A Sprinkling of Furikake History

    I first heard this term on a Japanese TV show I was watching with my Japanese husband and mother-in-law. When I asked what it was, they laughed and said they would pick some up at the store for me. As I am not overly partial to fish, the first version I had the chance to try was a dried egg and nori seaweed concoction, served over hot rice. It was tasty enough but also felt very normal, not overly complicated or difficult to prepare, unlike the dishes my mother-in-law fixes for every meal. I wondered why anyone would go through the trouble of frying eggs every morning when an easy and tasty enough alternative is this readily available?

    More recently, furikake has popped up not just as an ingredient grabbed by the girl with Japanese heritage in Masterchef Junior but also in my friends' lives as they work to find healthy but tasty options for food they can make at home, including rice balls. Another of my friends asked what exactly furikake was earlier this year because it showed up in a kids Japanese food vocabulary book I had sent to her child.

    Thus began my quest to better understand furikake. I have seen the term translated as a condiment or spice used as a rice topping but that really doesn't say enough about the content of variety of the products.

Just the furikake I have in my house. The little packs are for my husband's rice balls.

    At most supermarkets in Japan and even in many of the convenience stores, you can find these packets of dried food, commonly featuring egg, salmon, other fish and/or nori, but the options stretch far beyond. At a higher end grocery store near my home, I found mega-veggie furikake mixes alongside ones that featured dried eel. Different areas of Japan also have their own specialized furikake, like some we found in Onagawa that had a special kind of flying fish as a main ingredient.

    Where does all this come from? The name comes from 振り掛け which sounds like ふりかけ and means "something that is sprinkled (over something else)" which seems suitable enough. According to one English language website and an Australian magazine, it turns out that the name furikake only dates back to 1959 when the National Furikake Association was founded. The product itself is a little bit older and was invented by Suekichi Yoshimaru, a pharmacist in the Taisho era (1912-1926), as a way to get kids to eat crushed fish bones to avoid calcium deficiencies. He added sesame and nori flakes for seasoning and the product caught on. It seems that if you can turn it into an easy and tasty breakfast, people will eat it.

    Now, the International Furikake Association still works with major furikake producing companies to donate furikake with that same purpose of helping kids avoid nutrient deficiencies in Thailand and Laos. They also participate in global events to try to help furikake gain more recognition as a useful and delicious food around the world. Apparently it has been catching on in some parts of America and Australia, but it is hard to call it mainstream in most places. A Houston Chronicle article from 2010 recommends going to the grocery stores specializing in Asian imports and the Australian article linked above suggests tips for making your own.

    After the first version from the pharmacist, a product called Gohan No Tomo or Friend of Rice, the idea caught on and spread from his native Kumamoto Prefecture far north to Fukushima where Seiichiro Kai, a food broker, tweaked the recipe and released his own Kore wa Umai which should translate to This is Yummy. The second product went through more cooking fish in soy sauce before and after drying it to boost the flavor and became quite popular as well.

    War and Japan's hardcore military history also are involved in this dried and sprinkled history as soldiers during Japan's aggressive military maneuvers of the first half of the twentieth century were given furikake in their rations and many developed a taste for it that they retained after coming back to Japan.

    As a personal aside, I feel compelled to note that many Americans of my father's generation (my father included) were sent off to fight in Vietnam. A lot of them didn't return but those who did generally brought tons of trauma and drug addictions they hadn't left the states with. I wish they had only brought a taste for fish flakes or MREs. Of course, I know many of the Japanese soldiers likely brought home their own traumas, injuries, and problems as well. There is something sweet in imagining them coming back home and just wanting to sprinkle some dried fish on some rice, though.

    Whether you like it on a bowl of rice, in a rice ball, or as an ingredient in something completely different, furikake is a fabulous mainstay of the modern Japanese diet and there are enough variations available that it's hard not to find one you might like.

    What furikake do you like and how do you use it?