Letting them sit overnight enhances the fish’s umami as well as the pleasing suppleness characteristic of fugu. The secret to the delicious taste of fugu is that it is less fatty than other white-fleshed fish, with higher concentrations of the umami components glutamic acid and inosinic acid. Fugu is a star on menus not only at speciality shops but also at restaurants ranging from kappo (counter-style restaurants serving traditional Japanese cuisine) to ryotei (traditional Japanese restaurants). A proverb advises to start eating torafugu when the bitter orange gains colour and to stop when the rapeseed flower blooms. The season for torafugu (Japanese pufferfish or tiger pufferfish) is said to be from the autumn equinox to the spring equinox. The practice of eating fugu soon spread nationwide. The prohibition on eating fugu was lifted during the Meiji period (1868–1912 ), when the prime minister at that time, Ito Hirobumi, ate fugu in Shimonoseki and became so enamoured with it that he began discussions with the governor of Yamaguchi Prefecture to lift the restriction. The desire to enjoy the delicious flavour of fugu despite the dangers gave rise to a saying about perilous predilections: ‘I want to eat fugu, but I value my life’. Despite this edict, fugu remained stubbornly popular with everyone from the common folk to intellectuals, even appearing in haiku and ukiyo-e prints. During the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568–1600), however, the de-facto ruler of Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598 ), banned the consumption of fugu because so many people kept getting poisoned by it. Fugu bones have been unearthed in shell mounds from Japan’s Jomon period (approximately 14,000 to 1000 BC ). We know that people have been eating fugu for thousands of years. People have been eating fugu for a long time.

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