Abasa and Coconut Crab Soup: The Spiny and the Clawed

Churasantei’s bowl was cloudy and pale, with flakes of white fish, thick slices of spring onion and dark leafy greens.

The flesh was mild, as I had expected, with a firm, substantial chew. It tasted like pufferfish. Most of the flavour, though, seemed to have moved into the broth.

If the liver goes into the broth, that is presumably where the flavour is meant to end up. The fish had done the work. It simply was not keeping any of the credit.

Despite its name, the coconut crab is not a true crab. It is a relative of the hermit crab, and the largest arthropod that lives on land. London’s Natural History Museum, which gives it that title, also notes that the squeeze of its claws can be much stronger than a human grip. In Japanese it is yashigani: palm crab.

It is also an old part of island eating. On Miyako Island, where it is called makugan, the local newspaper Miyako Mainichi says it has long been caught and eaten as a valuable source of protein. Today it remains a prized ingredient in Okinawa, and a rare, expensive one.

Its situation is more complicated than the porcupinefish’s, though. Japan’s Ministry of the Environment lists it as Vulnerable, and several Okinawan municipalities have their own coconut crab protection ordinances. In Miyakojima City, catching them is banned all year in designated protected areas; elsewhere it is banned from June to August, and crabs that are too small or too large are off limits. Ishigaki City allows only males within a set size range, and only from September to November.

The rules manage the harvest rather than end it. Miyakojima City’s ordinance describes its aim as passing the crab on to the future as a shared asset.

The crab itself is not poisonous. It does, however, eat what it finds, and there are reports of people falling ill after eating coconut crabs that had fed on toxic plants.

The animal covered in spines had been the simple order.

As I had expected, it tasted close to crab. Once again, though, much of the flavour had gone into the broth. For ease of eating, an ordinary crab wins comfortably. For visual impact, this one was in a different league.