Pickled vegetables are generally known under the term tsukemono in Japanese, which can be translated as “pickled things”. If you go to a supermarket or pickle store in Japan or an Asian shop when living abroad, you can discover a broad range of pickled products made from vegetables, such as cucumbers, eggplants, bamboo sprouts, and many others ranging from cabbage to fruits and nuts, all of them pickled in many different ways. Should you look for pickled radish, you will find an amazing product range from slightly brined radish, pickled radish leaves and stems to takuanzuke (literally meaning “pickled swamp hermitage”, –zuke or –duke stands for “pickled in, preserved in”), a yellowish vegetable, which turns out to be a radish too.
Why this strange name? ……… and what actually is takuan?
If you check the common Japanese dictionaries, you’ll find an explanation like this:
“Pickled takuan (takuanzuke): a pickled vegetable; Miyashige radish or an offspring, such as Nerima radish, is sun-dried for about two weeks in order to reduce the water, then placed in a barrel, sprinkled with rice bran and salt and weighted by a stone weight.” (Kokugo daijiten)
This isn’t really revealing. This definition describes more the process of pickling than gives an explanation of the origin of the name.
Let’s dig into the historical sources for more information.
To come to the point: they all focus on something different
- Earliest source, a kind of template
- takuan, a temple name?
- Monk Takuan, the inventor of pickles?
- linguistic aspects, regional differences
- Kansai (Osaka/Kyoto region) versus Kantō (Tokyo region)
- takuan, a business model
- pickled takuan, how-to instructions
Earliest source: It all started in the 17th century…..
“There’s ‘one-hundred pickles’; one takes one hundred radishes, washes them and let them dry in the sun for several days. When the water content is reduced and they are easy to bend, one mixes one tō (ca. 18 l) of fine rice bran with four shō (ca. 7,2 l) of kōji, and three and a half shō (ca. 6,3 l) of white salt, put the radishes in layers one over another as previously described and let them pickle. They will be ready after about 30 days. This is also called pickled takuan. It is named as such because they were firstly produced in Daitoku zenji temple and then transmitted from household to household. One takes out the slightly pickled radishes that are about to rot and dries them in the sun for a short time. It is also tasty and good to make ‘one-hundred pickles’ pickled in sake lees or miso. This are some examples of how pickles are made these days.” (from Honchō shokkan, 1697)
The Daitoku zenji or Tokuzen-ji is a Zen temple located in the southeast of the Daitoku-ji temple complex in Kyoto and was originally built in the fourteenth century independently from the Daitoku-ji.
Takuan pickles have apparently something to do with a temple and are also called One-hundred pickles. And the kōji mold (the fungus Aspergillus oryzae) is used as fermentation starter.
Is then takuan the name of a temple?
The next source, published twenty years later in 1717, tells a slightly different story:
“takuan pickles: Takuan is a person called Sōhō or Meishi from Tajima province. He was the head priest of Daitokuji temple [in Kyoto] and the founder of Tōkaiji temple; he died on the nineth month of the second year of Shōhō [1646]. His grave marker is only one round stone. Now, it seems to me that this gravestone resembles a weight stone, hence the name.”
(Shogenjikō setsuyōshū, vol. 6, food)
Now it becomes clear that the name obviously derives from a monk whose grave is decorated with a stone that looks like a weight stone used for pickling. Tajima was an old province of Japan and covers the area of present-day northern Hyōgo prefecture. It is also the birthplace of the famous Kobe beef. (Side note: the stone on top of his grave INDEED looks like a weight stone).
Takuan, the inventor of pickled radish?
Other sources took up this information in a shortened form. For example,
“takuan pickles: It is Master [Takuan] who started this savory that is now pickled in Edo”.
(Edo sunago)
“takuan pickles: It started with the pickles of Master Takuan, the founder of Tōkaiji-temple”.
(Honchō seji danki)
The author of these quotes is the haiku poet Kikuoka Senryō (1680-1747). His short comments suggest that Takuan was the ‘inventor’ of pickled radishes.
This made another author mad.
His name is Tamiya Chōsen (1753-1815), and in response to that he wrote the following comment:
“takuan pickles only refers to radish. According to Kikuchi’s Sejidan, it is Oshō [Master Takuan] who started to produce them. This is not so! Born in the province of Tajima Master Oshō is also known under the names Sōhō and Meishi. He is the founder of Tōkaiji-temple and entered nirvana on the nineth month of the second year of Shōhō [1646]. On his grave is only a round stone. This stone is bizarre, it resembles a pickled radish, and that is why pickled takuan became the nickname of pickles. Oshō is only a person of the recent past but pickles do for certain have a long past. I can only say that opinions, such as in the Sejidan, go well over the target!” (Kitsuan manpitsu, 1791)
He is right, pickles are much “older”; in fact, they are already mentioned in the Engishiki, a fifty-volumes text about laws and customs written at the beginning of the tenth century.
Linguistic aspects
More clarity offers an early modern dictionary on dialects. In the Butsurui shōko (1775), a collection of about 4000 words from all over Japan which the author, the poet Koshigaya Gozan (1717-1788), has meticulously gathered. He says:
“Pickled radish: in Kyōto, it is called salty pickles (karazuke), in Kyūshū, one-hundred pickles (hyakuponzuke), and in Kantō, takuan pickles. Besides the idea that the name comes from ‘pickles for storing’ (takuwaezuke), which I do not support, the pickled radishes in that temple [Tōkaiji] are not called takuan pickles but ‘one-hundred pickles’.”
(Butsurui shōko, vol. 4, cloth and food)
Here we are. Takuan pickles is just another name for ‘one-hundred’ pickles.
But let’s dig more into the regional differences.
Kansai versus Kantō
“The citizens of Edo do not make every winter takuan pickles at their homes. They calculate their annual needs and task the farmers of Nerima village to pickle. Every winter, they give the [required] number [of radish], and the farmers calculate the actual demand, pickle and store them, and deliver them by horse throughout the year. Fires are frequently in this place because there is almost no unoccupied land. The citizens in Kyoto and Osaka for sure make their own pickles at home and store them.”
(Morisada mankō, later volumes, vol. 1, foodstuff)
There is not much known about the author Kitagawa Morisada (1810- ?); according to the foreword written in 1858, he was a merchant but felt it would be kind of sad to live a life to no purpose, so he got the idea of writing a book in which he wanted to record the people’s daily affairs.
The mentioned Nerima village (now part of present-day Nerima district in Tokyo) was one of the famous regions in which radish was produced.
Takuan pickles as business
The production of pickled radish was a lucrative business. This suggests the previous but also the following source, the Owari meisho zue:
“Takuan: Gokiso village and the neighboring villages, they all produce them. They are purchased by carriers who sell them in the suburban districts. Now, these radishes are called Tōhata [radishes] and are again a different variety in contrast to the Miyashige radishes, the local product of this territory. In general, many households have them stocked up in large-scales from the end of the tenth month to the beginning of February (risshun). If you look at the illustration, you will understand.”
(Ōwari meisho zue)
This work is a huge topographical guidebook that comprises thirteen volumes. It was compiled by the scholar Okada Kei (1780-1860) and the wholesale merchant Noguchi Michinao (1785-1865). The work was self-published and consumed most of Noguchi’s fortune. The writing took about three years from 1838 to 1841, and in 1844 the first seven booklets were printed. Since the undertaking ate up almost all of the Noguchi family assets, printing was interrupted and the remaining six booklets were not published until 1880 with the financial support of Aichi prefecture.
An interesting point is, according to this source, that apparently the famous Miyashige radish was not used for pickling, but perhaps an offspring called Tōhata radish.
I could not find more information about Tōhata radish but it seems to me that it was cultivated in Tōhata, which is now a district in Nagoya.
How to make takuan, a hands-on guide
An amazing insight on the method of pickling, which can also serve as a how-to-do guide, provides the manual Shiki tsukemono shiokagen. Therein the author, the “owner of the Odawara shop”, lists about sixty-four recipes beginning with the recipe for pickling takuan.
“pickled takuan: That is how it is commonly called. People say that Master Takuan started this kind of pickling. In addition, on the grave of this Zen-master is a round stone that resembles the stone weight used for pickling; therefore the name. Another theory says that it is transferred from the word takuwae, that means to store and preserve. Be that as it may, by being a daily product of economic value for the people, it makes the number one of pickles, which, for most households, cannot be missed for a single day.”
(Shiki tsukemono shiokagen, 1836),
(Source: National Diet Library Digital Collections)
Then, he explains in detail how to make pickled radish/takuan. The translation of the recipe is here: How to make takuan.
It seems that recipes such as those in the Shiki tsukemono shiokagen haven’t changed much during the last two hundred years (if we believe the advertisements of ‘shinise’, businesses that have lasted for hundreds of years).
But I guess they made some ‘adjustments’ to the palates of the modern people…… for example, sugar, an ingredient that you don’t find in these old recipes.
And now……the last question….
Why are (most) takuan radishes yellow?
Actually, the intensity of the color shows the grade of fermentation. That means, the longer radish is pickled the darker the color gets, which is the result of a chemical process inside the radish. Often the color of a radish is enhanced by a natural (or artificial) color additive, such as the fruit of gardenia (kuchinashi)….
Reality check
I’ve bought a takuan in an Asia shop outside of Japan, and the shop had a selection of at least four products from different suppliers and they all contained the same:
- Radish, water, salt
- three different kind of artificial sweetener: aspartame, saccharin (E954), acesulfame K (E950)
- acetic acid (E260; vinegar, for example, is mostly dilute acetic acid, and often produced by fermentation) and citric acid (E330)
- as preservative, potassium sorbate (E202, which is contained in instant food)
- riboflavin (E101) for coloring, and finally:
- sulphites, an additive to maintain food color, shelf-life and prevent the growth of fungi or bacteria