The Meaning of Rice

by Michael Booth

  Asakusa nori did indeed get its name because it was first farmed in Tokyo Bay, but it has always grown naturally in Izumi. ‘There is no doubt it is the best nori,’ Shimanaka says. ‘The flavour is stronger, the aroma carries for a long way, and when you eat it you can taste it all the way down your throat. You can tell good nori because it is soft and has small holes when you hold it up to the light. The moment you put it in your mouth it is very sweet, but it doesn’t stick. But in the last ten years it has been in decline. We don’t know for sure why but the biggest problem, I think, is climate.’

  The sea is getting warmer all the way up this busy volcanic coast of bays, peninsulas and islands, as far as Ariake Bay, the largest and most famous nori-producing area in all Japan. This rise in temperature is bad news because nori, even the hardy, commercially grown Susabi variety, struggles to germinate and grow if the water goes much above 15°Celsius. Asakusa nori is even more vulnerable. It is also more vulnerable to acid pollution, too, both from acid rain and the type of acid treatments used in susabi farming.

  ‘Asakusa nori is in danger of extinction, if it is not already extinct,’ says Shimanaka, turning to look me in the eye for the first time. ‘It is just not maturing like it should be. This year, for the first time ever, there has been nothing to harvest.’

  Asakusa nori production peaked eight years ago, and has been declining ever since. Though it typically fetches three times as much as susabi nori – ¥100 per sheet for Asakusa compared to ¥10–30 for susabi – its yield is much lower and Shimanaka fears that, with these new climate challenges, farmers are going to conclude that it is just not worth bothering any more.

  So why not just move production to a cooler part of Japan? It is not that simple. The western coast of Kyushu is perfect for nori, thanks not just to the climate and sea temperature here, but also the circulation of the water aided by the extreme tides – on Ariake Bay the difference between high and low tide can be as much as six metres. Around a hundred rivers flow into the Ariake Bay area too, which means the water’s nutrient composition is unusually rich and creates the perfect balance of salinity for the nori, which prefers less salty water. It is not, then, a case of upping sticks to Hokkaido.

  ‘I am not going to give up,’ says Shimanaka-san as we shake hands to say goodbye. ‘I am going to keep trying to grow Asakusa nori, I will try again next year.’

  Could the Japanese really let a food product as exceptional as this disappear without a fight? Few countries value excellence in their produce more, and no other people are more obsessed with perfection on their plates than the Japanese.

  My next stop is Uto, a larger coastal town further north in the next prefecture, Kumamoto. My ever-patient family decide they have had enough of nori for one day, and head for our hotel in nearby Kumamoto City, so off I go alone to meet Fumichi Yamamoto. He has spent half his eighty years researching all aspects of cultivating nori, and has invited along Yoshinari Fujiyama, another thickset boxer-type nori farmer, to help fill me in on the plight of Asakusa nori.

  We meet in the harbourside shed of Fujiyama’s company which is filled with vast incubation tanks, each with a large metal spindle suspended above to roll up the nets of oyster shells on which the young nori grows. There are stacks of mats for drying the seaweed, like the maki mats I use to make rolled sushi at home but made of green plastic; wooden box-frames for forming the sheets of nori; and electric fans for drying the freshly harvested leaves.

  ‘Yes, it is true, Asakusa nori is almost extinct,’ Yamamoto nods. ‘In the old days, it was the main type of nori harvested and it grew here and in Nagasaki and Saga Prefectures. But no one has managed to grow any this year. It is really delicious with a softer texture and longer lingering flavour. It melts in your mouth, I really hope we can get it going again, but I don’t think it is economical.’

  Susabi nori, on the other hand, is a reliable crop which can be harvested up to ten times in one season, compared to perhaps twice for Asakusa nori. Sales of susabi nori have grown 100 per cent since the late 1980s in line with the inexorable growth of the convenience-store onigiri. Susabi nori is stronger, so it doesn’t tear so easily, making it perfect for the mass production of these snacking rice balls. In a double whammy, just as the onigiri market has grown, the once common practice of giving high-quality nori as a gift has declined by 90 per cent, so, while total consumption of nori in Japan has actually increased slightly over the last thirty years, this is all accounted for by the cheaper, lower grade susabi variety.

  I wonder aloud whether the climate change that seems to have done for Asakusa nori might eventually wipe out susabi nori too?

  ‘It used to be that we could harvest for five months of the year, now that is down to four,’ says Fujiyama-san, a farmer for fifty years (I had guessed his age at around fifty, so this comes as something of a shock – it turns out that he is seventy-one). ‘At that rate, I don’t think all nori will completely disappear but the amount we harvest will definitely decrease. I worry about it constantly. The costs are getting very high, labour costs and machinery costs – a new nori boat costs forty million yen [£250,000], and young people aren’t interested in this kind of traditional food industry.’

  The farmers lead me across the street and over some railway tracks to the processing plant for Fujiyama’s company. The warehouse is almost completely filled with a gigantic blue machine into one end of which goes newly harvested, rinsed nori, roughly formed in trays into squares, and out of the other end three hours later come the familiar, dried papery nori sheets – 150,000 a day.

  I watch the machine in deafening action for a while until Fujiyama gets my attention. He is trying to say something.

  ‘Of course, you will be wanting to go and see mmmblleebm mumble?’ I can’t quite hear what he is saying but smile and nod.

  And, so, a five-minute drive later we arrive at the end of a natural promontory out in the bay where we climb a small, tree-covered hill to a Shinto shrine. At the top of the hill, I turn to look out at the bay which is covered with the wooden posts used for the nori nets. But there is something else here on the hill. In front of me is some kind of memorial. A granite monument with a brass relief featuring the bust of a Western woman. She is wearing round, wire-rimmed glasses; her hair is in a bun.

  The two men look at me expectantly. I look more closely at the memorial. It reads:

  IN MEMORY OF

  MADAME KATHLEEN

  MARY DREW, D.Sc.

  MRS WRIGHT BAKER

  (6 XI 1901–14 IX 1957)

  RESEARCH FELLOW IN

  THE UNIVERSITY OF

  MANCHESTER ENGLAND

  DISCOVERER OF THE

  CONCHOCELIS-PHASE

  OF PORPHYRA

  ERECTED in 1963

  I look back at the men, who now look at each other as if realising they must reassess the situation. They are going to have to explain. I am very glad they do because, behind the memorial lies a quite extraordinary tale.

  In 1949 a research fellow at Manchester University, a phycologist, or seaweed scientist, called Kathleen Drew-Baker, published a brief paper, ‘Conchocelis-phase in the life-history of Porphyra umbilicalis’. It was just a couple of paragraphs long, and appeared in the scientific journal Nature. While studying Porphyra growth, Drew-Baker noticed that what had previously been considered two distinct species of seaweed – Porphyra and Conchocelis – were in fact the same species. She observed one grow into the other in her petri dish. Big deal, you might think, but this discovery was to have massive consequences for a struggling industry and a starving people on the other side of the world because it turned out Drew-Baker had stumbled upon a method of cultivating nori on an industrial scale.

  The paper in Nature was picked up some months later by a Japanese scientist, Dr Sokichi Sagawa, from Kyushu. There were chronic food shortages in Japan at the time and many people had been relying on nori to supplement their diet, but that year had been a bad one for the nori harvest and no one knew why. Dre
w-Baker’s paper held the answer to more reliable and efficient nori cultivation because it solved the riddle of the early stages of its growth. Together with the local fisherman of Uto, Dr Sagawa set about implementing her new technique for growing nori spores on oyster shells. It revived the local nori industry within a season and ensured that, henceforth, crops would be more robust and reliable.

  Within a few years, nori production in Kumamoto had increased by 40 per cent. The locals nicknamed Drew-Baker ‘the Mother of the Sea’, and collected a sum of money to erect this memorial in the Sumiyoshi Shrine Park in 1963. They also planted an oak tree to symbolise England, in the shade of which I am now standing.

  Drew-Baker died in 1957 without ever making it to Japan and never earned a penny from her discovery, but more than half a century later the locals still hold a ceremony here every year on 14 April. Her old academic gown and cap are placed on the monument and they raise the Union Jack. Crowds of hundreds turn up, apparently. On the 100th anniversary of Drew-Baker’s birth in 2001, her son and daughter visited the memorial and learned how their mother is still remembered and revered in this part of Japan. Schoolchildren are taught about her discovery and the impact it had here. She is considered a great scientific heroine.

  ‘We appreciate her very much,’ says Fujiyama, the nori fisherman, and, for some reason, my mind drifts back to that pachinko parlour slogan we had passed earlier that morning.

  ‘Take your hat off to the past, but take your coat off to the future.’

  It suddenly makes a weird kind of sense, at least in terms of nori. The fishing community of Uto ‘take their hat off to the past’ every 14 April when they commemorate Drew-Baker, and as for the future? The future looks warmer. You might indeed want to take your coat off …

  Chapter 8

  Obama

  To get to Obama you have to take a ferry from Kumamoto City across the choppy waters of Shimabara Bay.

  On board the ferry, a fellow passenger beckons to us. My family and I look at each other and for some reason we all dutifully get up and follow the young man, who is dressed in a bomber jacket and jeans, out onto the rear deck of the ferry. By now the ship has picked up a decent lick of speed so we are surprised to see a flock of seagulls flying fast and low right along with us, almost close enough to touch. Other passengers are feeding them packets of biscuits and the man kindly hands us a packet of our own and gestures that we should feed them too. Emil is our sanctioned go-between when it comes to wildlife, so he goes first, squealing as the birds’ beaks nip at his fingers.

  Obama is a popular holiday resort, named long before the former US president was elected, of course, although there is now a statue there in his honour and he features on the welcome sign. It turns out to be a cosy seafront town, its promenade lined with palm trees and hotels. With the mountains looming behind, there is a touch of the Italian Riviera about it, but Obama is an onsen town, so hot that steam spirals from the manhole covers on the streets and in the seafront park you can bathe your feet, or hard-boil eggs if you prefer, in sulphurous spring water. Best of all, nearby on the seafront is Mushigamaya, an onsen restaurant.

  This turns out to be little more than a pine-wood shack, but it is the wooden shack of my dreams, and the reason why Obama is my new favourite town in all of Japan.

  Mushigamaya may not have crystal chandeliers and linen tablecloths, it may not have an obsequious maitre d’, a celebrity chef in the kitchen, or an impressive wine list, but it does serve truly amazing seafood, much of it still living until cooked to order, for about the same price as a visit to McDonald’s in Leicester Square.

  We select our lunch from an edible aquarium: abalone writhing indignantly in their upturned shells; twitching, glistening shrimp; scallops with vivid orange and purple shells which open slowly as if squinting at the world and then slam shut with an irritated hiss; and oysters and sea snails the size of my fist. We plunk them all in our plastic shopping basket and take them outside where a couple of young men are manning a range of steaming wooden hatches. They pull a rope to open one of the hatches, letting out a waft of eggy-smelling steam, set an electric timer and lower colanders full of the cross but doomed seafood into the hellish, earth’s core waters, heated by magma deep underground as it makes its way to the sea from Mount Unzen high above us.

  A few minutes later, the seafood is pulled up from the steamy depths of hell, no longer twitching. Served at a table inside, with a splash of soy sauce, it tastes like a fantasy of the ocean’s bounty, perfectly seasoned from the salty steam. Admittedly, some of our party feel a little queasy about the process of selecting our lunch and having it killed in this way, but it doesn’t stop them eating it. Some even return for seconds, and thirds.

  Obama had recently become quite well known in Japan thanks to Chanponman, a character in a TV series based on the story of a fictional local tourist authority employee who is determined to make the town famous for a particular type of Chinese-style noodle soup eaten here in Nagasaki Prefecture, called Champon. There is a picture of the actor in character outside the restaurant by the small enclave of food stalls and shops that you find at every tourist destination in Japan; he is dressed in the classic superhero vernacular with tight Lycra suit and cape, except that he also has a large bowl of noodles strapped to his head.

  You encounter this kind of thing often in Japan: a cultural phenomenon so peculiar and offbeat that it stops you in your tracks. In a similar vein is Anpanman, one of Japan’s most popular cartoon characters of all time. Anpanman is made out of cakey, adzuki bean paste-filled bread. If he encounters a sad or hungry child, he simply tears off a piece of his face and gives it to them – something I always think seems more likely to induce trauma than bring comfort. His enemy is Baikinman, or Bacteria Man, whose aim is to enslave the earth and all its people through the power of dirt.

  This kind of cultural oddness isn’t just limited to fictional or cartoon characters; indeed, aside from natural disasters, the international media’s reporting on Japan seems to focus almost entirely on other such freaky cultural phenomena, like the vending machines that sell women’s used underwear, or the passing fads like eyeball licking, on which the world’s media reported a few years back. Both of those stories were nonsense, by the way. I suspect that, often, these kinds of rumours start when three people try something weird, once, in Harajuku, the fad-hungry teenage zone in Tokyo, and do so in the presence of a blogger or photographer knowing full well that the international press will pick up on it. Let’s be charitable and assume that’s what happened with Ganguro, the disturbing schoolgirl blackface trend of the 1990s. But occasionally the trends are both true and genuinely Japan-wide, like the comparatively recent tradition of eating KFC on Christmas Eve – a result of a successful marketing push by the industrial chicken fryer – or the horrifically graphic and violent manga porn read openly by men on public transport, which you do see everywhere if you are the type to read over people’s shoulders (and if you are, then this ought to cure you).

  I have to say, though, that having now myself been turned into a cartoon characterfn1 – a character which, at various times, has been depicted flying naked through the sky in a tamago kake gohan (raw egg on rice)-induced ecstasy, and orbiting outer space with the ‘Ramen King’, among other indignities – I am now much more accepting of things like Chanponman and his noodle hat, or Anpanman with his edible face. ‘Sure,’ I think to myself. ‘Of course, there is a noodle superhero. Why not?’

  It is with this open-minded approach that I invite you to join us as we venture forth from Obama to our next stop, Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park nearby in Nagasaki Prefecture, which I suspect might well be a strong candidate for the most perplexingly bonkers place on Planet Earth.

  Huis Ten Bosch is a full-scale evocation of an eighteenth-century Dutch city replete with canals, a full-sized replica of Huis Ten Bosch Palace – Holland’s answer to Versailles – windmills, (of course, there’s loads of windmills), as well as Renaissance-style redbri
ck townhouses and fields of tulips. About the only thing it lacks to complete the Amsterdam vibe are coffee shops selling pre-rolled joints and ladies of the night beckoning from red-lit windows. It does, though, have several hotels, including one staffed by robots, as well as a truly terrifying horror zone, and even a residential district where actual people actually live. What’s more, quite by chance, in Huis Ten Bosch on the day we visit we even get to experience the very latest bizarre Japanese cultural phenomenon to have captured the global media’s attention: Kabe Don.

  This happens in the Chocolate House, which has a five-metre-high chocolate fountain and serves chocolate pizza. It is also temporary home to a tall young Japanese man dressed in a dinner suit and sporting the layered, spiky, androgynous hairstyle beloved of Japanese boy bands. Right now, he has my wife pinned to the wall. He is caressing her cheek with his left hand and leaning in as if to kiss her. He pulls back, unwraps a small chocolate, looks deep into her eyes and places it between her lips. Seeming to forget that she is a strong, independent woman of a certain age, my wife blushes and giggles. If she had a fan, I think there is a good chance she would now be fluttering it distractedly.

  She is experiencing the full romantic force of Kabe Don. ‘Kabe’ means ‘wall’ and ‘Don’ is onomatopoeic, it is the noise the man’s hand makes as it comes to rest, with a thunk, on the wall beside the woman’s head as he leans in to seduce her. The practice originated in the realm of manga and seems, from where I am standing (a little tense next to Asger and Emil, who can barely breathe with embarrassment), to teeter perilously between assertive courtship ritual and non-violent sex attack. But Kabe Don has gained cultural currency in Japan as a ‘thing’ over the last few months, to the extent that it is being presented as just another of the many visitor experiences here in Huis Ten Bosch on the day we visit, which happens to be Valentine’s Day.