【Reading】さばなれずし

【English Name】Saba nare zushi / Mackerel nare zushi

Saba nare-zushi is an ancient preserved food in which mackerel is salt-cured, then layered with cooked rice and made to undergo lactic acid fermentation over a long period of time. Using no vinegar at all, it is characterized by the natural sourness arising from the action of microorganisms, and can be classified as "narezushi," the primordial form of sushi.

The "Yoro Code," compiled in the Nara period, contains a description concerning sushi, and fermented sushi has trodden a path of more than 1,000 years. Mackerel deteriorates extremely quickly—so much so that the phrase "saba no ikigusare" (mackerel rots while still alive) remains—and it is a fish for which the ingenuity of preservation through salt-curing and fermentation was required from an early stage. It also has a deep connection with the cultural sphere of the "Saba Kaido" (Mackerel Road), along which mackerel landed in Wakasa Bay was salted and delivered to Kyoto.

Eaten down through the generations across a wide area from Kyushu to Hokuriku, it has taken root as a local taste in the San'in region and inland mountain settlements. In the Muromachi period, "namanare," which shortened the fermentation period, emerged, and the form of eating it together with the rice of the pickling bed spread.