【Reading】ぼうぜのすがたずし

【English Name】Whole pacific rudderfish sushi

Bouze no sugata-zushi is a local dish handed down in the northern part of Tokushima Prefecture, a type of pressed sushi using a whole Pacific rudderfish (ibodai). Bouze is a Tokushima dialect word for the ibodai, a fish known for varying in name by region, such as ebodai in Kanto, uoze in Kansai, and shizu in Kyushu.

As for the method, the ibodai is opened from the back (se-biraki) with the head left on and cured in vinegar, then vinegared rice is stuffed inside and arranged into pressed sushi. Because curing in vinegar makes the flesh easy to flake apart, a characteristic is that even the head portion can be eaten whole. Styles in which sudachi, known as a Tokushima specialty, is heaped on top, or in which its juice is blended into the curing vinegar or sushi vinegar to add aroma, are also widely seen.

In Tokushima, each household makes it by hand, and it has taken root as a dish indispensable to the autumn-festival table. It has blended into the region as an everyday food found not only at sushi restaurants but also at station-building shops and on supermarket shelves. It is one of the traditional sushi dishes that symbolize Tokushima, registered in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' One Hundred Selected Local Dishes of Farming, Mountain, and Fishing Villages and as a Tokushima Citizens' Heritage.