【Reading】はつもの/はしり

【English Name】First product / First of the season

"Hatsumono" (first of the season) refers to a food that appears in the market for the first time, at the very start of its season. In the world of sushi, the name "hashiri" is also widely used, marking the opening of the three stages of the season (shun)—hashiri, sakari, and nagori.

Because hashiri ingredients are limited in quantity and highly scarce, their prices tend to be high. In terms of flavor, some youthfulness or immaturity may remain compared with the sakari (peak) period, but there is great value in being able to sense the breath of the season ahead of others. In Japan there is a long-rooted saying that "eating the first of the season extends one's life by 75 days," and such items have been treated as exceptional since ancient times.

Among sushi toppings, the first bonito (hatsu-gatsuo) is the foremost of the hashiri, and the bonito arriving in early summer was traded at high prices from the Edo period. The custom of offering the first ear of grain (hatsuho)—the first of the harvest—before the gods is thought to lie at the very root of the food culture that prizes hashiri ingredients.

In the Edo period, enthusiasm for the first of the season rose, and forced cultivation was even practiced in which farmers covered crops with oil paper and warmed them with charcoal fire to bring summer vegetables to maturity in winter. The shogunate repeatedly cracked down on this with frugality edicts, but the prohibitions are said to have had little effect.

Today, with advances in freezing and transport technology, the outlines of the seasons are fading, but at sushi restaurants hashiri toppings are still positioned as exceptional dishes, symbols of a culture that physically senses the turning of the seasons.