🥩 Kujira no Tare (Sauce-marinated whale meat)

“Sauce-marinated” is a local dish in the Minami-Boso region of Chiba prefecture, in which whale meat is marinated in a sauce and dried. It has the appearance of tree bark, and is colored black like charcoal or seaweed. A type of whale known as the giant beaked whale, which grows to roughly 12 meters long, is used to make “sauce-marinated.” The excavation of many whale bones from archaeological sites in Kamakura City, together with other evidence, suggest that coastal whaling may have begun in Boso between the late Kamakura Period (13th century) and the Muromachi Period (14th to 15th century). Even though “net whaling” became the mainstream whaling method in many areas, whaling in the Minami-Boso area is unique as net whaling was not suitable for giant beaked whales because they dive deep, leading to the adoption of “pierce whaling”. Whaling was common throughout Japan until the Showa period, and was a source of food for the general populace. “Sauce-marinated” is said to have been prepared as a preserved food due to the abundance of whale meat in the days where refrigerators did not yet exist. The Japanese name for "sauce-marinated whale meat (kujira-no-tare)" is said to have come from the fact that "whale (kujira) meat" was marinated in sauce (tare) and dried, or the fact that whale meat was hung from the eaves of houses. It is an indispensable and familiar part of the diet of the citizens of the Minami-Boso region, and people who have moved to other prefectures often buy sauce-marinated whale meat whenever they return to their hometowns in the region.