The Morning the Beans Meant to Be Thrown Out Drew Threads, and No One Would Eat Them

Nattō — fermented soybeans that draw out sticky threads — is, when you think about it, a truly strange thing to eat.

Boiled beans draw threads and turn sticky and stringy. The smell is sharp, and it is no better to look at. And yet people ladle the stuff over their rice, stir it about, and — of all things — eat it declaring how good it is, how good. Anyone who sets eyes on it for the first time takes it, more often than not, for something gone rotten. And in truth it stands but a hair's breadth from rot.

And yet — strange to say — it is that very thread-drawing stickiness that keeps the bean from rotting, that makes it last the longer, and even, it seems, adds to its nourishment. A tiny unseen worker hidden away in the straw is what turns the bean like this — so it is known now. But the people of the old days had no way of knowing the shape of that worker at all.

What I have watched is the turning by which threading beans that were meant to be thrown away came to be lifted, fearfully, to people's mouths, and in time became a dish of every day. The stretch of it when they still worshipped the unseen power in the straw as "the grace of the gods" — that is what I mean.

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It was the winter of 1408 (Ōei 15). I was living in a small village in Shinano, one that seemed to cling to the mountainside, working the fields for my keep. Yozō, they called me.

That winter was cold beyond the common run. Snow buried the roofs white from early on, and let the fire in the hearth go out, and the chill went straight to the marrow of you in no time. As for stores, there was nothing but a little of the soybeans taken in over the summer. The rice had long since been carried off as tax, and what came to our mouths was hardly more than boiled beans mixed into barnyard millet and foxtail millet.

That day I was packing boiled soybeans tight into a tsuto, a wrapper plaited from rice straw. Wrapping beans in straw was the custom of the village. Straw comes off the harvest in any amount you please. You bundle it, plait it into a tube, and carry your goods packed inside. Beans, rice balls, anything at all — you did it so. Done that way, a thing is easy to carry, and the straw guards it from the cold besides. Straw was the one rich vessel a poor village had.

I had promised to share out a little of the boiled beans to the house across the ravine. The old woman there, I had heard, had lost the strength to see the winter through and taken to her bed. Boiled beans are soft, and kind to the belly of a weakened old body. I wanted, somehow, to get them to her before the snow lay deep.

But from that very night the snow turned wild again. The blizzard wiped out the road, and crossing the ravine was out of the question. I left the straw bundle tossed down by the hearth. Between the warmth still in the boiled beans and the warmth of the hearth, the bundle stayed faintly damp, and warm. Waiting for the snow to let up, two days passed, and then three.

On the morning the snow at last settled, I undid the straw bundle. And I drew my hand back before I knew I had.

Between one bean and the next, cloudy white threads ran, strand upon strand. Pinch a bean up with chopsticks and it drew out sticky, threading on and on and never breaking. Bring your nose close, and there was a sharp, stinging, powerful smell.

"Gone rotten, has it…"

I clicked my tongue. A whole store of good food, wasted entire. And the promise to the old woman was undone along with it. In my vexation I made to fling the whole bundle out into the snow — and that was the moment.

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From the corner of the earthen floor came my wife's voice.

"Wait, now. Throwing it out is a thing you can do at any time."

My wife peered hard at the threading beans. In the village, to throw away something a body could eat was held to be a sin against heaven. For folk who had come through famine year after famine year, that was soaked into the very marrow of their bones. Not one bean could be wasted. We had come through winters like that more times than I could count.

"The color's still a bean's color. There's no mold on it. I'll try eating a bit and see."

So saying, my wife took some of the threading beans into a bowl and, timidly, on the tip of her chopsticks, lifted the barest mouthful to her lips. I watched at her side with my breath held. Let it turn her bowels, and in the depths of a cold like this it would be no small matter.

She worked it in her mouth a while, and then, all at once, her eyes went wide.

"…Why. It stinks, but it goes down well. It's far richer in taste than beans just boiled."

Seeing her nod, I put a single bean in my own mouth too. The smell was strong, sure enough. But as I chewed, from within the sweetness of the bean something like a savor came spreading slowly over my tongue. It was another food altogether from the flat, tasteless boiled bean. And then — why, I could not say — a feeling oddly, powerfully like nostalgia passed across the bottom of my heart.

Even so, that evening the village folk were still half afraid. Eat something rotten and a body's bowels give way, and at the worst you lose your life. That fear, everyone in the village knew. And so my wife ate first, alone, and only after a whole night of watching how her own belly fared did she press it on me and the children. A mother is ever like that — the first to taste for poison with her own body.

That night we ate the threading beans ladled over millet rice. Not one of us was the worse in the belly for it. If anything, bodies that had drawn themselves small against the cold seemed even to warm from within. The next morning, and the morning after, we were all of us hale and well. And so at last we were easy in our minds.

I stared long at the straw bundle. The same beans, boiled the same day — and only the ones wrapped in straw and set by the hearth had turned like this. There was nothing for it but to think that the straw had done something.

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The next morning, by way of a trial, I did the same thing over again. Pack boiled beans into a straw bundle, set it by the hearth. On the first day, nothing happened. On the second, faint threads began to show. By the third, the same cloudy white threads as before ran strand upon strand. It seemed, after all, that the straw and the warmth of the hearth had to come together. A bundle set in the cold corner of the earthen floor stayed, however long it sat, nothing but boiled beans.

I made bundle after bundle, and it came out now well, now badly, over and over. Warm it too much and the beans go slippery and fall apart and truly rot. Warm it too little and the threads never come. There was, sure enough, such a thing as the right heat of the fire and the right count of days. That, I came to learn by tongue and nose. For a farmer with no means to set anything down in writing, there was no road but to learn it in the body.

When the snow began to slacken, I shouldered a bundle of the well-made threading beans and carried them at last to the old woman across the ravine. I could hardly feed something rotten to a sick body, I thought, and at first I hung back from offering it. But my wife would have it that it "gave nourishment," so I made up my mind and parted a share into a bowl.

The old woman brought her nose close and grimaced once. Even so, she took up chopsticks in her thin hand and, mouthful after mouthful, chewed slowly.

"A curious taste, this. But it warms me at the pit of my belly."

So saying, she emptied the bowl. That evening, to the cheeks of the old woman who had kept to her bed, a faint color of blood seemed to come back. It may have been only my fancy. But that the threading beans could be strength to one grown weak — that, I came to believe.

Back in the village, I went about crowing of this to anyone who would hear. At first everyone pulled a face. Eating rotten beans — the house of Yozō must be hard put indeed, they muttered behind my back. But among those who tried it, packing boiled beans into a straw bundle and letting them sleep by the hearth, one and then another began to change their minds.

"Well now — it draws threads, right enough, but this… this goes down well."

The more it drew threads, the better made it was held to be. At hearth after hearth about the village, straw bundles came to be warmed. Boil the same beans, and only those wrapped in straw and set in the warmth turned so. The straw does something.

At first the children found the threading beans uncanny and set their mouths in a hard line against them. There were some who, on the verge of tears, hated the sticky stuff clinging about their fingers. But as one winter passed and then a second, before you knew it they were shoveling the beans over their rice with untroubled faces. When a thing has been at the hearthside since your birth, it is no longer a rarity, nor an uncanny thing. It is simply an ordinary dish. To the children, a bean was a food that drew threads from the very start.

"The power of the straw, is it. Or else — well, now."

My wife pressed her two hands together and bowed in worship to the fire of the hearth.

"The gods took pity on us in our trouble with the snow — that is what it is. A good thing we did not throw it away."

Something unseen lodged in the straw and changed the bean. For that, we had no way of speaking but to call it "the grace of the gods." The true nature of the little worker in the straw was a thing we could not have known. In the colder country, this grace took root all the better.

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From that time on, the village took to packing boiled beans into straw bundles on purpose and letting them sleep by the hearth. The threading beans that people had first put in their mouths in fear and trembling became, before anyone marked it, a dish there was no doing without among the winter stores. In a mountain village shut in by snow, where rice and greens alike ran short, it was a food to be thankful for, one that gave nourishment. I have watched hearthsides like that in village after village.

Threading beans, wrapped in straw and left to sleep. That, and no more than that, became in time the custom of the place, and was handed down from parent to child, from child to grandchild. The name of the unseen worker in the straw — that, people would not learn until long, long after. Through all the long while before, they only pressed their hands together before the power of the straw and the grace of the gods.

Now, threading beans are made anywhere at all, with never a straw bundle needed. The smell has grown mild, and everyone stirs them about on the breakfast tray. Those who worship the stuff as "the grace of the gods" are hardly to be found any longer.

Even so, I find myself thinking.

At a hearthside in a snow-deep village, there was a wife who took up beans that were to be thrown away, calling it a sin to waste them. There was a man who watched with his breath held, wondering if it would turn their bellies. On that small courage — the courage to lift the threading beans to the mouth rather than cast them out — today's bowlful stands.

Threading beans do nothing but cling and give off their sharp smell. And yet, soaked into that stickiness, is the frugal life of people who, in the midst of cold and hunger, would not throw away so much as a single bean. That is the sort of thing I love.

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