Sukugarasu Tofu: One Fish per Block

A fish on a lunar timetable

In Okinawan, suku are young rabbitfish, and karasu means salting. Sukugarasu is suku preserved in salt.

The fish are about three centimetres long and roughly a month out of the egg. They arrive in large schools on the spring tides around the first day of the sixth, seventh and eighth months of the old lunar calendar, riding the rising water into the shallow lagoons inside the reef. Only fish that have not yet started eating seaweed are used.

Few ingredients turn up on a schedule set by the moon.

Salt draws moisture out of the fish and helps preserve them. As they mature, enzymes break down proteins into amino acids, which contribute to the savoury flavour.

The calendar still belongs to Okinawa’s reefs. Most of the fish in the jars do not.

According to Japan’s national fisheries research agency, about 90 per cent of the raw fish used for sukugarasu is imported, from the Philippines and elsewhere. A 2022 news report found that suku landings in Naha had fallen by more than 80 per cent in three years. Fishermen suspected warmer seas, poorer water or changes to the coastline, but nobody was sure.

On island tofu

The most common way to eat sukugarasu is also the simplest: put it on Okinawan tofu. Shima-dofu, Okinawa’s island tofu, is firmer and contains less water than most tofu elsewhere in Japan. It is made by pressing crushed soybeans before boiling them, rather than after.