Ozu is given as the origin, and the account reaches back more than three hundred and fifty years, to when the Kato family held the domain. The starting point was okomori, a religious vigil, and the pot cooked for it, to which each person brought taro from their own ground.

The method is not complicated. The taro is peeled and cooked through in salted boiling water first. Chicken is fried in oil, the taro and thick fried tofu go in, and stock is added and everything simmers. Dumplings of glutinous rice flour go in too, and the seasoning is sweet and salty.

Ozu taro is sticky enough to hold together through all of that, which is credited to the soil the Hijikawa river lays down.

In 1966 the town turned it into a tourist event. Pots are set up on the river flats, people sit out on mats through the autumn evenings, and they eat this while the moon comes up. At its height the event drew over seventy thousand people a year. It runs from early September to mid-October. It is eaten across the prefecture, and most heavily in the Nanyo district in the south. Not a dish you go out to eat, exactly: the pot itself goes down to the riverbed and everyone follows it.