But not here in Kyushu – though it needs a highly skilled chef to cut away the poisonous sacs. In most of Japan’s prefectures, eating the liver is banned. We also ate the liver where much of the deadly poison is found. The taste of fugu sashimi is so delicate as to be almost imperceptible hence the experience is one that embodies not just the taste but the ritual of slowly plucking the petals of the flower and imagining what fate might await. About half a dozen people die every year from fugu poisoning, but if truth were told, they are amateurs, largely drunk anglers, who prepare the fish themselves and end up eating their Last Supper. The sashimi was arranged to resemble the petals of a chrysanthemum, the flower of death in Japan. He did not talk while doing this but concentrated hard putting to one side the poisonous organs.
Fugu fish death skin#
He then removed the skin from the body, filleted, and then sliced the flesh into pieces. He carefully sliced down the belly of the fish and gently removed the guts, putting them to one side. The animal flapped for a minute and then lay still. Within seconds he had pushed a thin knife into the spine of the fugu severing it just behind the head. I often see smaller fugu in the harbour where we live and thought these were the normal size. We sat a wooden counter with the open kitchen behind and watched the chef take out a live fish from a tank.
Anyone who declines it for fear of death is really a pitiable person.’
If you eat it three or four times, you are enslaved…. As Kitaoji Rosanjin, one of Japan’s most important twentieth-century potters wrote, ‘The taste of fugu is incomparable. It proved to be an excellent start to our journey: we ate thickly sliced (compared to Tokyo’s thin) sashimi, all parts of the skin and organs and enjoyed twice fried fritters of thick white flesh. It was certainly long established and would have been open when Bond came to the city. Who knows if it was the one that Bond ate at. On the way, we stopped for lunch at a back street Fugu restaurant in the garish, seaside town of Beppu. There followed various side-dishes containing other parts of the fish, and more saké, but this time containing raw fugu fins.īond sat back and lit a cigarette. But it was very pleasant on the palate and Bond was effusive in his compliments because Tiger, smacking his lips over each morsel, obviously expected it of him. The fish tasted of nothing, not even of fish. He was proud of the fact that he had reached Black Belt standard with these instruments–the ability to eat an underdone fried egg with them. Bond followed Tiger’s example and set to with his chopsticks. On it were arranged, in the pattern of a huge flower, petal upon petal of a very thinly sliced and rather transparent white fish. “Now you can bring on this blasted blow-fish,” he said belligerently, “and if it kills me, it will be doing a good turn to our friend the doctor in his castle.”Ī very beautiful white porcelain dish as big as a bicycle wheel was brought forward with much ceremony. Bond downed the lot, tumbler by tumbler, and expressed himself satisfied. Bond said, “Now then, Tiger, I’m not going to commit honourable suicide without at least five bottles of saké inside me.” The flasks were brought, all five of them, to the accompaniment of much tittering by the waitresses. They were expected, and their table had been prepared. “The restaurant had a giant blow-fish hanging as a sign above the door, and inside, to Bond’s relief, there were Western-style chairs and tables at which a smattering of people were eating with the intense concentration of the Japanese. He used and described the experience in the Bond novel You Only Live Twice. The first in Beppu, where the author Ian Fleming had eaten some decades before. I am of the opinion that the best fugu can be found on the east coast of Kyushu, and so the two experiences that I describe below took place there. And as I am here to write this, I can attest to the fact that at least for me indeed nothing has happened. …is the way that Matsua Basho described it in one of his poems. Eating fugu is unlikely to kill the casual diner yet it is still the most poisonous of foods that can be legitimately ordered. This, of course, is an exaggeration while not a complete urban myth. The flower of death and the hanging sign found outside a restaurant serving fugu, the fugu-chochin, are there to warn the the unwary diner that at any moment death might befall them once they have stepped into the restaurant.
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