Boze is the Tokushima word. Elsewhere the fish is called ibodai, and it also answers to ubose and shizu. It is a white-fleshed fish caught from summer into autumn, and it used to be expensive, the kind of thing you bought for an occasion rather than a Tuesday.

Around the autumn festivals, Tokushima makes a lot of sugatazushi, sushi that keeps the fish whole. The boze is split along the back, cured in vinegar, and wrapped around a body of seasoned rice, with the head and tail left on. Set out on a plate it still reads as a fish, lying there intact, which is the entire point of the form. A citrus note from sudachi or yuzu is more or less obligatory.

What has changed is the supply. Catches of boze have been falling, and households increasingly make the same dish with mackerel or saury instead. The shape stays, the ritual stays, the name stays. The fish inside it is somebody else.

I found that quietly unsettling and then decided it was probably fine. The dish was never only about the species. It was about presenting something whole on the day of the festival, and a form that can outlive its own ingredient is a form that was built to last. The plate still looks like a fish.