Chef Satō Haruki of Dewaya: Wild Vegetable Cuisine in the Timeless Spirit of Mount Gassan

Satō Haruki

Executive chef and managing director, Dewaya inn. Born in 1988 in Nishikawa, Yamagata Prefecture, to Satō Haruhiko, Dewaya’s third-generation proprietor. Graduated from Tamagawa University College of Business Administration in 2011. Next in line to assume the mantle of proprietor.

In the far distance there rose a rounded, snow-white peak, shining with such an unearthly glow that I thought I was watching the moon rise and only later realized that this was the famous Mount Gassan.—Mori Atsushi, Gassan

In the mountainous region of central Yamagata Prefecture known as Dewa Sanzan (for its three sacred mountains), at the very entrance to the mystical peak described by Mori Atsushi in his famous 1973 novelGassan, stands Dewaya, a 90-year-old inn renowned for its sansai (wild vegetable) cuisine.

SATŌ HARUKI For centuries, the three sacred mountains of this area—Gassan, Yudono, and Haguro—have been a focus of deep religious sentiment in Japan. In the old days, the devout were urged to complete at least two pilgrimages before they died—one to Ise Shrine in the West, and the other to the shrines of Dewa Sanzan in the East.

In 1929, after a railway station sprang up near here, my great-grandfather opened Dewaya right next to the entrance to Mount Gassan to serve the pilgrims who came through the town. He and my great-grandmother were farmers from nearby Sagae. At that time it was quite unusual for farmers to leave the land and go into business, and I’m told it caused a big brouhaha.

In the old days, the street at the entrance to Mount Gassan was lined with tea shops, inns, and other establishments catering to pilgrims. The pilgrims dressed in white kimono [as if preparing for death]. For them, the hike up Mount Gassan was basically a journey to the other world, from which they hoped to be born anew.

Dewaya has preserved the old wooden sign (Dewaya Ryokan) that beckoned pilgrims on their way to worship at the shrine near the summit of Mount Gassan.

The inn’s front entrance remains much as it would have appeared to pilgrims eight or nine decades ago.

Dewaya’s welcoming genkan, just inside the front entrance.

A vintage teapot bubbles over a sunken irori hearth.

It was customary for the local inns to serve a sumptuous “last supper” to the pilgrims on the eve of their perilous journey up the sacred mountain, where they would often endure physical hardship and privation in their quest for spiritual rebirth.

SATŌ Inevitably, the menus of the local inns depended heavily on wild edibles. After all, this is a mountainous region blanketed by snow about one-third of the year, and it’s far from the seacoast, so the local diet was limited. At the same time, the innkeepers would have been at pains to serve their guests something filling and nourishing to prepare them for the arduous journey ahead.

Of course, the inns would have drawn heavily from the cooking techniques and recipes passed down among local families over the generations. Then they would have elaborated—for example, adding finely ground walnuts or sesame to supply fat, protein, and other nutrients that you can’t get from sansai alone. Pilgrims visiting from remote locales might have contributed recipes of their own. The dishes that got a good reception from diners survived. In this way, the area gradually developed its own distinctive cuisine.

The locals took this style of cooking for granted, since it was all they knew. It was my grandfather Kuniharu, Dewaya’s second-generation proprietor, who identified it as a cultural tradition, with its own special history, and coined the term “sansai cuisine.”

The meals served at Dewaya convey the essence of that culture at a glance. The table is laden with countless small dishes, varying by the season. The vast majority are prepared from wild vegetables, many of them unfamiliar to visitors from other areas.

Stalking the Mountain Asparagus

SATŌ In the spring months, we serve anywhere between twenty and thirty different edible plants. We’re going for the look and feel of all-out rural hospitality, so we do what we can to add glamor to our humble vegetables. Dinner generally begins with an array of dainty cold dishes, including o-hitashi.(*1) That’s followed by something warm and substantial, often a nabe [hot pot] and tempura.

The sansai season only begins in earnest in April. This is a snowy, mountainous area that becomes impassable in the winter, and spring comes relatively late. But when the fuki-no-tō [butterbur bud clusters] appear, and seri [Java water dropwort] and kawamatsu [baikamo, another aquatic plant] start lining the streams and rivers, that’s when we know spring has really come.

When the mansaku [Japanese witch-hazel] comes into bloom, that’s the cue for all kinds of edibles to make their appearance. There’s kinomoe, nirinsō [Anemone flaccida], katakuri [Asian fawnlily], kogomi [ostrich fern], juuna, ukogi [eleuthero],tara no me [Japanese angelica shoots], gyōja ninniku [victory onion/Alpine leek], dohoina, shidoke, aiko, mizu, yama udo [Aralia cordata/mountain asparagus], zenmai [Asian royal fern], warabi [bracken], shiode, yamabuki, and so on and so forth. Then, in late May, the Gassan-dake bamboo shoots come into season.

Although spring comes late, it sticks around for a good long time. We can keep harvesting young shoots, buds, and leaves and delivering that fresh taste of spring right up through early July.

A typical meal at Dewaya features more than 20 varieties of wild vegetables and herbs in season.

Four different wild greens (kinomoe, mizu, shidoke, and urui), each with its own garnish (walnuts, ginger, etc.), surround a mound of fuki-miso, a condiment made from fried fuki-no-tō (giant butterbur buds) mixed with seasoned miso and bonito flakes.

These edible chrysanthemum petals (among the few dishes prepared from cultivated plants) are an autumn delicacy.

Amadokoro (fragrant Solomon’s seal) with sweet-and-sour miso dressing

Three dainty dishes prepared from udo (mountain asparagus), bamboo shoot, and katakuri (Asian fawnlily)

This tempura features five varieties of sansai, including fuki-no-tō (butterbur bud clusters), mountain asparagus, and ostrich fern fiddleheads.

Alpine leeks (above) and red ostrich fern fiddleheads.

Vital Role of Master Foragers

Dewaya depends on master foragers—knowledgeable, experienced, and intrepid professionals with whom it has cultivated a relationship spanning generations—to secure a 100% safe supply of wild edibles on a daily basis.

SATŌ Our master foragers hike through snow, ford rivers, and penetrate deep into the mountains, where no one else will venture, all to provide us with fresh wild edibles every day. In addition to knowing where to find all these plants and mushrooms, they have to be able to distinguish the edibles from look-alikes, which can be toxic. For example, nirinsō [Anemone flaccida] is very similar in appearance to torikabuto [monkshood], which is poisonous. The safety of our guests is in our hands, so clearly it’s essential to distinguish between edible and inedible plants.

Of course, timing is of the essence when harvesting sansai. You have to know when to pick each type for optimum flavor and texture. I often join the foragers on their sansai-hunting expeditions around Mount Gassan. The only way to acquire foraging know-how is through hands-on experience.

Then there’s the task of preparing each variety according to its exact requirements. The water used in cooking is crucial when it comes to bringing out the flavors and colors of sansai. At Dewaya, we cook with spring water from Mount Gassan. It’s soft water and ideal for Japanese tea as well as sansai.

The mountain decides when we get our ingredients. Our livelihood and our very lives are directly linked to Mount Gassan.

Dewaya also offers a special menu of fancy dishes—referred to as furumai cuisine—for gala occasions. Furumai meals are served on decorative ceramic dishes known as Imari-mono, in keeping with a longstanding local tradition.

SATŌ The bright colors of Imari-mono give a meal a grand, festive air. I should explain, though, that in this region, the term Imari-mono is used rather loosely; it isn’t limited to authentic Imari ware from northwestern Kyūshū.

The use of Imari-style ceramics for special occasions is a legacy of Edo-period trading culture in which our ancestors played a key role. Yamagata has long been a major center of safflower production. In the Edo period, the flowers were shipped down the Mogami River, along with our famous Yamagata rice, to Sakata, on the Sea of Japan. From Sakata, kitamaebune [coastal trading vessels] would carry the cargo along the coast and through the Seto Inland Sea to the port of Sakai. Then the ships would load up with ceramic wares, partly for ballast, before heading back out to the Sea of Japan for the return trip. Among the ceramics they transported to Yamagata was Imari ware.

Furumai meals are served on brightly colored, intricately patterned ceramic dishes known as Imari-mono. (© Dewaya)

As the eldest son of third-generation proprietor Satō Haruhiko, Haruki is next in line to take over the family business. His grandfather the heir-apparent with loving care, taking him along on trips around the prefecture and Japan, including the Tsukiji market in Tokyo. Today, as executive chef, Haruki works in the kitchen alongside his father, contributing his own fresh ideas to the tradition of sansai cuisine.

SATŌ After graduating from high school in Yamagata, I enrolled in the College of Business Administration at Tamagawa University in Tokyo. I was well aware that I was going to take over the family business, and that it would fall to me to preserve and nurture sansai culture. I believed that to do that, I needed a firm grounding in Japanese cuisine. As a university student, I had the opportunity to study Japanese culinary arts and hospitality operations firsthand at several Tokyo restaurants and hotels.

Preserving the local culture and tradition is my top priority, but I think it’s also important to adapt to new trends and tastes. As chef, I’ve introduced some innovative desserts, including chocolate with udo and a cheesecake made with udo and sake lees. The pleasant bitterness of the sansai complements the intense flavors of Western cooking, and the dishes have been well received.

The inn has welcomed a growing number of foreign visitors in recent years, as interest in the Dewa Sanzan region, with its unique spiritual history, has spread beyond Japan.

SATŌ For most of our foreign visitors, Dewaya’s sansai cuisine is a completely new experience. I think the religious background makes it all the more intriguing to them. The mountain has a mystical fascination even for those of us who live here, and I would think visitors from abroad would feel that even more strongly.

But apart from the religious aspects, I think more and more people are turning to sansai cuisine because it offers a refreshing and healthful alternative in this age of dietary superabundance. In our family, we eat sansai every day. There’s something cleansing and rejuvenating about the fresh taste and firm texture of wild vegetables.

Even after the long spring is over, there’s plenty to look forward to around here. In addition to midsummer delicacies like iwabuki, aomizu [clearweed], and junsai [water shield] we supplement the sansai menu with fresh-caught sweetfish and kajika [Japanese fluvial sculpin]. In August, when the tobidake mushrooms begin to sprout, you know that autumn is on its way. And autumn brings fruits and nuts, such as akebi [chocolate vine], wild grapes, matatabi [Chinese gooseberry], chestnuts, and beechnuts, not to mention a cornucopia of mushrooms, including such favorites as matsutake, maitake, and chicken of the woods.

Sansai dishes may look simple, but making these wild plants fit to eat involves a lot of advance preparation. With these painstaking techniques, our ancestors developed a food culture perfectly adapted to their harsh, mountainous environment. Then they elevated it further in their passion to serve the pilgrims and ascetics who passed through the town on their way up the mountain. I like to think that this history and passion come through in Dewaya’s sansai cuisine.

Bright green ostrich fern fiddleheads are among the fresh-picked wild vegetables delivered daily to Dewaya by trusted foragers.

Satō Haruhiko, third-generation proprietor of Dewaya, immerses the fiddleheads in lightly salted boiling water.

The ferns must not be overcooked, or they will lose their crisp texture.

A view of the Dewa Sanzan district from the Yamagata Basin, where farming contributes to the local diet.

Dewaya

Address: Mazawa 58, Nishikawa, Nishimurayama-gun, Yamagata Prefecture 990-0703
Phone: +81-(0)237-74-2323
Fax: +81-(0)237-74-3222
E-mail: info@dewaya.com
Website (in Japanese only): http://www.dewaya.com/

(Originally published in Japanese on July 26, 2018. Banner photo: Chef Satō Haruki with his mother, Satō Akemi, who manages the inn’s day-to-day operations as okami. Photos by Inomata Hiroshi, except where otherwise noted.)