Kasube is dried skate. The name is said to have meant fish dregs once. The fishery has shrunk since, and it is now a scarce and expensive thing.

It does not come from here. It is landed in Hokkaido, and it reached the ports of Noshiro and Tsuchizaki on the kitamaebune, the coastal trading ships. In an age without refrigeration, a sea product that kept indefinitely was worth a great deal to an inland-facing province.

Cooking it starts by undoing what the drying did, which takes longer than the cooking itself. The fish is soaked for more than a day, with the water changed repeatedly, then parboiled, then simmered over a low flame for around two hours. A little mirin at the end brings up the gloss.

It appears at festivals, at new year, at Obon, at weddings, and at memorial services, which is to say at both ends of the emotional range. In Tsuchizaki the custom holds around the port's hikiyama festival in July: households make it and serve it to whoever comes to the door. Across the north and south of the prefecture it is widely made for Obon. A dried fish that arrived by ship two centuries ago is still what the neighbors are given when they come to the door.