Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Vegetables from Yamagata, Japan

Seisai-zuke and omi-zuke (Yamagata)青菜漬

Whole plants of Yamagata seisai, a large takana-type mustard, are sun-wilted, salted under a heavy weight for about three days, then washed and pickled again in a cooled soy-sauce, sugar and sake dressing. The pickle is eaten through winter and turns amber and slightly sour by spring. Omi-zuke chops the same greens with radish, carrot and other vegetables.

Fully documentedVegetables11 days – 13 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceYamagata prefecture's recipe on MAFF's regional-cuisine site, for one pickling tub of 1 kg of greens. Many households keep their own family dressing.
Yamagata seisai, whole plants1 kg[maff-seisai]
Salt, for the first salting40 g (about 4% of the greens)[maff-seisai]
Priming waterAs neededToo much lowers the salt level, so the salt is adjusted[maff-seisai]
Soy sauce30 ml[maff-seisai]
Sugar40 g[maff-seisai]
Sake30 ml[maff-seisai]
Shochu30 ml[maff-seisai]

Total time across the recorded steps: 11 days – 13 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Whole mustard plants hang in the sun until they go limp

Step 1 of 6
Wilt the whole plants in the sun
Time
24 h – 3 days
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
L. curvatus
L. plantarum
Levilactobacillus brevis

Harvest runs from late October to mid-November, before the snow, on a run of fine days.

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

Whole plants of Yamagata seisai, a large takana-type mustard, are sun-wilted, salted under a heavy weight for about three days, then washed and pickled again in a cooled soy-sauce, sugar and sake dressing. The pickle is eaten through winter and turns amber and slightly sour by spring. Omi-zuke chops the same greens with radish, carrot and other vegetables. Made in 6 steps over 11 days – 13 days. The longest step, main pickling under a weight in a cold place, takes 7 days (MAFF 2026). Salt is 4 % (MAFF 2026). In nozawana-zuke, a related Japanese salted leaf-vegetable pickle (Brassica rapa leaves in a 7 % salt brine at 10 °C in the study, not seisai), Latilactobacillus curvatus was the predominant species, followed by Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Levilactobacillus brevis does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step7 daysReported[maff-seisai][maff-tf-seisai]Main pickling under a weight in a cold place
Salt4 %Reported[maff-seisai]First salting under a heavy weight

What makes this one different

The whole plant is salted first, washed, and then pickled a second time in a cooked soy-sauce dressing. Omi-zuke chops the same greens, including leaf tips once thrown away, with other vegetables.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Omi-zukeGreens cut 7 mm wide with daikon, carrot, Jerusalem artichoke and salted perilla seed, salted at 3% under a weight overnight, then dressed with soy sauce, zarame sugar and mirin. The name may come from Omi merchants or from momi-zuke (rubbed pickle).

Safety

MAFF's recipe salts the greens at about 4 % of their weight under a stone at least twice as heavy as the greens, and warns that priming water lowers the salt level, so the salt has to be adjusted. The second pickling stands in a cold place under a weight. Pickle that has turned sour by spring is washed before it is cooked, as in fried rice or kukina-ni [maff-tf-seisai].

History and sources

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

The seisai variety is said to have come from Chongqing, China, in 1904. Yamagata brought seed from Nara in 1908 and trialled it at the agricultural experiment station, where it proved better than the pickling greens then in use (taisai, Shandong cabbage and bashōna), and began growing it. Seed could be collected locally from the early Taishō era (1912 onward), and in the Shōwa era (from 1926) the growing area spread from the Murayama district across the prefecture [maff-seisai].

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [maff-seisai] MAFF, うちの郷土料理, 青菜漬 (Yamagata; recipe from Yamagata prefecture), read 2026-10gov
  2. [maff-omi] MAFF, うちの郷土料理, おみ漬 (Yamagata), read 2026-10gov
  3. [maff-tf-seisai] MAFF, にっぽん伝統食図鑑 (Traditional Foods in Japan), 青菜漬, read 2026-10gov
  4. [sandagdorj2019] Sandagdorj B. et al. 2019, Characterization of Microbiota that Influence Immunomodulatory Effects of Fermented Brassica rapa L., Microbes and Environments 34(2):206–214paper