The turnip is the Hida beni-kabu. It came out of the hakka-kabu, a round reddish-purple variety, when a crimson individual was found among them in 1918. Growers selected from there for roundness, for vivid color, for white flesh inside, for soft leaves, and arrived at the variety used now.

The method is old and short. Cut the tops off, wash them well, pack them into a wooden barrel with no gaps, salt them, weight them, and leave them at room temperature for about two months. Sugar in the turnip and lactic acid bacteria do the rest, producing a faint sweetness, a moderate sourness, and a smell that belongs to nothing else.

The part worth watching is the color. A turnip just out of the ground is red only on the skin. Inside it is white.

Over the weeks in the barrel the pigment in the skin moves inward until the whole thing is crimson through and through, and no dye or additive is involved in any of it. Packing runs from October to December. Through a winter in a mountain basin closed off by snow, this is the vegetable a household has. It is eaten with rice, rolled into hand sushi, put in salads, taken with a drink. The color arrives while nobody is looking at it.