Behind each dish, you can see the path leading from the fields. Once you start to see it that way, something else comes into view.

Food does not come only from faraway places. It also comes from a distant time.

At FARM8, there were several roles involving fermentation: koji, sake lees and miso. Thanks to this, I found myself visiting sake breweries and production sites more often.

Wine cellars come in all shapes and sizes. Some are surprisingly mechanised and resemble factories, whilst others are truly ancient—so dilapidated they’re almost a little scary. Steep staircases. Old tools. Buildings and fittings that seem to have been frozen in time, straight out of the Shōwa era.

As I was shown round several breweries, my perception of what the brewers do gradually began to change. At first, I thought they were simply people who made sake. But when I watched them up close, I realised it was a little different.

Check the temperature, check the humidity, smell the aroma, and listen to the sounds. After assessing the conditions in this way, I make adjustments. It’s a constant cycle. I cannot directly influence the sake itself. It is the microorganisms—such as koji mould and yeast—that are at work, transforming it into sake. The brewer’s role is simply to create an environment in which those microorganisms can thrive.

I think it’s more about creating an environment than simply making things.

When I looked at it from that perspective, it seemed as though the various stages of the brewing process were all moving in the same direction. Washing the rice, steaming it, making the koji, and controlling the temperature. It is a process of preparing the rice whilst also creating an environment in which the koji mould and yeast can thrive.

At the storehouse, we carefully monitor the times for washing and soaking the rice. How much water should the rice absorb? We adjust the times based on the condition of the rice on the day.

This part rang a bell with me. It’s because I’ve observed the process from a quality control perspective at a factory that produces pre-packaged rice and mochi using the same variety of rice. At what temperature and for how many minutes should this rice be cooked to achieve the best flavour? The considerations involved are very similar.

However, this is where the difference lay. In the production of sake, koji mould is added to the rice. At the packaged rice factory where I worked, we had strict controls in place to ensure that no mould was introduced into the product. My job was to prevent any mould from forming. In sake production, on the other hand, mould is deliberately introduced into the rice.

This wasn’t the first time I’d had to deal with bacteria.

When I was in my twenties, I worked in food quality control and used to carry out bacterial cultures. The growth patterns differ depending on the culture medium used. Even a slight variation in the temperature of the incubator can alter the time it takes for growth to begin. It also varies completely depending on the sample taken.

I did a lot of research to find out what key factors were needed to keep the cleanroom clean. I wanted to know how many hours it took for bacteria to start multiplying and what form they would take. I am well aware that these things are impossible to predict. As it took dozens of hours to get the results, I went into work at the weekend to monitor the progress.

What we were doing back then was work designed to prevent the growth of bacteria. What we do in the brewery, on the other hand, is the exact opposite: work designed to make the bacteria do the work.

But what we were doing was essentially the same. Rather than directly interfering with the bacteria, we were adjusting the environment to determine how they behaved. Then we simply observed how they developed. Even though the approach was the opposite, the fact that we were dealing with living organisms remained the same.

And once you’ve got everything sorted, all you can do is wait.

No matter how much you tell the bacteria to ‘hurry up’, they won’t listen. It is the bacteria, not us, who decide when to call it a day.

I’m told that in the old days, people used to sleep in the storehouses and would check on the situation repeatedly to ensure the temperature didn’t rise too high and kill the mould. Some storehouses even had accommodation available. I was quite surprised when I saw several kotatsu quilts laid out to cover the koji boxes.

It struck me that it was just like raising a baby. Just as with growing crops, I think fermentation is a bit like raising a living creature.

I was once shown round the yeast-fermentation room at a certain sake brewery.

The person showing us round would lift the plastic sheeting and say, ‘This one isn’t ready yet,’ or ‘This one’s nearly there.’ It seemed as though they were judging by looking at it and smelling it. As the bacteria grow, the rice changes. As a layperson, I have absolutely no idea where the finishing line is.

Fungi do not grow at the same rate every time. Some years they grow quickly, others slowly; it varies from year to year. We humans simply have to adapt; we cannot rush them, nor can we make them wait.

Come to think of it, preserving food and fermentation were all techniques for managing time.

Drying. Pickling. Salting. Leaving it to the koji. It’s easy to dismiss this as simply ‘the wisdom of our ancestors’, but all these methods serve the same purpose: to pass on today’s food to the future.

From autumn’s harvest to the family in winter. From this year’s harvest to next year’s dinner table. In the days before refrigerators, people devised many ways in the kitchen to preserve food for the future.

Why was such a technique necessary? It is because produce comes in waves. During the peak season, there is so much of it that it is impossible to eat it all, whilst outside the season, there is none to be found. Whether the harvest is bountiful or poor depends not solely on the skill of the grower, but on the weather. Food does not ripen according to our convenience.

To cope with these fluctuations, the surplus harvest was sent to regions where crops could not be grown at that time of year. Preservation was, in essence, a way of balancing the ebb and flow of nature with people’s daily lives.

And whilst drying and salting are techniques for stopping and preserving time, fermentation is slightly different. It does not stop time. Instead, we entrust the process to microorganisms and allow time itself to do the work.

Between the person who made it and the person who eats it, there lies a period of time during which the bacteria have been at work. When we drink a bowl of miso soup, we are, in effect, drinking the time that someone set aside a whole year ago.

That which has been passed down through the ages is now on the verge of being lost. It was through my own story that I realised this.

I’d never eaten simmered vegetables or sake lees until I started secondary school. The first time I tried them was when I stayed over at a friend’s house. The simmered vegetables they served contained sake lees. They told me, ‘It’s absolutely delicious,’ so I gave it a go, and I did indeed think it was delicious.

It was because my mother is from Tokyo and wasn’t familiar with Niigata’s local cuisine.

It was only much later that I realised this. At work, I was asked to recommend a restaurant serving local cuisine from Nagaoka. However, I was unable to answer.

Even if someone asked me, ‘Is that tasty?’, I wouldn’t be able to answer because I’ve never tried it. Although I live in Nagaoka, I had to open a guidebook on the town and look it up at the library before I finally managed to find the shop. It was around that time that I first learnt about kensayaki and noppé.

I thought I’d at least try to be able to name some of Niigata’s local dishes and sake. Once I started looking into it with that in mind, I found it so fascinating that I couldn’t stop.

Winters are long in snowy regions, and the fields lie fallow beneath the snow. Yet the reason our dining tables remained well-stocked throughout the winter was that the kitchen had worked hard enough in the autumn to provide for the winter as well.

Whether it be stewed vegetables, barrel-fermented pickles or miso, all these foods were delivered across the seasons. Pickles differed from one hamlet to the next, and drying methods varied from household to household. At the very heart of the local cuisine’s value lay, without fail, these flavours that had endured the passage of time.

And such wisdom has been passed down from person to person, not on paper in the form of recipes, but usually through hands-on practice: how to dry food, how to pickle it, and how much salt to use. From grandmother to mother, and from mother to child. It means that, through food, people have been maintaining that bond for hundreds of years.

It was not until much later that I touched the edge of whatever had been passed to me.

When I got married, I chose to live with my in-laws. Part of the reason was that my husband was an only child, but to be honest, my main concern was that doing all the housework on my own would be too much. Not only do I cook, but my grandmother-in-law and mother-in-law also help out in the kitchen. There’s a large garden where I can grow the vegetables and herbs I’ve always wanted to try.

Looking back now, it was a choice that was very much in keeping with who I am.

However, what I really came to appreciate about living with them was something else entirely: the fact that my grandmother-in-law and mother-in-law taught me dishes and customs that we’d never practised in my own family home.

What I remember most clearly is how to make pickled vegetables, which I learnt from my late grandmother-in-law.

In Nagaoka, there is a local dish called ‘Nisai’. It uses a vegetable called ‘Tainai’, which is a variety of Chinese cabbage. However, at my grandmother-in-law’s house, they found Tainai too large and awkward to handle, so they pickled Nozawana instead. We eat it as a pickle, and after rinsing off the salt, we also use it to make Nisai.

As my father-in-law worked outside the prefecture and my mother-in-law was often away from home every other month, I frequently found myself helping my grandmother-in-law. Looking back now, I realise I should be grateful that she asked me to help.

This is a story about the first time I tried my hand at pickling vegetables.

I’d just harvested them from the vegetable patch, washed them in water, and was wondering if I was supposed to pickle them straight away, when my great-grandmother said,

‘Could you make some salt water for me here?’

I made a brine, following the instructions and using what I thought was a suitable amount of salt. I then added the freshly washed, crisp Nozawa-na to it and placed a weight on top.

‘Hang on, aren’t you supposed to pickle it in salt?’ When I asked that, my great-grandmother replied:

‘If you leave it to soak in salt water, the insects will float to the surface. I leave it to soak overnight, remove the floating insects, and then put it in for the main pickling.’

It came as a shock.

You won’t find anything like this in any recipe.

I imagine my grandmother-in-law was probably taught in the same way by her own mother-in-law. Rather than someone having come up with it through logical reasoning, it was simply a practice that people tried, realised it worked better that way, and passed it on to the next generation.

I am now receiving the very end of that legacy that has been passed down to me. I cannot forget that thought. In my parents’ home, the culinary traditions of this region had been lost. Yet, in the family I married into, I was able to rediscover them.

Come to think of it, perhaps the person who said, ‘This one isn’t ready yet,’ in that storehouse was in the same situation.

Distinguishing things that cannot be measured by numbers, using one’s eyes and nose. I suppose that intuition was something I picked up through watching others do it time and time again. Whether it was pickling vegetables or brewing sake, it wasn’t just the procedures that were passed on to me.

However, not everyone has the chance to reconsider things in this way. And the hand that offers it is now growing weaker.

Since we got a fridge, we’ve been able to buy most things all year round. We can get by without having to store food. Whilst life has become more convenient, the need to store food has disappeared from our daily lives.

And when the need disappears, neither the wisdom nor the gesture of passing it on will be passed on. Something that had continued uninterrupted for hundreds of years has begun to fade away over the past few decades. As for that story about the salt water, now that my step-grandmother has passed away, if I do not pass it on to someone, it will end there.

We had lost sight of the distance food travelled to reach us. Something similar is happening with time, too.

Even now, when life has become so much more convenient, the very concept of preserving food for later has not disappeared. Whether it’s cooking in advance, freezing food or preparing ingredients in advance, the principle remains the same.

I send food today for the sake of someone in the future. Just as the packed lunch I prepare tonight was a meal for myself at lunchtime. It’s just that the recipient gradually moves further away—from my future self, to my family next year, and on to the next generation.

I used to think of the kitchen as simply the place where today’s meals are prepared. Now, however, I see it in a slightly different light. It is a place where we receive what has come from the past and send it on to the future. Without even realising it, those who stand in the kitchen continue, even now, to send food across time.

It is through this cycle of receiving and passing on that both flavour and wisdom are passed from person to person.

However, once I give something away, it is bound to disappear from my possession. Whether it is a barrel of pickles or a batch of miso, sharing it means there is less left. And yet, when it comes to cooking, there were certain things that, for some reason, did not seem to diminish the more I shared them. What on earth could they be?

TERUMI ISHIBASHI

FARM8 Co. Ltd.,

Next chapter: ‘The Power of Cooking to Shape the Future’ – Chapter 9: ‘What Grows When Shared’