Hatahata has no scales. That single fact shapes the dish, because it means the fish can go into the mouth as it is, with nothing to pick out. The flesh is mild and plain, and in Shonai it is the taste of autumn.

Its other name is thunder fish. When the sea turns rough and thunder is rolling, the fish crowd into the shallows, and that timing gave it the name.

The cooking could not be simpler. Take off the head, the guts, and the tail, and boil the fish in plenty of water for around ten minutes. When the backbone starts pushing out at both the head end and the tail end, the flesh has let go of it and the fish is ready. Lift it out, pass it through cold water, pull the bone, and eat it with grated daikon, or with spring onion and soy sauce. Some cook it in a clay pot set over kombu with sake added to the water, and finish it with ginger, shichimi, or a squeeze of citrus.

From the end of the 1980s into the 1990s the catch collapsed. The fishermen themselves agreed on limits and on managing the stock, and it has come back. The months matter too: June and July are for the flesh, October and November for the buriko, the roe, and the milt. A dish that consists of boiling a fish came very close to having no fish.