Wild Flavors of Japan Take 2: The Original Soul Food

Spring is a beautiful time to forage. 

Just look around the forests, fields, and streams of southern Japan with a knowledgeable eye, and you will see so many wild foods! This lovely lady, who asked us to call her Hirono-san, has gathered wild foods in Kyushu's deep forests and cooked them up into delicious traditional meals since she was a little girl in the 1940s. 

She shared the secrets of forest and garden with me and three anthropologist colleagues at her house outside a tiny village called Nishimera, on the southern island of Kyushu.

Hirono-san with delectable zingy pickles of all kinds. Some of them are wild greens from the forest floor.

Boar Stew

Wild boar roam Kyushu's mountains, and sometimes sneak into gardens and wreak havoc. Hirono-san's husband, who passed away two years ago, was a hunter par excellence. Armed with a rifle, he would walk out into the woods alone to stalk boar and usually came home staggering under the weight of his catch.

The jawbones of wild boar adorn the back porch of Hirono-san's home.

Although her husband is gone now, other hunters who are friends still bring boar to the house. Most of her food is grown, hunted, or gathered wild. Things like salt, sugar, flour, and tea come from town.

Savory, steaming miso boar stew with fresh scallions is just the thing for a cool rainy day. 

In addition to soup, we were treated to sashimi with shiso leaves, rice, a variety of home made pickles, and my favorite, yuzu kosho (柚子胡椒). The rind of the citrus fruit yuzu is fermented with chilis into a pungent, zesty paste to flavor just about anything! It's the golden paste in the middle of the tray, above. 

Fox Spirits 

In the steep, dark mountains surrounding Nishimera are many small isolated shrines. After lunch, we visited an 稲荷神社 (Inari jinja), protected by the kami (god) called Inari. Inari is a popular deity from Japan's ancient pre-Buddhist religion associated with foxes, rice, household wellbeing, and prosperity in business.

Small red torii lead you up the mountain path toward a tiny deity house. 

The trees in these southern forests are simply immense, and several are designated as sacred by the local community. 

A few times, we came across votive offerings left on the forest floor or tucked into a tree crevice. My colleagues advised me to tiptoe away... 

Have you seen Princess Mononoke, the anime film by Miyazaki? (Because you should!) Here, I almost felt I could see the tiny kodama spirits sitting glowing in the shadows. 

The little deity house was filled with wooden carvings of spirit foxes with human faces; the embodiment of the kami Inari.

Some of the carvings were probably several hundred years old.

Futuring with Wild Foods?

It's not hard to get dis-oriented by the extreme contrasts encompassed by Japan; from gigantic, modern, wired metropolises like Osaka and Tokyo, to Kyushu's ancient human-nature connections enshrined in the deep, misty green forests and guarded by fox spirits. 

My favorite picture of Hirono-san. She gave each of us a big jar of her special wild forest honey, as a travelling gift. 

I wonder if, after the apocalypse, the world will be quietly repopulated by the plants and animals in protected places like Kyushu. And the traditional food wisdom of people like this 83-year old woman will be what allows the last humans to survive and re-discover out how to live in harmony with animals and plants.

Science fiction? Maybe not...

In my next installment, we will travel north to Hokkaido's magical landscapes inhabited by the Ainu.