Kikkoman Corporation

Every autumn and winter, like clockwork, the northern rivers of Japan fill with countless salmon returning to their original home after several years of roaming the vast Pacific.

The salmon, or sake as they are called in Japanese, make their way upstream until, approaching the water’s source, they reach pebbled riverbeds. Here the females deposit their eggs and the males quickly void their milt, and fertilization takes place. After spawning, the salmon eventually die. By spring, the newly hatched fry are ready to travel down the river to the broad, briny ocean. This new generation of young salmon leaves on their long journey, not to return for another four or five years.

Salmon migrate upriver with an unerring instinct that always brings them back to the river where they were born. The known species of the family Salmonidae in Japan include shiro-zake (dog salmon), masunosuke (king salmon), Karafuto masu (pink salmon) and sakura masu (masu salmon), the most common of which is the dog salmon. They all somewhat vary from one another in feeding and other behavioral habits.

Successful Catch

Knowing that the salmon never fail to return to the river of their birth for spawning, the Japanese long ago developed various methods of catching them. They learned how to take large numbers of the fish on their way upriver using fish weirs or by setting gill nets, or they caught them individually, with various hooked or barbed implements.

They also found that they could catch salmon off the coast before the fish reached the mouths of the rivers. In recent years, however, there has been growing international concern that catching fish far off the coast seriously disturbs the salmon’s natural habits and rhythm of life; since 1991, offshore drift-net salmon fishing has been banned. Along the coast, however, you can still see fixed-shore nets.

The Ainu, Japan’s indigenous people, were strongly dependent on salmon as a food source, and at the start of every fishing season, they performed special rituals to ensure a successful catch. The catch was highly organized: as the salmon ascended the streams, the Ainu marked off different territories over the spawning area for each of their various regional groups. In the Hidaka district, in southern Hokkaido, for example, each of these territories extended some 90 to 400 meters (about 100 yards to a quarter-mile). This custom of demarcating territories was a way to maintain the fishing grounds of specific groups while preventing others from catching salmon indiscriminately.

The Versatile Salmon

Salmon is a versatile and delicious fish—no wonder it has been prized since ancient times. As long ago as the Nara and Heian periods (eighth to twelfth centuries), salmon was transported to the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto from several points on the coast of the Japan Sea. According to the Engishiki, an early tenth-century compilation of court regulations, we can appreciate how developed the salmon food culture had become at that time. The document tells us that salmon caught along the coastal areas from present-day Fukui to Tottori prefectures was sent raw to Kyoto.

Other products sent to the capital from Fukui, Ishikawa and Niigata included suwayari (strips of salted salmon), hizu (head cartilage), sewata (salted and processed innards), “salmon sushi”, and kogomori (salted salmon roe stuffed inside salted salmon), among others. Hizu literally means “ice head, ” probably because in form and color the head cartilage looks like ice. “salmon sushi” apparently referred to salmon fermented with rice and salt (narezushi). These products were used as gifts for the imperial household or as tax payments in kind. The salmon food culture of that time is familiar to us, for, transmitted from generation to generation, it remains almost unchanged today.

Salmon can be prepared and eaten in myriad ways, often with distinct regional variations. In the north, there are one-pot dishes such as Ishikari-nabe and akiaji-nabe in Hokkaido; Akita’s sanpei-jiru (flavored with “fish soy sauce,” the product of fermenting small fish with salt); and dongara-jiru in Niigata. These pleasures of the table from the snowy districts of Japan warm both the body and the soul.

The variety in salmon cuisine, whether gourmet or plain fare, goes on and on: there is ruibe (frozen salmon eaten raw after thawing), mefun (salt-cured salmon kidney), salmon steak, canned salmon, marinated salmon, ikura-donburi (rice topped with roe seasoned with soy sauce), gunkan-maki (sushi roll with seasoned roe), and sake-ben (boxed meal of rice featuring grilled salmon). Like the skin of globefish, sea bream and eel, salmon skin is eaten parboiled and dressed with vinegar. Besides food, salmon skin also has been used to make shoes and clothing.

The Enduring Salmon

In certain places throughout the Kanto region and northward, it is a tradition to present salted salmon as a year-end or New Year’s gift. This custom originated in the Edo period (1603-1868), when samurai would bring salted salmon packed in woven rice-straw wrapping to the shogunate. Eventually, the Edo (old Tokyo) townspeople took up the practice as well, and today many continue this practice each year.

Because salmon is so deeply rooted in their food culture, the Japanese are concerned about maintaining a stable and abundant supply of the fish. One effort launched in Hokkaido in 1876 was a project to raise salmon eggs artificially. Another eighteenth-century scheme took place in present-day Niigata Prefecture, which involved barricading the Miomote River some five kilometers upstream from its mouth after the fish had ascended and spawned. This system was intended to ensure a good catch without jeopardizing the next generation of salmon.

In the past, salmon returned to many regions to make their annual run up rivers and streams, but industrial and economic development has taken a heavy toll. Water pollution and engineering projects to control the nation’s rivers have made many, if not most, rivers unnavigable for the salmon. During the country’s rapid economic growth after 1945, the salmon catch began to decline, even in Hokkaido. Faced with an impending crisis, a “Come Back Salmon” campaign was initiated in 1975 to stock the Toyohira River with salmon fry. The success of this campaign inspired the launch of similar movements across the country.

The relationship between the Japanese and salmon goes back for centuries. The fish is such an immediate presence in the milieu of everyday life that one cannot fail to notice it. That presence should be a reminder of those who devoted themselves to farm-raising salmon in the past; of the tough, awesome life force that empowers the lifetime journey of these fish; and of the gratitude we surely owe to the bounty of nature.

Author’s Profile

Tomoya Akimichi is one of Japan’s leading maritime anthropologists. He is currently a professor at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, where his main areas of study focus on Southeast Asia, Oceania and Japan. He is the author of various books and articles on fishing and maritime culture.