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Fish and seafood from Japan

Saba no kōji-zuke (Chizu, Tottori)鯖の糀漬け

Saba no kōji-zuke is salted mackerel layered in a tub with cooked rice, rice koji, ginger and red chilli, then weighted and left to ferment. In the mountain town of Chizu, households made it from December for New Year. It can be eaten after half a month to a month and is said to be best at 20–30 days.

Fully documentedFish and seafood15 days – 30 days

Recipe

Saba no kōji-zuke (Chizu, Tottori), a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Kida Yasuo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceThe Tottori Prefecture recipe from the Mutsumi group of Chizu town; it is a large batch because the dish is a preserved food.
Salted mackerel, filleted into three pieces15 fish[tottori]
Vinegar5 cups, diluted with an equal amount of waterFor washing the fillets[tottori]
Rice koji1 kg[tottori]
Rice, cooked8 gō[tottori]
Sake1 cupUsed to wet the hands while packing[tottori]
Ginger1 piece, minced[tottori]
Red chillies5–6, seeded and sliced[tottori]
Salt3 tablespoons[tottori]
Starternatural fermentation of the salted fish and rice, with rice koji (米糀) mixed in

Total time across the recorded steps: 15 days – 30 days

Start
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What changes: Salted mackerel is filleted and washed in vinegar diluted with water

Step 1 of 5
Fillet the salted mackerel and wash in diluted vinegar
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Latilactobacillus sakei
Leuconostoc
Lactic acid bacteria
Moulds
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Saba no kōji-zuke is salted mackerel layered in a tub with cooked rice, rice koji, ginger and red chilli, then weighted and left to ferment. In the mountain town of Chizu, households made it from December for New Year. It can be eaten after half a month to a month and is said to be best at 20–30 days. Made in 5 steps over 15 days – 30 days. The longest step, cover, weight and ferment, takes 15–30 days (Tottori Prefecture 2026). Latilactobacillus sakei and Leuconostoc species, the psychrotrophic lactic acid bacteria found in related izushi-style narezushi (fish fermented with rice and koji), namely nezushi from Gifu, izushi from Hokkaido and kabura-zushi from Kanazawa; no study of Tottori koji-zuke itself was found does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step15–30 daysReported[tottori]Cover, weight and ferment
Temperature50–60 °CReported[tottori]Mix cooled rice with salt and koji

What makes this one different

Rice koji goes in with the rice, which promotes the ferment and adds sweetness through saccharification (the izushi type), where a rice-only narezushi uses cooked rice alone. Chilli and ginger are added to take away the fish smell and bring out its umami.

Related ferments

Safety

The source gives no salt percentage, pH or fermenting temperature, so nothing here shows that botulism is controlled. Japan's agriculture ministry lists home-made izushi and similar fish ferments as botulism foods, and izushi caused 14 of the 29 food botulism incidents reported in Japan from 1984 to 2026. Japan's health ministry names mackerel among the main fish behind histamine poisoning, and the FDA says histamine can form during salting and fermenting, that refrigeration holds it back, and that cooking or freezing cannot remove it. The fish may be eaten uncooked, and Japan's health ministry says ordinary vinegar or salting does not kill Anisakis larvae in mackerel; freezing at -20 °C for at least 24 hours does. The makers start it in December, but the source does not say how cold the tub stays, and the FDA says botulinum toxin forms faster when warm. Read this as a record of their recipe, not a method shown to be safe.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

In Chizu, a mountain town where fresh fish and sashimi were once out of reach and only salted fish could be had, households pickled salted mackerel in koji each December and took out what they needed from the tub, for New Year dishes and as a snack with sake.

  1. [fda-ch13] US Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance, Chapter 13: Clostridium botulinum Toxin Formationgov
  2. [mhlw-histamine] Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan, ヒスタミンによる食中毒について (histamine food poisoning)gov
  3. [maff-boto] MAFF Japan, hazard profile, Clostridium botulinum (food poisoning cases and control measures)gov
  4. [fda-ch7] US Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance, Chapter 7: Scombrotoxin (Histamine) Formationgov
  5. [mhlw-anisakis] Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan, アニサキスによる食中毒を予防しましょう (preventing Anisakis food poisoning)gov
  6. [tottori] Tottori Prefecture, とっとりのうまいもん紹介, 鯖の糀漬け (with recipe from the Mutsumi group, Chizu town), read 2026-10gov
  7. [jawiki-narezushi] Japanese Wikipedia, なれずし (outline of rice-only narezushi and koji-added izushi types)wiki
  8. [hori2026] Hori M., Ohtsubo C., Nakamura K., Hirata M., Shimada M., Nakagawa T. 2026, Comparative analysis of bacterial communities in traditional fermented food, Nezushi from Gifu Prefecture and izushi-style narezushi from across Japan, Journal of General and Applied Microbiology 72:70-73, doi 10.2323/jgam.2026.05.001 (abstract)paper