For Japanese, seafood a way of life

By John McQuaid,
Staff writer

TOKYO

When it comes to fish, Japanese consumers are a bit more discerning than Americans. They have to be — fish are everywhere.
  Supermarkets sell fish hot dogs. Chewy invertebrate organisms such as sea cucumbers are washed down with beer at business lunches. Dried eel vertebrae are Japan’s answer to pork rinds. Sea bream are bestowed on victorious sumo wrestlers.
  Seafood and the rituals of preparing and presenting it are deeply rooted in Japanese culture. An island nation in a region where fish has been the protein staple throughout history, Japan has imbued fish with historical, symbolic, even spiritual meaning.
  Carp, which swim upstream, are a symbol of strength, perseverance and masculinity in Japan. Multicolored carp are bred for fish ponds. On an annual holiday honoring boys, carp-shaped windsocks fly from flagpoles. One of the country’s more popular baseball teams is the Hiroshima Carp.
  Seafood is the No.1 dish in Japan, despite the recent growth in popularity of steaks, fast food and other Western-style dishes. Japanese households spend more on seafood, including seaweed, than any other food product, government studies show.
  For many Japanese, fish will remain a big part of life no matter how many visits they make to McDonald’s.
  ‘‘We can observe the changing seasons by what’s available at the fish market,’’ said Hiroko Ikeda, a Tokyo homemaker. ‘‘Eel in the summer, cod in the winter. Bonito is a harbinger of spring.’’
  Ikeda lives in a Tokyo apartment building subsidized by the international bank that employs her husband, Kazuo. Though her three teen-aged boys tend to favor hamburgers, she serves fish three or four times a week: sometimes miso soup made with fish stock, or saury — a small, bluish-gray whole fish, or an abalone marinade, or eel.
  Her husband grew up in a fishing town, and his mother was disappointed when he married a girl from Tokyo who was unfamiliar with small-town, seagoing traditions, she said. But Ikeda learned many cooking techniques from her mother-in-law and the fishmongers of Tokyo.
  Like many Japanese, Ikeda tries to juggle tradition with the demands of modern life. Many fish products are sold prepared, she said, such as the dried bonito shavings used to flavor soup and other dishes. But she prefers to buy the bonito whole and use a traditional tool: a rectangular box with a blade built into the lid and a drawer to pull out the shavings that fall past the blade. It takes more time, but it tastes better.
  ‘‘Nowadays, a young housewife doesn’t know how to handle a fish,’’ she said.
  Japanese buying habits are also influenced by a combination of folk wisdom and fads. The vitamins contained in kelp, the green seaweed used in many Japanese dishes, for example, are supposed to help women keep their hair a lustrous black.
  Recently, when scientists reported that many fish eyeballs contained DHA, an unsaturated fatty acid that supposedly improves brain functioning, demand skyrocketed, especially among anxious students trying to pass college entrance exams.