The Boiled Beans I Was Meant to Throw Out Were Drawing Threads in the Straw

Iwazō was the kind of man who would wipe up even a single bean stuck to the pot with his finger and carry it to his mouth. Better in the belly than in the bin. For a man who had come through more than one famine, that was the only good sense there was.

And that same Iwazō, one morning, stood rooted to the spot with a straw tsuto — a wrapper plaited from rice straw — in his hands and a sour look on his face. The boiled beans inside were drawing cloudy white threads. Should it be thrown out, or kept, or should someone be sent for to have it purified? The household was soon quarrelling over it.

This was the food that would later be called nattō, fermented soybeans. But on this morning there was not a soul in the village who knew it.

Not a soul — no, I cannot quite say that. I had seen it before. Only, what lay in front of me was somehow not the thing I remembered. The size of the beans, the strength of the smell, even what one called it.

In the winter of 1408 (Ōei 15), I had drifted into this village in the mountains of Shinano. I had tumbled into an old man's shed — Iwazō's — and got my winter meals by splitting firewood and hauling water.

That year's stores were thin beyond the common run. The rice had long since been carried off as tax, and what the house ate day by day was millet, both barnyard and foxtail, with boiled beans mixed in. I caught myself counting on my fingers the days until we would see the bottom of the pot. A day-labourer like me could not know how long he would be let stay in that shed, and the thought brushed the floor of my chest now and again, at odd moments.

Iwazō had a promise: to share some of those boiled beans with the house across the ravine. The old woman there, he had heard, had lost the strength to see the winter through and had taken to her bed. But the snow turned wild again and the road vanished. Delivering them was out of the question, and Iwazō left the beans packed in their straw bundle by the hearth. Between the warmth of the beans and the warmth of the hearth, the bundle stayed faintly damp, and warm. Waiting for the snow to ease, two days went by, and then three.

On the morning the snow at last settled, Iwazō undid the bundle. Open it, and there it was, in that state.

"Gone rotten," Iwazō muttered.

A whole store of food, wasted entire. The promise to the old woman, gone with it. Iwazō was about to fling the bundle, straw and all, out onto the snow in front of the house, and I borrowed it from him.

I looked inside. Between one bean and the next, cloudy white threads ran, strand upon strand. Pinch one up with chopsticks and it stretched on and on without breaking. Bring your nose close, and a sharp, stinging, powerful smell met it.

— I know this.

And yet it was somehow different from what came back to me. The beans were a size larger and a deeper colour. The smell of the threads was far sharper than I remembered. It looked to be another food altogether from the small black beans I knew. I was not even sure the name I could say now was the same one. I had thought I knew it; in truth I may have known nothing at all.

Iwazō was still trying to throw the bundle out into the yard. "No use keeping a thing like this."

"Wait."

"This can be eaten."

That is what I said.

Iwazō's eyes went round. "Eaten, you say. Beans that draw threads?"

"It isn't rotten. Something in the beans is only doing its work."

The words were hardly out before I noticed that I had no way of proving them. Even so, I picked a bean up with chopsticks and put it in my mouth.

The smell was stronger than I had expected, and the bean held firm to the tooth. As I chewed, a savor spread slowly from deep within the sweetness of the bean. It was another food altogether from a boiled bean and no more. It was a far wilder taste than the one I remembered.

Iwazō stared at me with his mouth hanging open. "Are you in your right mind? What if it turns your belly?"

"If it does, then it does."

I answered lightly, but in the pit of my own stomach I could not have said either. All I had to go on was that something in the smell and the stickiness of the beans was familiar. On that alone, I had put it in my mouth.

That night I spent the whole night watching how my belly fared. Nothing happened. Nor the next morning, nor the one after. So I offered Iwazō a bowl too.

"I'll still pass, thank you."

Iwazō balked at first, but after a few days, seeing me go about with a perfectly easy face, he took a mouthful, fearfully.

"…Hm. It stinks, but it isn't bad. Over rice, I'd say, it would be better still."

After that I tried the same thing over and over. Pack boiled beans into a straw bundle and set it by the hearth. On the first day, nothing happens. On the second, faint threads begin to show. By the third, white threads run plain and strand upon strand. A bundle set in the cold corner of the earthen floor stayed, however long it sat, nothing but boiled beans.

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 set about learning by tongue and nose.

Once I set a bundle too near the hearth, and its contents collapsed into a slop and turned to a stench that stabbed the nose. There was nothing to do but throw it out. But thanks to that failure, I began to see little by little how far from the fire it should be kept.

Sakuhei, from the house next door, came round, having caught wind of the rumor. He took one look at the threading beans and snorted.

"Not even a dog would eat that."

I said nothing and held out a bowl. Sakuhei held back for a while, but in time he took up chopsticks and, fearfully, carried some to his mouth. You could see even from the side how his face changed the longer he chewed.

"Don't skimp on the straw. Whether the beans live or die is up to the straw and the warmth of this hearth."

That is what I went about telling the men of the village. There was no need of writing it down, nor of fine theory. You only keep the warmth from dying for a few days —

At first the children found the threading beans uncanny and set their mouths in a hard line against them. By the time one winter was over, they were spooning it over their rice with untroubled faces.

From then on Sakuhei took to making straw bundles at his own hearth too. Sometimes he came to me to check how they had turned out. The colour and sheen of the bean, the stretch of the thread, the strength of the smell — there were several things to judge by. One by one I pointed them out to him.

When the snow began to slacken, I shouldered a bundle of the well-drawn beans, straw and all, and carried them 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 Iwazō insisted 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. "What is that stink?" she muttered in a cracked voice. Even so, she took up chopsticks in her thin hand and, mouthful after mouthful, chewed slowly.

"A curious taste. 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. Even so, that threading beans could be strength to one grown weak — that, I came to believe.

On the way back, listening to the meltwater in the ravine, I thought of the weight of the empty bowl. Beans that had been meant for delivery, and had not been delivered, and had all but been flung away, had in the end been of the most use of all. A curious turn of fortune.

Back in the village, I went about crowing of this to anyone who would hear. At first everyone pulled a face. Eating rotten beans — that day-labourer 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. Beans left in the cold corner of the earthen floor, however many times you tried, ended as nothing but boiled beans.

When the snow had all but melted, I left the village again. I went over the mountains, looking for work.

Somewhere in the corner of the pack on my back, a single straw bundle that Iwazō had forced in against my protests lay hidden.

I did not need to undo it. I could tell by the smell — that sharp smell that stings the nose.

A load that should have been light stayed, at that one spot, heavy with smell all the way. In place after place along the road, whenever I ran into the same smell, I found myself stopping, hunting for the straw bundle.

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