yomena よめな 嫁菜 a species of aster Aster yomena (Kalimeris yomena) yomogi* よもぎ 蓬 wormwood, mugwort Artemisia princeps zenmai* ぜんまい 紫萁、 薇 Osmund fern, royal fern Osmunda japonica
10 ❖ Soy Sauce Originally, Japan’s basic condiment was uoshōyu, a salty liquid made from rotting fish. Such sauces are still very much in use in Southeast Asia, but Buddhism, introduced to Japan from China, brought with it Chinese vegetarianism and a range of basic foods and condiments based on the soybean. Tofu, miso, and soy sauce are originally from China. So the fish-based uoshōyu was replaced with the soybeanbased shōyu, and the Japanese developed such a highly refined product that no other soy sauce is good enough to substitute for it. The early history of soy sauce in Japan is not particularly clear, but soy sauce seems to be connected with the liquid that separates from hishio and miso during their fermentation. This liquid was called tamari, a word with quite a different meaning from that in current usage, which means soy sauce made without wheat. This very early version of tamari is now called tamari shōyu. The earliest reference to it seems to be A.D. 775, and somewhat more clearly in the thirteenth century, but the word shōyu doesn’t seem to have come into use until the late fifteenth century at the earliest and wasn’t really established as the name for the sauce until 1643, when the half-wheat, half-soybean product that we know today was developed. The traditional process of making soy sauce is as follows: grains of whole wheat are parched and cracked and soybeans are steamed. These are then mixed with spores of the mold Aspergillus oryzae and incubated for three days, making the kōji. This kōji is added to a brine solution, the result, now called moromi, being put into huge