The Appeal of Salt

Ms. Aoyama, I understand you are a salt coordinator. What led you to pursue this profession?

After graduating from the Faculty of Policy Management, I found the world of food interesting and joined Kagome. I was involved in product development and other areas, but I worked a bit too hard and my health suffered slightly. That prompted me to move to Okinawa, and encountering Okinawan salt there was my entry point into the world of salt.

That was about 19 years ago. I changed jobs to a company specializing in salt business, and my relationship with salt began. In 2012, I established the Japan Salt Coordinator Association, and this year marks exactly its 10th anniversary.

What aspects of salt did you find appealing?

I do many things, but for example, like the collaboration I did with Mr. Sugimoto last year for an event called "The World of Salt," I find the relationship between cooking and salt, the history of salt from various parts of the world, and the beauty aspects very interesting.

Salt and cooking are truly inseparable.

Even when I conduct food education classes for children, I feel the importance of salt very deeply. I use salt to help children perceive umami. Of course, for us chefs, the use of salt is extremely important. There is a history of salt in every part of the world, and it is linked to the history of cuisine. Furthermore, fermentation techniques have advanced because of salt, and encounters with ingredients harvested from the land have created new dishes and influenced food culture. It is truly indispensable.

My specialty is modern Japanese economic and business history, and colonial economic history. Research on Japan's colonial economic history has mainly discussed what pre-war Japan did when it expanded into Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula.

While that research is important, I am interested in how the colonizing country, Japan, changed due to the colonization of neighboring regions.

In particular, I focus on the supply of primary products from colonies in pre-war Japan. As one of these primary products, nearly half of the salt distributed in the mainland during the interwar period was imported or transferred from the colonies. Therefore, the colonial salt industry was indispensable when considering the salt market in pre-war Japan. That is why I conduct historical research on salt.

So, I am not familiar at all with current salt trends (laughs).

I haven't often thought about salt from that perspective, so it's very intriguing. Of course, salt has been made in Japan since ancient times, and there were a vast number of places across Japan making salt in salt pans and fields, weren't there?

However, after the "Salt Monopoly System" began in 1905 to raise funds for the Russo-Japanese War—placing salt, which had been freely sold until then, under the control of the Tax Bureau of the Ministry of Finance—salt fields gradually disappeared in the name of efficiency. But until then, salt was even produced from hot spring water in landlocked prefectures like Yamanashi, so it was rare to find a prefecture that didn't produce it.

That's true.

From what I know, salt fields introduced by the Japanese military still remain in Qigu, Taiwan. Does that mean Japan built salt fields overseas during its colonial rule and brought that salt back?

Rather than the military making salt in Taiwan, I believe it was a case of the military utilizing existing salt fields.

In Taiwan, salt is produced in solar salt fields, which differ from the "irihama-style" salt fields used in the mainland. Due to this production method, literature from the early period of Japanese possession describes solar salt as being gray and lumpy. Because its shape differed from the white, powdery mainland salt, it was called "gravel salt" and was disliked by mainland consumers.

For example, until the World War I period, the largest industrial consumption of salt by use was for soy sauce brewing, but in the brewing process, salt is dissolved in water to make brine before being added. Therefore, lumpy salt was difficult to dissolve. Consequently, many brewers disliked solar salt.

So there are two major ways of making salt: solar salt and the irihama-style.

Broadly speaking, the difference is whether it is boiled in a pan or not. Salt crystallized to the end using only the power of the sun and wind is solar salt, and even if a salt field is used partway through, if it is boiled in a pan at the end, it becomes "sengo" (boiled) salt. It has various names like pan-fired salt, but in technical terms, it is classified as sengo salt. With solar salt, as Mr. Maeda mentioned, the base is often soil or gravel, so there is a higher possibility of foreign matter getting in.

But what I found interesting in your story is that back then, gray salt was shunned as gravel salt, whereas today, salt from Guérande in France is gray but is extremely popular as a brand salt. Things certainly change as times change.

That's right. Guérande salt is rich in minerals and brings out the inherent deliciousness of ingredients, so I think it is highly regarded by chefs as well. Now you can even see it in supermarkets.

Recently, there has been a strong natural orientation among consumers. With the raw food trend, there is a preference for foods that are not cooked with heat. In that context, since "sengo" salt is naturally boiled at nearly 100 degrees Celsius, I think the trend toward preferring unboiled solar salt has become stronger.

In Japan, the 4th Salt Industry Reorganization Act was promulgated in 1971, which mandated that only salt made using ion-exchange membranes could be produced. As a result, only salt that had only the sodium extracted from seawater suddenly began to circulate.

In human history until then, the history of using salt containing minerals other than sodium—what used to be called "sashijio," which was sticky and full of "bittern" (nigari)—is much older.

In that sense, before the introduction of the salt monopoly system in 1905, I think there were various criteria for choosing salt other than the sodium chloride content.

For example, a professional chef like Mr. Sugimoto can use knowledge obtained from exchanging information with other chefs, not just information sent out by ingredient producers, when choosing ingredients. However, that is quite difficult for general consumers. In that case, easily understandable information like "appearance" becomes important.

Certainly, it must be difficult for the general public to gather detailed information.

It was the same in the pre-war period. Taiwan salt, which looked different from mainland salt, wouldn't sell. However, that was a problem for the Taiwan Governor-General's Office. The Governor-General's Office, like the home government, obtained revenue from the salt monopoly system. Therefore, importers dissolved the solar salt brought from Taiwan to the mainland in seawater and boiled it.

Salt that has undergone this process is called refined salt, but in the end, mainland consumers would not eat solar salt unless it was boiled. This was the reality of salt consumption in the mainland at least until around the World War I period.

I see, so those were the circumstances.

Under the salt monopoly system, the Monopoly Bureau of the Ministry of Finance abolished many salt production sites across the country during the reorganization of salt production areas in 1910–11. Until then, production sites of a certain scale existed in each region; for example, Miyagi Prefecture in the Tohoku region and Fukuoka Prefecture in the Kyushu region were major salt production areas. Although they were small compared to the main production area in the Seto Inland Sea region, they could supply salt within their regions to a certain extent. However, many of those production sites were abolished, and eventually, the Monopoly Bureau of the Ministry of Finance took on the role of adjusting the supply and demand of salt for the entire mainland.

And in order to provide a supply that met the salt demand of the entire mainland, they ended up in a situation where they had to bring in salt from the colonies.

However, even if they told consumers to buy solar salt because there wasn't enough salt, consumers wouldn't buy it. No matter how much it was under a monopoly system, the government couldn't force people to buy it, so the government had to supply what consumers would buy. Therefore, they had no choice but to process colonial salt into refined salt and supply it as white, powdery salt.

With so many different types of salt, does the way they are used change depending on the culinary application?

The primary use of salt is to determine the flavor, but salt used during the cooking process is also very important.

Fish is a good example. First, you wash the fish and soak it not in plain water, but in salt water with a concentration of about 3%. By doing so, excess moisture and odors are drawn out through osmotic pressure. This maintains freshness. In my case, I use plain water and ice, soaking the fish in a high-salt environment while firming it up in the ice. When I do that, the quality of the fish meat is completely different by the time it reaches the finished state on the plate served to the customer. I feel that kind of appeal of salt being on the front lines.

Also, since my main focus is French cuisine, I was always taught to "salt" when sautéing vegetables and the like in French cooking. What that means is also osmotic pressure; when sautéing vegetables, the parts where salt is attached to the surface have a higher salt concentration, so the vegetable's own moisture tries to move outward. By causing the moisture to move toward the higher salt concentration—making it release water—the flavor of that vegetable becomes tightly concentrated. This vegetable cooking method is the first thing you learn in French cuisine.

So osmotic pressure is important.

Perhaps the first French word a chef learns is "Suer." It means "to sweat," and you always add a small amount of salt to make vegetables sweat when sautéing them. Instead of adding extra moisture to cook them, the French way of using salt is to cook them using their own moisture.

So you bring out the flavor of the ingredients with salt.

Also, where the salt is harvested greatly affects the taste of the final dish, and it definitely affects the drinks enjoyed with the meal.

For example, a wine of the same lineage would pair well with something seasoned with salt that contains a lot of calcium, whereas if it contains a lot of iron, a wine that reacts to iron would conversely not pair well. Even a single salt affects not just the dish, but also the surrounding environment.

That's quite a deep topic. So, Ms. Aoyama, you coordinate the salt when making such dishes?

Yes. I ask the chef what kind of dish they are making and how they want it to be, and then I say, "Well then, let's go with this salt."

I currently have about 2,300 types of salt, and each one has a different personality. The shapes are different, the tastes are of course different, and the balance of minerals inside is different. Since the production methods and origins are different, my role is to choose something that fits the concept or theme of the dish at that time.

2,300 types is amazing. Does that include overseas ones as well?

There are about 600 salt production sites in Japan alone. However, a single production site doesn't just make one product; they might commercialize only the first salt to form, called "fleur de sel," or make separate products from salt formed in the middle or bottom layers. So one production site sells three to four types, or in some cases, six to seven types of salt.

As a result, domestic salt alone easily exceeds a thousand types. When you include imported ones, it comes to about 2,300 types.

For example, sommeliers use complex expressions for wine, like "nutty." Certainly, since wine is a complex mix of various tastes and aromas, I can understand why the expressions used to evaluate it are diverse, but can one perceive anything other than "saltiness" in salt?

When I listen to people researching taste sensors, the data shows that there are various elements besides the so-called "saltiness" of salt. It means there are also bitterness and acidity.

It is often said that since seawater is common throughout the world, the taste shouldn't change. Certainly, from a macro perspective, you could say it's the same, but if you shift your perspective to the micro level, the state of the seawater when it is drawn as a raw material for salt changes significantly depending on whether it's an offshore area with a very fast current or a bay where incoming seawater accumulates in large quantities at the bottom. That affects the taste of the salt.

When Japan built salt fields in Taiwan in the early 20th century, differences in seawater quality certainly became an issue. A Japanese entrepreneur tried to build a salt field in Kaohsiung Bay in the south, but because a river flowed into it, the salt concentration dropped below the seawater average. There was a case where they couldn't make salt successfully because of that.

Salt production efficiency drops significantly when a river flows in. However, in today's salt market, that is also seen as a point of interest, and attention is also paid to things like the mountains behind the production area. In other words, what the river carries.

Whether it's an iron mine or soil rich in phosphorus. Because minerals from the mountains travel down the river and flow into the sea, the salt concentration is diluted, but the water is used as a raw material for salt in a state containing various things not found in normal seawater, making it easier to produce salt with unique characteristics.

Does the cooking change if you use salt with characteristic components?

I think it has a significant impact if it's at a timing like sprinkling it on during the finishing stage.

There is the expression "the salt is sweet," isn't there? I wondered what that was, but among salts, there are some that have a mild taste. I think some people perceive that as "sweet."

That's right. I think the interpretation of "mild = sweet" is common. Sodium is the mineral that presents "saltiness," but if it contains only sodium, it becomes a sharp, piercing salty taste. Since that is treated as normal for modern people, when compared to that, if the saltiness becomes mellow due to the inclusion of minerals other than sodium, it probably leads to the expression "sweet."

Also, salt containing many minerals other than sodium has the effect of working in combination with organic matter, in addition to providing saltiness. Especially when used for preparation, some salts break down amino acids quickly while others do so slowly during the resting period, so if you prepare the same meat or fish with different types of salt, the finish will be completely different.

That's true. Although using them differently is difficult.

Because the perception that salt equals sodium has lasted for a long time, research into how minerals other than sodium are involved in fermentation, aging, and the breakdown of umami hasn't progressed much yet. I think it will be interesting as that is clarified. The color development of meat, for example, changes quite a bit.

You mean it changes depending on the type of salt?

This is only based on empirical rules, but if you prepare food with salt high in magnesium—salt containing a lot of so-called "bittern"—it can turn a bit gray. When that happens, the taste is delicious, but because of the appearance, the total deliciousness decreases. It's very delicious if you eat it with your eyes closed, but I don't think that's what cooking is about, so I suppose it's a world of searching for the optimal solution there.

Probably people don't go that far in home cooking, so I think that becomes the world of dishes that chefs provide to customers in restaurants.

That's right. That might be the realm where we operate to maximize the appeal of ingredients.

Mr. Sugimoto, how many types of salt do you usually use?

In normal times, I use about three types. Ones that aren't that expensive and can be used in large quantities. Then there is rock salt and the clearest crystalline salt called fleur de sel. I always have those in stock.

Another thing I pay attention to is the timing of use. I differentiate between using it at the timing when I want to deliver the sensation of the salt and the flavor of the ingredients it brings out to the customer, and the timing within the cooking process.

Personally, I also own several types of salt. I love salts where you can enjoy the texture of the salt itself, and among them, I often use Maldon salt from the UK. If it's a salt that has a bit of a smoky flavor in addition to the texture, it adds more depth to the dish and makes it very delicious.

When pairing salt with food, it's not just the taste, but the mouthfeel and texture that are very important. When people think of salt, they have an image of white grains, but there are also salts shaped like large spherical pearls and various other shapes, so the texture changes considerably depending on this.

Quite a few people use different salts for seasoning beforehand and for toppings. It's interesting to pursue that aspect as well.

Also, I think salt is very interesting because it is unique as a market. In the modern salt market, the price of a product basically does not correlate with quality at all. Just because it's cheap doesn't mean it's bad salt, and just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's good salt.

In the salt market until the end of the monopoly system, so-called household salt was always sold at a fixed low price. It was sold for about 100 yen per kilogram, and since household salt accounted for most of the market, the pie for other types of salt was small.

However, today, about 20 years after the end of the monopoly system, the market for what are commonly called natural salts or sea salts, which cost about 500 yen per 100 grams, is expanding. Even if the consumption of household salt decreases, the overall market does not shrink much because that market is expanding.

This is a pipe dream, but if a world comes where everyone chooses salt as a specialty food item and it becomes normal to buy salt for 500 yen per 100 grams, the market size would suddenly become 50 times larger. No other food has a market with this kind of potential. Depending on how public relations are handled in the future, I think there is a possibility that the market size will expand significantly.

When expressing that there is no relationship between quality and price, I wonder what the elements that constitute "quality" are. Under the monopoly system, it was very simple; basically, a high sodium chloride content was the measure of quality.

However, that might be a way of thinking unique to the monopoly era. Before the monopoly system was introduced, it was much more difficult to measure the sodium chloride content of salt than it is today. Therefore, the price changed based on information about the production area and whether the packaging was a straw bag (tawara) or a straw sack (kamasu).

I suspect that the current salt market is not in a situation where "sodium chloride content is the sole measure of quality" as it was during the monopoly era. If so, rather than saying there is no relationship between quality and price, it might be that the criteria for judging quality have become extremely diversified.

That may be so. To explain why Ako salt became a brand, during the monopoly era, permission was granted in 1973 for reprocessed salt—meaning, "it's okay to sell it if you take salt imported from overseas and put effort into remaking it in Japan." At that time, people who were involved in the movement to restore natural salt, which later became the parent body of Ako no Amashio, decided that even if it was overseas salt, they would start making it if they could add effort to create salt close to Japan's traditional salt. That's how Ako no Amashio and Hakata no Shio began.

Then, people who wanted to eat traditional-style salt started choosing these two. After that, Ako no Amashio took a strong approach toward processed food manufacturers, while Hakata no Shio took a strong approach toward the culinary industry, so they gradually carved out their own niches. If you ask people in the culinary industry, Hakata no Shio is more common than Ako no Amashio, isn't it?

That's true. It might be common in the professional world.

Regarding what makes quality superior, I think the interesting thing about salt is that there isn't one absolute brand. For example, even a salt that pairs well with grain-fed Wagyu beef will often kill the flavor of red sea bream sashimi if used with it because the taste of the salt is too strong.

So each has characteristics depending on the application.

Yes. For example, recently there has been a tendency to prefer salt with a high "nigari" (bittern) content, but because it's sticky, if you use it as a sprinkling salt for yakitori, it falls off in clumps and you can't grab it with your fingers to sprinkle it properly.

You end up over-sprinkling it.

As a result, it becomes extremely salty. I think the quality of salt can change depending on the application.

Nowadays, all over Japan and the world, various salts are coming out in just the right size for souvenirs. I think that's very attractive. Even people who have never been to that land can use the salt from there; it's great as a gift.

Recently, as a way of eating that pursues diversity, at the Imperial Hotel we have been pursuing dishes specialized in plant-based ingredients for vegans. When I think about where Japan, an island nation, got its umami from, it is, after all, kombu (kelp).

If we can't use bonito because it's animal-based, it has to be kombu. Kombu is, of course, something in the sea, and when cooking with it, I find it very appealing to use salt from the seawater where the kombu grew to finish the dish along with the kombu dashi. Even if you haven't been there, it's an attractive way to use it that leads to tasting that environment.

I understand that very well. It's like saying the original place of production, or the lineage, is the same. Rice, in particular, tends to be strongly influenced by the production area. That's because it grows with water. And it naturally pairs well with salt made from the seawater of the ocean into which that water vein flows.

It's like a feeling that the DNA is the same. And that way of thinking is probably "natural basic," and since it aligns with the preferences of those who eat plant-based or vegan diets, I feel it will increase in the future.

That's true. I feel that the appeal of salt with such diversity in food has more and more possibilities.

Are there many chefs around the world who say Japanese salt is wonderful?

I was in France for a long time and also worked in London, but I've never met a chef who uses Japanese salt because it's good.

That might be because they have very high-quality salts from their own country in various regions, and it might be a matter of national character, so to speak, but they properly promote their own things, put good things out into the world, and use them with pride in what they are creating.

I think so. Especially in France, the love for their own country is extraordinary. Besides the famous Guérande, there are other good salt-producing areas, and since they can get about 20 types of good salt just within those, I think they feel there's no need to go out of their way to use things from other countries.

Conversely, Japan is very unusual. Japan is the only country where people at the general household level import salts from other countries so widely and use them selectively, saying it's not this one or it's that one.

As a recent trend, are there indeed more individual consumers seeking foreign-produced salt?

I do feel there's a consciousness that using pink rock salt somehow makes one feel "fashionable." It's being treated as an everyday item that slightly boosts one's desire for self-affirmation, like "I'm particular about salt, I'm thinking about my health, and that's a bit nice." I'd be happy if you, Mr. Maeda, could also awaken to the charm of salt even a little bit starting today (laughs).

When I say, "I'm researching the history of salt," I'm often asked, "Which salt is good?" and I'm at a loss (laughs).

You're definitely asked that.

Previously, when I visited a certain sushi restaurant, the owner spoke very passionately, saying, "I use this kind of salt." But I had no idea what he was talking about (laughs).

As you mentioned, I think there's a sense that using pink salt is somehow "cool." However, there was a shop that labeled that pink salt as "sun-dried salt from the Himalayas." I thought, "What on earth is sun-dried salt from the Himalayas?" and felt there was some confusion in the information. They probably can't distinguish between rock salt and sun-dried salt.

I hear stories like that quite often. It's only been about 20 years since liberalization, and on top of that, there are many small-scale operators, so there isn't much information dissemination activity, and it feels like information about salt is hardly reaching consumers.

For example, when TV or magazines occasionally do a special feature, things that make you go "Wow, that's wrong" are broadcast, and on social media, everyone says whatever they like, so I think a considerable amount of incorrect information is being circulated.

From the perspective of someone doing history, I feel there are reasons why salt tends to become that way. Originally, salt was often used as a means of preservation in an era without refrigeration. For example, by salting all fish to prevent spoilage, fishermen were, in a sense, professionals in the use of salt.

However, during the Meiji period, fishermen in Hokkaido intentionally procured poor-quality salt. This was, of course, due to its low cost, but there were other reasons as well. Among Hokkaido fishermen, there were people who believed that it was not the sodium chloride, but the components of the "nigari" (bittern) that were effective in preventing spoilage. In other words, incorrect knowledge had spread that using salt with a lower salt concentration would make things last longer.

Therefore, when exporting furs such as fur seals to Europe, they sometimes went out of their way to use salt with a low salt concentration for preservation. As a result, the furs would rot when passing through the equator during transport.

It was only then that they realized their mistake and noticed they should use salt with a high salt concentration. Because salt is something so familiar, there may be an aspect where urban legend-like rumors spread easily.

Mr. Sugimoto, how do you want to express the charm of salt in your cooking from now on?

Expressing new cuisine through salt might be quite difficult, but I think professionals have faced salt in various ways for cooking, for the cooking process, to make food delicious, and for preservation.

I think that if the ways professionals have confronted salt, passed down through generations, are brought more into the world and spread, it will be an opportunity for everyone to rediscover the charm of salt. I hope to spread the word, even a little, that using salt in this way is, of course, good for the body and good for the ingredients.

I want to face various ingredients and also work on social issues such as food loss. I want to continue pursuing the way of eating and the way of food where one "becomes healthy by eating." Even in the luxury spaces of the services we provide, I am currently exploring whether such things can be considered even a little and provided as luxury value. In that regard, I believe salt will become an indispensable item.

Salt is a product whose self-sufficiency rate declined quite early in modern Japan. In the pre-war period, supply depended on colonies, and after the loss of colonies due to the defeat in the war, it has depended on various foreign countries. Currently, it depends on Mexico and Australia.

One of the factors for this low self-sufficiency rate was policies by the Monopoly Bureau, such as the consolidation of salt-producing areas. And, as mentioned in Mr. Aoyama's talk earlier, a unique Japanese market has been established today where various overseas salts are widely distributed, from first-class restaurants to general households. I thought that one of the factors for the establishment of such a characteristic market might be related to the Japanese way of consumption, where salt has been ordered from overseas and used for a long period of over a century.

I think a wide variety of topics came up today, and I believe this "variation" in the conversation is the very charm of salt. Salt has been deeply involved not only in health but also in the food culture and history of each region, as well as economic development. It is also utilized in beauty. I think the fun of salt lies in the fact that there are so many perspectives, and I want more people to know about this variety-rich fun.