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John Lindsey
16th September 2000, 14:54
The following was taken from the Nippon culture email list


The definite turning of the seasons every year has given
a keen sense of the seasons to the Japanese people, who
are gradually losing it, though.
An example of a sense of the seasons is "shun" (in season).
They usually enjoy "shun no mono" (a food in season) every
season. Many Japanese are fond of "sanma" (a saury) in
autumn. Kanji "sanma" means an autumn fish the shape of
which is like a katana.

Dave Lowry
21st September 2000, 14:01
Dear Mr. Lindsey,
Sanma are a long, thin, very oily fish that are, indeed, popular around this time of year in Japan.
A very common way of preparing them is grilling them over an open shichirin.
You may know this, but a shichirin is a ceramic grill. Imagine one of those old, stoneware pickling crocks you see in collectible shops in this country. Shichirin look like those except they have a hole at the bottom, with a sliding metal door. You put a little charcoal in the bottom, light it, and you can control the fire by letting more or less air in with the little door. The top on some is a ceramic grill; on others, you put a thin metal grill. I've often insisted that someone could make a fortune importing and selling these in the US. They're like the common "hibachi" used by apartment-dwellers and others who want to grill but who have limited space.
Anyway, when you grill sanma on these, enormous clouds of smoke billow up because of the oily flesh. Has to be done outside. You can walk through a neighbourhood in lots of places in Japan and identify who's having sanma by the columns of smoke ascending.

Shun is an essential element of Japanese cooking, just as it's the essence, in a way, of haiku. Nowadays, refrigeration and other methods of food preservation have overshadowed the concept. Too bad. I was thinking, reading your post, of back when I was a kid and at this time of year we'd have picnics and "moon-viewing" parties in September, and a common dish was rice balls served on a bed of persimmon leaves that had just begun to turn a deep russet. Not that the rice was special, but the attention to the leaves as a decoration made the meal an example of shun no mono. I'm sure others who've done a lot of eating in Japan will have other examples.