The hinona is a kind of turnip. Purple at the leaf end, shading to white toward the root, about thirty centimeters long and slender, with a distinct flavor and a real bite of heat and bitterness to it.

The account of its discovery is dated to roughly five hundred years ago. Gamo Sadahide, then the lord here, is said to have found it growing wild while visiting a Kannon hall at Kamagake. Pickled, the whole thing turned the color of cherry blossom.

It went from there to the capital, presented through a court noble to the Emperor Gokashiwabara, who was pleased enough to send a poem back down to Sadahide, naming the pickle for the blossom it resembled.

That is where both names come from: hinona for the vegetable, sakura-zuke for the pickle. The method itself has nothing courtly about it. The roots are dried, then layered alternately with rice bran and salt, pressed under a wooden lid and a stone, and left about a month before anyone checks how they are coming along. The season for the root runs from October to the end of December, though the pickle is sold all year. The vegetable was named after the poem rather than the other way round, which is a strange order for a turnip.