Shave It, and It Smelled of Treasure

The world these days is convenient to the point of cheating.

One shake from a little bottle. Or a splash of some brown liquid. That alone, and any soup you like turns quietly, smoothly good. Instant dashi — soup stock in a packet, they call it. Even a child can conjure that "good taste" now. But where that "good taste" actually comes from — probably nobody stops to wonder anymore.

I knew that "good taste" back when it still had no name.

A fish, hard as a club, hard as wood, shaved with a blade — shak, shak. And down flutter pale pink curls, like flower petals. Drop them into hot water and the water takes on a scent beyond describing, and a deep taste that lingers far back on the tongue. Katsuobushi, it is called: a bonito dried until it rings like a stick of timber.

Why should so much taste come out of a thing like a hard chip of wood? These days, of course, I understand the reasoning. The flesh of the fish is smoked, and dried, and then — mold is deliberately put upon it, and it is left to wither. The mold draws out the last of the water and the fat, and leaves nothing behind but the taste, packed tight. And then you set it against the broth of kombu, the broad sea kelp. Together, the two raise up a "good taste" many times stronger than either one alone.

...Well. All of that is learning that came in a later age, when the scholars gave it difficult names and explained it to us.

The craftsmen I met on the shore of Tosa knew none of that reasoning. They only had what their hands had learned from their grandfathers' day, and this is what they said:

"You've got to let the mold come on it, proper. Else the taste never runs clear."

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Summer of Kaei 3 — 1850. The rule of the Edo shogun was drawing toward its close. I was walking through a fishing town in Tosa called Usa, salt and small wares slung over my shoulder.

The smell of smoke hung over the whole beach. Along the water's edge stood a row of huts, black with soot, and inside them they were burning oak or beech and smoking the split bodies of bonito. That smoke had soaked into every corner of the town.

I had my wares spread out when a young man came bursting from one of the huts, the color gone from his face. In both arms he carried an armful of rough, knotted fish, just out of the smoke.

"Master! Master, it's ruined — the mold's got in. Blue mold, all over the good sticks. It's the damp that did it. Damn it all, they've gone rotten, the lot of them. Nothing for it but to throw them—"

The young man's voice was half in tears. Days and days of work had gone into those fish, the smoking, the drying, to bring them this far. And now the mold had come and spoiled everything — so he must have thought.

But then.

Out of the back of the hut came the master, ambling, his hair half gone white. He took the "rotten fish" gently out of the young man's arms and — of all things — he stroked that blue mold with his finger, tenderly, the way you would stroke something you loved.

"Ah. It's come up well. Come up beautifully, hasn't it."

I confess my mouth simply fell open. Stroking a rotten fish, and smiling at it. Has the old man lost his wits, I thought.

The young man was gaping too.

"M-Master... that's mold, that is. It's gone rotten—"

"Fool." It was the first sharp word out of him. "Does that look like rot to you? Look properly. A thing that's rotted goes slimy, and it stinks. But this. It's dry as powder, and it smells fine, doesn't it."

Told so, the young man brought his nose to it, fearfully. I leaned in and smelled it too. It was true — this was not the green stench of rot. How to put it. It smelled of earth, and of chestnuts: a dry, roasted sort of smell.

"This mold," said the master, settling himself onto the shaving box, and beginning to talk, "it drinks up the water that's still left inside the fish, and the fat with it. And you put it on and dry the fish in the sun, and put it on and dry it, over and over, over and over — until the thing is withered clean through. And what do you suppose happens then?"

"...What happens, then?"

The master grinned, drew out a well-honed blade like a carpenter's plane, and began to shave the "moldy fish" — shak, shak. The pale pink shavings drifted down into a basket like falling blossom. He gathered up a handful and threw them into a pot of water boiling hard.

The shavings unfurled with a hiss, and the water darkened, quick as anything, to the color of amber. And that scent — that unbearable, marvelous scent — bloomed out and filled the hut.

The master ladled it into a bowl and thrust it, first of all, at the young man.

"Drink it. Then tell me if that's the taste of something rotten."

The young man, still half unbelieving, blew on it and took a sip.

And in that instant.

The pinched look on his face came loose. His eyes went perfectly round.

"...It's good."

"There. What did I say."

"What is this... I've never drunk anything so deep. It goes right down into the pit of my belly..."

The master nodded, satisfied — mm, mm — and poured a bowl for me as well. I drank. And indeed: this was something remarkable. Not saltiness. Not sweetness. How to say it — it was a taste that woke some place at the very back of the tongue, a place that ordinarily sleeps, and set it humming with pleasure.

"Now, listen." The master picked up one more shaving between his fingers and spoke as if to himself. "A thing looks rotten for a while, and you bear it, and you bear it, and you wait. And then it turns, and it becomes a treasure. Fish are no different from men. A fellow who throws them out in a hurry will never draw this taste out of anything."

The young man was holding his bowl, with the shavings scattered across it, in both hands, as if it were precious. Made from the very fish he had been about to throw away.

That evening I bought from that master one whole block, fresh from his blade. It made my load heavier, but what of it. With this in my pack, the flat and flavorless soup of any inn on any road would turn, on the spot, into the finest bowl in the province. There is no more welcome burden than that.

◇ ◇ ◇

A long time has flowed by since then.

The craft of that master who stroked the mold was carried from shore to shore, from Tosa to Awa, and to Izu, fluttering along like a shaving of dried fish. And in time every kitchen in this country came to lay that amber broth at the very bottom of its taste. Soups, simmered dishes, the dipping broth for noodles — all of it begins from that one bowl.

Far, far later, the scholars ran down the true nature of that "good taste." The savor of the kelp and the savor of the bonito are of different kinds at the root, and when they are joined, they grow stronger by an order beyond reckoning. It was given a fine, difficult name, too.

But this is what I think. That master in Tosa knew not one of those names, and yet he had understood the thing on his tongue long, long before. That if you bear with what looks rotten, and wait, it will become a treasure.

Even now, when I hear someone in a kitchen shaving a block of bonito — that shak, shak — I find myself remembering that smoke-smelling shore, and the crumpled, delighted face of the old master, stroking his blue mold.

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