Several bowls arrive at once. Rice in one, shredded chicken in another, then thin ribbons of omelette, simmered shiitake, pickle, and a small dish of spring onion, shredded nori, sesame and dried tangerine peel. Nobody assembles it for you. What goes onto the rice, and in what quantity, is left entirely to the person about to eat it.

Then you pour the soup over the top. It is made by simmering a whole bird rather than a rack of bones, which is why it can be clear and still taste of so much. The rice takes it up, the shredded chicken loosens, and seven separate things become one thing in the bowl in front of you.

The dish began as something set before officials from the mainland domain, back when these islands were administered directly from Satsuma; chicken, at that point, was what you served to impress a visitor. There is also an account that an older dish of pork cooked into rice came first, and that the chicken simply replaced the pig.

The version with the soup poured over it is post-war. A woman who opened an inn on Amami in 1945 took the older cooked-in-the-rice version and rearranged it into what is served today. So the part of the meal that feels most traditional — the pouring, the assembling, the freedom to get the proportions wrong — is the newest part of it.