Delicious Fermentation

Ioku: Mr. Namae, as a French cuisine chef, you have a profound interest in fermentation technology, don't you? Namae: My mentor is a man named Michel Bras, who runs a restaurant in the French countryside. It's a restaurant standing all alone on a hill in a remote area with nothing around it, yet people from all over Europe drive there in Porsches and Ferraris. Seeing that, I wondered what it was that fascinated people so much. My mentor often told me, "Cook and live with sincerity toward the place where you stand, the place where you were born and raised." He would also sternly ask, "You were born and raised in Japan, and Japan has various deep cultures, including its cuisine, so why do you leave your country to come and learn French cuisine?" I was so fascinated by him that I have been constantly asking myself this question. After completing my training and opening my own restaurant, I revisited that question and decided to relearn Japan—to study again the things I had ignored until then. Ioku: That's where your encounter with fermented foods happened. Namae: Yes, I inevitably came into contact with many fermented foods. I would be asked many questions about Japanese fermented foods by overseas chefs and food specialists. I felt very ashamed that I couldn't answer them. So I studied again and visited sake breweries, soy sauce breweries, miso breweries, vinegar breweries, and the production areas of "shottsuru" and "ishiru" as much as possible. Even now, I am still learning many things. Also, interacting with overseas chefs through fermentation has reignited my passion. Since they don't have a set theory, they just pick up the technical aspects and start creating their own original fermented foods. Many things that never existed in Japan before are being born there. Koizumi: I see, that's interesting. Namae: Japanese fermentation technology is now starting to spread and take root worldwide, becoming a part of global originality. I feel that a very interesting scene is emerging.

Ioku: Since my student days, I have been studying the economic development of the Edo period. At that time, it was often generally said that the Edo period was a stagnant era, but around my student days, professors like Akira Hayami and Nobuhiko Nakai began to say that the Japanese economy developed considerably during the Edo period. Then, when I investigated various things using the Kanto region as a field, I found that agricultural production had indeed increased significantly in Kanto by the late Edo period. As a result, people who previously had their hands full just paying land taxes and feeding themselves gained some leeway and began to process surplus agricultural products to make something. In that case, the Kanto region has a geological loam layer, which is very suitable for the production of soybeans and wheat. That's why the soy sauce brewing industry developed. I think soy sauce is a truly mysterious seasoning. Standardly, it takes about a year to make. It also involves promoting fermentation by diligently stirring it every day. Among the world's ethnic groups, there are probably few others like the Japanese who spend a whole year diligently making a seasoning every day. Koizumi: In the case of Japan, I think that style of making things diligently spread from around the Edo period. Also, Japan is a culture of wood. There were wooden barrels (oke). Barrels made it possible to age soy sauce, miso, and sake for a long time. The center of that Japanese fermentation culture is koji. Soy sauce koji mold, miso koji mold, sake koji mold, and so on. However, koji mold doesn't ferment immediately; the deliciousness comes out through long fermentation. Then lactic acid bacteria and yeast come in, and it ferments slowly. Through such aging, the taste becomes very good.

Koizumi: One characteristic of fermented foods is that they are very stable foods and hardly ever rot. This is a very mysterious thing even when considered as a microbiologist. For example, if you leave milk out, it rots quickly, right? In summer, it's gone in just one day. But if you add lactic acid bacteria to make yogurt, it doesn't rot. Even with natto, you eat boiled soybeans as they are after being propagated with natto bacteria. Even if you leave it out, it hardly ever rots. In the era before refrigerators, people preserved food by fermenting it. Second, fermentation significantly increases nutritional value. Microorganisms create various things like vitamins and amino acids. Moreover, it is said recently that it even enhances immune activity. That is how fermentation creates things that are very good for the body. Third, the taste and smell are indescribable. In my case, the smell of kusaya just makes me tingle (laughs). So, the taste and smell are characteristic. This cannot be created by human power alone. To add one more thing, fermented foods are the ultimate natural foods. In other words, there are no additives. Even with miso, you ferment soybeans, koji, and salt and eat it as is. There are no additives, chemical seasonings, or synthetics. That's why I think it's the gentlest food for the body. Japan is the country with the most fermented foods in the world. This is also related to the climate; for example, in East Asia, there are China, the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, and Japan. In Southeast Asia, countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos all have fermented foods. However, only Japan uses koji mold. In Korea, China, and Southeast Asia, they all use a mold called Rhizopus for fermentation. That's the difference. Ioku: So koji is unique to Japan. Koizumi: There are two types of koji mold: yellow koji mold and black koji mold. These are only used in Japan and are hardly found in other countries. In 2006, koji mold was designated as the national mold. It's the country's mold. Yellow koji mold is used to make miso, soy sauce, sake, mirin, rice vinegar, and so on. Black koji mold is used only for shochu. Okinawa's awamori and Kagoshima's sweet potato shochu all use black koji mold. In 2013, the International Society for Microbiology named the black koji mold from Okinawa and Kagoshima "Aspergillus luchuensis," after "Ryukyu."

Ioku: When studying the history of soy sauce, I ultimately think about what Japan is and what the Japanese people are. I feel that soy sauce is something very characteristic of the Japanese. Even watching the craftsmen making it, they seem to be in dialogue with the koji mold. They make it while worrying every day so that it ferments evenly and doesn't ferment too much or too slowly. Koizumi: Exactly, a craftsman is like an orchestra conductor. Ioku: I feel that its delicacy and diligence make it a seasoning that fits the Japanese people very well. Koizumi: Nowadays, if you go abroad and say "shoyu" or "soy bean sauce," they might not understand, but if you say "Kikkoman," they do (laughs). Ioku: I've heard that koji mold is a very miraculous fungus; while most relatives of koji mold are toxic, only koji mold is non-toxic. Koizumi: Aspergillus oryzae is the yellow koji mold, and while Japan is a country of rice, "oryzae" comes from rice (oryza). It means a koji mold that grows well on rice. However, among the same Aspergillus relatives, there is Aspergillus flavus. This is a deadly poison among poisons, creating a very strong carcinogenic substance called aflatoxin. Taxonomically they are both Aspergillus, but the Japanese Aspergillus does not produce poison. This is one of the characteristics of Japanese koji. Another clear point is that only in Japanese koji does the mold grow separately on each individual grain of cereal. This is called "bara-koji" (scattered koji). However, from the Korean Peninsula onwards, all koji outside of Japan is "mochi-koji" (cake koji). In other words, it is shaped like a dumpling, a rice cake, or a brick. So, it is completely different in that respect as well.

When did Japanese people first notice the existence of these "microbes"?

In terms of microorganisms, it is said that the first time was in the 17th century when Leeuwenhoek in the Netherlands made the first microscope and found that there were microscopic creatures, but in Japan, there was a business selling microorganisms 400 years before that. This was during the Heian period. What was it? It was the seed koji makers (tane-koji-ya). Of course, the word "microorganism" didn't exist yet, but there was an awareness that it was something mysterious. If you leave steamed rice out, mold grows on it. That is called koji. The definition of koji is mold growing on grain.

So they had noticed it quite a long time ago.

To begin with, koji appears in the "Harima no Kuni Fudoki" from the Nara period. There is a shrine called Iwa Shrine in what is now Shiso City, Hyogo Prefecture, and the "Harima no Kuni Fudoki" compiled there says something amazing. Steamed rice was offered to the gods. It became old, and mold grew on it. That was called "kabitachi." "Kabitachi" became "kamutachi," then "kamuchi," then "kauji," and finally "koji." So, the existence of koji was already there in the Nara period. Only mold comes to the rice cakes offered on the family altar. If you boil rice, mold won't come because there is too much moisture. It won't come to parched rice either. Mold only comes to steamed rice. That is the beginning of koji. If you steam rice and leave it, mold will grow and it will become koji, but it was actually the late Heian period when only the good koji was selected from among them. If you sprinkle ash on it, miscellaneous bacteria are eliminated and only the koji mold emerges. I believe this was the first pure isolation in human history. Then it is passed through a silk sieve. The mesh of a silk sieve is just the right size for koji mold spores to fall through. Collecting those, seed koji makers began selling them to sake breweries and miso makers. This was the early Muromachi period. It's amazing that Japanese people were doing such things so long ago. In that sense, I truly feel that Japan is indeed a country of Aspergillus oryzae.

Is the involvement of French and Italian chefs with fermentation technology different from that of Japanese chefs?

Yes. For Japanese people, soy sauce is recognized as something that has existed since birth, but for foreigners, the technology and process of fermentation are very unique and new. In English, it feels "hip" and "cool."

I see.

Also, the countries trying to incorporate fermentation technology are not France, Italy, or Spain, which have been the centers of European culinary hegemony, but rather remote areas, and often regions where fermentation—or rather preservation—was necessary. In Nordic countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, they are successfully synergizing Japanese fermentation technology with their own original preservation techniques. Of course, the ingredients are different; basically, they can't grow soybeans or rice in their land. So, for example, they dry green peas and make miso from them, or make koji from barley and create fermentation ingredients from that. Also, they take things that are high in protein but low in fat and make original soy sauce and miso. An interesting example is soy sauce using grasshoppers and locusts. They make soy sauce using only koji started with barley, salt, water, and grasshoppers. Koizumi: That's interesting.

It's a kind of soy sauce that ordinary Japanese people wouldn't think of.

The story of locust soy sauce just came up, but actually, the Engishiki (a book of laws and regulations) from the Heian period states that there were four "hishio-ya," or soy sauce shops, in the city of Kyoto. They were koku-hishio (grain soy sauce), uo-hishio (fish soy sauce), shishi-hishio (meat soy sauce), and kusa-hishio (vegetable soy sauce). At that time, Japanese people were already making four types of soy sauce. When I found this, I thought that people of the Heian period might have been more gourmet than modern people. Meat soy sauce no longer exists today, but in the Heian period, it was made with duck meat. The last one to remain was meat soy sauce made with streaked shearwaters on Mikurajima, one of the Izu Islands, which I believe existed until around 1952. We have now started making pork soy sauce in Ishigaki City, Okinawa. Everyone is very interested, and when used in ramen soup, it's incredibly delicious.

During the Edo period, when Japan was closed to the outside world, a small amount of soy sauce was exported from Nagasaki to the Netherlands. There is a story that it reached France and King Louis XIV was very pleased with it. Since then, stories remain that Japanese soy sauce was used as a secret ingredient among court chefs in Europe, albeit in small quantities. Today, Kikkoman's production volume overseas is already greater than its domestic production in Japan.

It feels like soy sauce equals Japan. I think it has become completely established as a Japanese taste. However, I also feel that many people might not understand what soy sauce actually is. I wonder how many people know that it is made through slow fermentation and becomes soy sauce after aging.

What is the position of soy sauce for foreign chefs?

When you go to the kitchens of restaurants in Paris, Kikkoman is always there. However, Europeans use Southeast Asian nam pla as well as Japanese soy sauce and miso. In that sense, they might group them all together as Asian seasonings. There is a sense that they are trying to master various Asian fermentation technologies, including Japanese soy sauce, Korean ganjang, and the fish preservation methods of Laos and Cambodia, according to their needs. Within that, they are thinking about where to focus the deliciousness. If anything, I think Europe has had a strong tendency to prioritize fats and oils until now. On the other hand, Asia emphasizes amino acids. How to control amino acids—this is also a way of engaging with soy sauce. And there is a strong interest in how to make delicious things using water, and it feels like Europe is also shifting from fat to water.

In Japan, soy sauce is one of the brewing industries, and sake, soy sauce, miso, vinegar, and mirin are all part of the brewing industry. "Brewing industry" would be translated as Brewing Industry in English, but for foreigners, "Brewing" seems to have the image of only making alcohol.

Yes, in Japan, everything can be expressed with just "jozo" (brewing). Tokyo University of Agriculture still has a Department of Brewing Science. About 20 years ago, when I was a professor, there was talk of changing the name to Department of Food Industry or Department of Food Chemistry because "Brewing" sounded old, in order to attract more students, but I strongly opposed it. Since the word "jozo" is unique to Japan, I argued that it must be preserved as a traditional Japanese culture. Now, there is only one Department of Brewing Science left in Japan.

I once saw Mr. Koizumi on TV eating 40-year-old carp narezushi from China. Is it okay to eat something like that?

I tried eating it sliced thinly, and it was completely cheese. Everyone says Japan didn't have cheese, but that's nonsense. In Japan, cheese is narezushi. It's just that the word "cheese" didn't exist. Cheese is animal milk, right? It's high in protein and fat. For example, funazushi from Omi. This is also protein and fat. So, if you make cheese with lactic acid bacteria isolated from narezushi, you can make perfectly fine cheese and yogurt. Conversely, you can also make narezushi using cheese bacteria. In other words, narezushi is what was made in Japan by fermenting animal protein to create the same thing as cheese. Japan didn't have cows, but there were plenty of freshwater fish, and those were fermented. Initially, it was probably for preservation purposes. So, when analyzed, narezushi and cheese have almost the same components. The smell is also similar. Especially "hon-narezushi," where mackerel is pickled for a long time, is exactly like intensely smelly cheeses like Gorgonzola, Stilton, or Epicure cheese. In Shingu City, Wakayama Prefecture, there is a restaurant called Toho Chaya. They are currently selling 30-year-old saury narezushi. It's not that expensive. When I have students taste it with a spoon while blindfolded, 100 out of 100 answer, "It's melted cheese." If you eat this on a cracker or something, it really feels like blue cheese. You can do that with saury.

I'd like to try that once.

That's why fermented foods can be preserved indefinitely. So, why can they be preserved once fermented? There are two reasons. One is that when microorganisms ferment, that place becomes their habitat, so they create inhibitors that prevent other bacteria from proliferating. These are called antibiotics. And the other is that the microorganisms themselves possess elements that prevent rotting. For example, in the case of lactic acid bacteria, when they create lactic acid, it becomes acidic, and other bacteria cannot come there. The same goes for natto. This fermentation technology is also used in medical sciences. Without fermentation, surgery would be impossible. Antibiotics are things created by microorganisms. If you don't administer antibiotics and perform surgery, the incision will fester.

There are various fermented foods all over the world, but are there any that make you think, "This is amazing"?

What I think is the rarest fermented food in the world is the rice-bran-pickled pufferfish ovaries from Ishikawa Prefecture. Pufferfish ovaries contain a deadly poison called tetrodotoxin. This tetrodotoxin is 180 times more toxic than potassium cyanide, and normally, you would die just by licking it a little. However, these rice-bran pickles have been made since the Edo period and are still commonly sold today. They are made in a place called Mikawa, Hakusan City, and it takes three years to remove the poison before they can be eaten. Pufferfish ovaries are large, but when you pickle them in salt, the salt removes the moisture, so they become much smaller. After pickling in salt for about half a year to release the moisture, they solidify to some extent. Then, putting them in fresh water allows for desalination. But the poison is still not removed. So, next, they are pickled in rice-bran miso and left for three years. Then, the poison disappears. This is sold as a product. I have never heard of anyone dying from eating this. However, there is know-how in the way it's made, so do not try to imitate it.

Why is the poison removed?

It's decomposed by microorganisms after all. In one gram of rice-bran miso, there are about 180 million lactic acid bacteria. Pufferfish ovaries have a thin membrane like mentaiko. That membrane gets damaged during the salting process. To a single microorganism, a single lactic acid bacterium, that damage is as large as the Tokyo Dome. Microorganisms enter the ovary through such damage and proliferate. Since they don't have blood vessels or blood, poison doesn't matter to them. They take the chemical substance called tetrodotoxin into their bodies and live by decomposing it into ammonia, water, and carbon dioxide. I call this detoxification fermentation. This detoxification fermentation is truly unique to Japanese rice-bran-pickled pufferfish ovaries. It absolutely exists nowhere else in the world.

It smells like rice-bran miso, like cheese, doesn't it?

It's hard, but when you cut it open, the beautiful ovary is packed with tiny grains like herring roe. You can sprinkle it over rice and eat it, or have it as chazuke or yuzuke. The acidity, umami, and smell of this ovary—I think it would be interesting to use it as a secret ingredient in cooking.

If rice-bran-pickled pufferfish ovaries are the Yokozuna of the East, the Yokozuna of the West is kiviak. It's a fermented food made by the Inuit.

First, they catch a large seal of about 200 kilograms, remove the internal organs and meat, and leave the skin. Inside that, they stuff about 200 to 300 little auks. They bury it in the ground, cover it with soil, place many stones on top, and let it ferment for three years.

The reason for placing many stones on top is to prevent bears and Arctic wolves from coming and digging it up to eat. After three years, they dig it up. Since about 300 birds were stuffed in without even removing their feathers, they come out fermented just as they were. This is intensely smelly. To the point where you'd think there's nothing else this smelly.

That's quite a large scale (laughs).

As for how to eat it, you take out a bird, put your mouth to its anus, squeeze the body hard, and suck it out. Since the body fluids are also fermented and gooey, the internal organs and meat come into your mouth all sticky. I heard that Naomi Uemura loved this kiviak.

Why do they eat such a thing? Because the Inuit cannot cultivate vegetables, they cannot get vitamins. Since vitamins cannot be made in the human body, they must be taken from the outside. The intestinal bacteria of walruses and seals create many vitamins, so they eat the contents of those intestines attached to raw meat like birds. I think they eventually invented kiviak. When you analyze kiviak, it's a mass of vitamins.

Besides sucking it out like that, they also keep it frozen as a seasoning. When thawed and squeezed hard, a gooey paste like bean jam comes out. The meat and internal organs have fermented and become gooey. They eat it by attaching it to caribou or reindeer meat.

Did you eat it too, Mr. Koizumi?

Yes, I did. Anyway, it's smelly! As for the taste, in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, there is a sausage made by putting blood into sheep intestines, and it has that sticky texture you get when you boil and eat that. However, the smell is intense.

A fermented dish often cited as being smelly is surströmming from Finland.

The canned food from hell (laughs). That one is also amazing. It's fermented herring, but because it's so smelly, there are three warnings when opening the can: "1. Never open it inside a house," "2. The person opening it should wear something they don't mind throwing away," and the third is, even when opening it outside, "Make sure there is no one downwind" (laughs).

When we checked at a Tokyo Institute of Technology lab, the odor level of natto was about 470. Uncooked kusaya was about 680, and grilled kusaya was about 1,200. For reference, my socks are about 120 (laughs). But when you pop open a can of surströmming, it hits about 12,000.

That's practically a hazardous substance (laughs).

That's what makes fermentation so interesting. However, the smell of fermented foods is somehow attractive. Whether it's kusaya or natto, it's the same. If natto didn't have that smell, I don't think anyone would feel like eating it at all. After all, that kind of smell is actually something like the original scent of human beings.

For example, you have people who are a bit slovenly—those who don't take a bath for a week or two. Similarly, there is such a thing as a "slovenly smell." It's the smell of things like narezushi or natto.

To begin with, humans didn't always take baths every day. The origin of humanity is that kind of smell. So, I think of it as something like my own hometown (laughs).

Living that way might actually be more human. Smelly people might be healthier (laughs).

There is research suggesting that if we become too clean, we can't live as long. Perhaps we should return to being a bit more wild.

Connecting to what Mr. Koizumi said, I feel that modern civilization has become quite detached from nature. The concept of "culture" is how humans face and interact with that nature.

We tend to think of culture as art or systems, but apart from that, I think there is a perspective of how humans find a compromise with nature. Therefore, I believe that cultivating microbes is also a form of culture.

Exactly.

Even in the city, if you have fermented things nearby, you can find a small piece of nature there.

When living in a very clean, sterile building in the city center, it's difficult to be conscious of our relationship with living things. But if you have a nukadoko (rice bran bed) or your own homemade miso nearby, you see its appearance, aroma, and taste change every day.

That is truly a culture, and it makes us feel a connection with nature. Fermentation exists there, a medium is created through fermentation, and delicious things are born.

When we say "delicious food," there's an image of it being pieced together like a plastic model, but that's not it. I think delicious food starts with an environment, and then uses the ultimate technology of fermentation to create that culture. I feel that is the entrance to the connection with nature that humans perceive as "delicious."

I see. The act of cultivating is itself culture. When you watch what these microorganisms do, it feels profoundly mystical. For example, lactic acid bacteria, natto bacteria, and acetic acid bacteria are tiny things only about 1/2000th of a millimeter, yet they have the same bodily functions as humans.

All their genes are already built into those tiny bodies. They take in nutrients, metabolize them, create energy, and even give birth to offspring. Just the fact that such things are programmed into such tiny life forms feels very mysterious. It's fascinating that a collection of these beings brings us miso, soy sauce, and sake.

In our daily lives, we often focus on things we can see or perceive with our five senses. Consequently, things that are invisible or cannot be smelled or touched are often overlooked. Conversely, for me, being able to connect with that invisible world is very romantic.

It might sound cliché, but I feel it's close to conceptual things like love. Our daily lives exist while being protected by such things.

Microorganisms can, of course, be seen under a microscope and pursued chemically, but the way we interact with bacteria in daily life is close to something conceptual that corrects human life. It's like being protected by an invisible force.

Microorganisms create delicious things, but in some cases, they can even kill people.

There are good bacteria and bad bacteria. Bad bacteria include spoilage bacteria that rot food and pathogens that cause disease. These are different from fermentation bacteria.

Good bacteria include natto bacteria, lactic acid bacteria, acetic acid bacteria, yeast, and koji mold—humans only cherish this group. Though they are invisible, humans can distinguish and choose to use them. I think that skillfulness is also part of the wonder of fermentation.

Fermentation is primarily the process of breaking down large things. It's not making large things larger, but breaking them down into smaller pieces.

If we apply that to human activity, when we eat, we put large things in our mouths and break them down through saliva, gastric juices, and intestinal absorption. This makes me feel like I am also performing fermentation. What the bacteria are doing and what I am doing are actually very similar.

That's true. There is much we can learn from microorganisms.

The technology of fermentation seems like it will be a major hint when thinking about the future of cuisine.

I want to trace back further into the Asian culinary culture that Japanese people originally originated from. I believe we can see things there that connect to the present and the future. As an Asian myself, I want to utilize the ideas born from that in my cooking. To put it a bit grandly, it would be a post-colonial way of being for cuisine.