Spring comes late to the town of Nishikawa in the uplands of Yamagata Prefecture. While residents of Tokyo and the lowlands are counting the days until the arrival of cherry blossom season and the onset of spring, here snow still covers the land two meters deep or more.
For this small mountain community close to the foot of Mount Gassan, life has never been easy, least of all in winter. Until just a generation ago, planning for the cold season meant laying in provisions to last as much as four months. Pickles and preserves played a vital role in the survival equation, along with whatever game the hunters could bring down from the woods.
Even now, after the snow retreats there is always an interval before local farmers can start harvesting their first crops. Fortunately, nature provides a welcome stopgap. Many of the first green shoots to appear in the fields, woods and hedgerows are edible wild plants, or sansai (literally "mountain vegetables"). In the past, they would often have made the difference between life and death.
A vast body of local lore has been passed down over the centuries about these plants and the best ways to cook, eat and preserve them. These days, their shoots, buds and leaves are served in restaurants across Japan from exclusive, city-center establishments to simple, station platform noodle counters. But few places, if any, have the history or enduring presence of Dewaya.
Fourth-generation ryokan
Founded in 1918 as a ryokan, a traditional inn that provides both accommodation and sustenance, Dewaya initially catered mostly to pilgrims. Many of those visitors were ascetics, practitioners of the mountain-worshiping Shugendo religion, for whom Mount Gassan — along with nearby Mount Yudono and Mount Hagoro — was considered the domain of the deities.
So great was the demand to worship at the holy shrines on those three peaks — collectively known as the Three Mountains of Dewa (the former name for the Yamagata region) — that a railway track was laid, connecting Nishikawa with the nearby main line. Although it was later scrapped in 1974, Dewaya continues to stand right by the former site of the terminus, Mazawa.
These days, Dewaya's clientele has more down-to-earth desires. They now make the 40-minute drive from Yamagata City so they can dine on the inventive, multicourse meals offered by chef Haruki Sato.
The great-grandson of the founder, Sato studied hotel management in Tokyo while also working in the kitchen of Nihon Ryori Tsukiji Tamura, a prestigious ryokan. He went on to study at the renowned Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka, widening his palate by dining out whenever possible.
When he returned to take over the day-to-day running of Dewaya and its kitchen in 2013, Sato was keen to breathe new life into the inn’s menu. However, he understood the importance of maintaining its reputation for serving food that reflected the traditions and dishes of this mountainous area, with a special focus on sansai.
“It’s important that we work from the bottom up, starting from our connection with the local community," Sato says. "For me, the first thing was to reinforce our strong links with food producers in the area, including the hunters and expert foragers. That just reinforced my intention to focus on the abundance provided by Mount Gassan and to make sansai the focus of our restaurant."
Bringing tradition up to date
As you arrive at Dewaya, it appears little has changed from its earliest days. From the ornate architecture of the imposing timber entrance to the traditional irori (hearth) in the main lobby, its vintage copper kettle simmering over glowing charcoal embers, the connection with the past is clear. But when it’s time to eat, you’ll find the dining room reflects a much more contemporary aesthetic.
Following a recent refurbishment completed in January, the walls, fixtures and the walk-in wine cellar are faced with fragrant cedar, while the eight-seat, L-shaped counter in front of Sato’s open kitchen is a massive slice of ancient keyaki (zelkova) wood. With a picture window onto rustic buildings set in a traditional garden, it’s a setting that beats anything in the heart of Tokyo.
Sato likes to open his omakase (chef’s special) menu with a simple dish of vegetables that perfectly encapsulates his approach. In a ceramic bowl, he places a whole kabu (white turnip) that has been slowly simmered till tender, along with a couple of leaves of lightly blanched spinach. The clear broth he ladles over them is simply the water — from a source on the sacred mountain — in which the turnip has been cooked.
In the past, this part of Yamagata was too poor and too remote from the ports where the trading ships would unload kombu kelp and katsuobushi (cured bonito flakes), the standard ingredients used for dashi. Sato chooses not to use these sources of umami, not just as a nod to the poverty food of the community’s past but also to spotlight the taste of the vegetables in this dish.
Local farmer Shintaro Hosoya leaves his organically grown turnips and carrots in the ground right through the winter, only harvesting them when he needs to supply his customers. Even though that may entail digging down through a couple of meters of snow, the effort is worth it for the remarkable depth of flavor and sweetness that develops in the root vegetables during this hibernation period.
If booked in advance, Hosoya may allow visitors to watch and even take part in the excavation process. It is a valuable chance to gain an up-close, hands-on insight into what it takes to make it through the harshest of seasons in this off-the-radar location.
Where the wild things grow
Over the course of the year, Sato uses at least 30 different kinds of wild plants, dozens of fungi and several varieties of nuts, wild berries and other fruit. Even during the winter months when foraging is out of the question, he is able to continue serving sansai that have been preserved — whether dried, pickled or packed in salt or brine — since the previous spring.
Several of these are likely to be familiar to city dwellers, such as the fiddleheads of kogomi (ostrich fern) and zenmai (royal fern), young warabi (bracken), fukinotō (sprouting butterbur), yama-udo (spikenard) and taranome (Japanese angelica tree buds). While all are widely known around Japan and most often cooked as tempura, at Dewaya, the preparations are more sophisticated.
Later in the spring, bamboo shoots make their appearance. As autumn arrives, the delicacies will be ceps and matsutake pine mushrooms. Sato says his contacts sometimes bring in even rarer fungi, some with the tantalizing aroma of truffles. These foragers all have their own favorite patches in the forests, sites for which they will never divulge the locations, even to their own family, for fear of word getting out.
One of the most unusual finds is kibunori, a type of moss that grows only on old beech trees in sheltered pockets at high altitude. Because this used to be known solely to the mountain ascetics, it came to be known by its nickname, sennin no kasumi, or "hermit’s mist." Sato serves this with a creamy dressing of walnut blended with savory homemade miso.
In the old days, seafood was never part of the diet for people in Nishikawa. Sato tips his hat to this by also sticking to freshwater species such as ayu (sweetfish), iwana (char) and wild carp. Each has its own season, when it is particularly prized, for example when bearing roe. At the same time, they all lend themselves to being preserved for use year-round.
So too with game meats: wild fowl, rabbit and bear meat often feature on the menu at Dewaya, but never wild boar, as it is not found in this area. Sato minces pheasant to serve as dango (meatballs). He grills duck breast over charcoal. And his classic preparation for bear meat is to briefly cook it in a nabe (hot pot), using a mix of wild fungi to imbue extra umami.
Sansai Day
It is a meal of no little refinement, comprising as many as a dozen separate courses presented on hand-thrown pottery and paired with a well-considered selection from Sato’s wine cellar. Dewaya offers other dining possibilities, too. A simpler, more traditional feast of local dishes can be reserved (from ¥6,600 a head). And there is also a walk-in lunchtime noodle restaurant serving a la carte dishes of buckwheat soba, wild plants and fungi (from ¥1,500), plus sansai tempura as a side dish (¥1,000).
To recognize the importance of wild vegetables at this time of year, March 31 has since 2012 been formally certified in Japan as Sansai Day. This date marks the moment when the first wild vegetables generally start to be found in the Mount Gassan area.
Sato is proud to carry on the legacy of his forebears, especially his grandfather, Kuniharu, who codified this culinary tradition and was the first to coin the term "sansai cuisine." Truth be told, at Dewaya every day of the year is Sansai Day.
Mazawa 58, Nishikawa, Nishimurayama-gun, Yamagata 990-0703; 0237-74-2323; dewaya.com; 12-2 p.m. (LO) & 5-8 p.m. (LO), closed Tue.; standard menu from ¥6,600; chef’s table from ¥19,800, full-board accommodation from ¥19,800; nearest station Sagae; nonsmoking; major cards accepted; Japanese menu; a little English spoken
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