While I was busy with raising up my child, I got interested in healing effects and nutrition value of food. This led me to experiment and study about all kind of fermented food like soy sauce, miso, vinegar, mirin, pickles and Kouji dishes. My goal remained cooking healthy and tasty dishes for my daughter and family.
2 years since I have been studying fermented food, I decided to visit master craftsmen of Miso gura or Shoyu gura to interview about their enthusiasm for their products and vision.
The first place which came up in my mind to visit was Shodoshima as it is easy to access from my home town Nishinomiya but also I was very impressed with their drive to use wood barrels for fermentation process. The project to revive the use of “kioke” for making soy sauce in Shodoshima has been started up by Yasuo Yamamoto, 5th generation owner of Yamaroku Shoyu in Shodoshima.
In Japan, up until Edo period, soy-sauce, miso, sake, mirin and vinegar fermentation and production utilized wood barrels. However after the war, for the sake of so called improvement of efficiency, wood barrels have been ubiquitously replaced with steel tanks. Today, soy-sauce made with Kioke is less than 1% of the total soy sauce production at present. The beauty of “kioke” made soy sauce is its unique and excellent tastes that comes from the microorganisms which thrive in the kioke.
As a result, only one Kioke or wood barrel maker`s factory was left in 2012 because there has not been much demand for wood barrels for many decades. Fearing the of collapse of Japanese fermented food culture, Yasuo Yamamoto has started up his project called “The Kioke Craftsman revival project”.
When I met Yamamoto san for the first time, I even didn’t have my own name card or company’s name as I haven’t started up anything for new project but visited him with my only strong curiosity. Usually , I might have been given a cold reception when I don’t have name card, but Yamamoto san was different. He enthusiastically explained about the history of Kioke Shoyu and its
unique way of fermentation in Kioke and what he is planning to do in the future.
What is more, he kindly invited me to “Culture of fermentation by Kioke summit” to be held a month after my visit at Shoidoshima.
There are so many expression that I want to share with you about Soy sauce by Kioke but the first thing that I have to proclaim is,
“ These are unbelievably delicious!!!”
Honestly speaking, it’s not just comparable with soy sauce those are made in mass production.
Yamamoto san said, ” I just would like customers to enjoy different tastes of soy sauce like they enjoy tasting the wines”. Of course, soy sauce are not articles of taste but essential articles for Japanese people so it requires stable taste in each product, having said that it would be possible to have different tastes and uniqueness in each makers.
Japanese cuisines such as Sashimi, Niku jaga (Braised beef and potatoes ), sukiyaki, rice with raw egg will be completely different experience when you change the soy sauce in each dishes. I hope you could check out and try these flavorful, tasty soy sauce which might change your life!
