-smoldered pickles,” and it’s more homey and smoky than your typical, vinegary cucumber.
In the Global Spotlight
Despite the broader attention, restaurateurs and other hospitality industry leaders have had trouble fully capitalizing on the region’s recent renown, says Elizabeth Andoh, author of Kibō: Recipes and Stories from Japan’s Tohoku. “To some extent, a shadow of concern still remains regarding the safety of Tohoku’s food and possible radiation contamination.” This sentiment persists, she says, despite Japan’s rigorous food-safety monitoring.